Category: Listen

The pensive chords dominating the opening of Timothy Polashek’s Porcupine Quest don’t immediately hint at the angular gestures, replete with dense clusters which hijack the solo piano piece into new territory. Riffs and phrases are asymmetrically placed in time and the usual fare we’re all used to gets unusually recast with a tinge of jazz—not the swing, but the spontaneity. With all these strange repetitions and octave displacements, I hear a composer railing against the long-lasting effects of species counterpoint homework. This is a perfect example of what Fux followers would deem an utter disaster. Way to go!

—RN

A poster to our Chatter section recently claimed that minimalism has had no real impact on European music. Tell that to the Italian Pierrot-plus-percussion groove machine Sentieri Selvaggi who play music by the Bang on a Can crowd as if it were as natural to them as singing bel canto. David Lang’s totally wacked out and utterly relentless I Fought the Law might be my new all-time party favorite.

—FJO

Get out your hydrophones, kids: rushing streams, crashing waves, and seagulls. Though by and large these sounds are digitally masked, one might start getting suspicious, judging from the electronic sounds culled by Joseph Waters, that the composer’s name is actually a not-so-subtle pseudonym. To be sure, liquefied references abound on the composer’s album titled Offshore. Waters’s chamber composition, Ocean Eyes—stop it already!—demonstrates an interesting contradistinction between past and present. Without the electronic processing, the music is almost indistinguishable from Romantic era fodder, but this all changes once the laptop is hooked up. Even if it’s difficult to pin down what exactly this music’s intentions may be, it’s easy to put your finger on how far the radical electronic transformations actually go here because we’ve heard this music before, or at least we know where it came from and where it’s going. So, does this exercise in familiarity really emphasize the electronic component over the live performance? Hardly, due to the fact the acoustic side of the music pokes through its digital veil often enough to maintain some sense of its identity. But then come special moments when, rather than merely enhancing a gesture, Waters wittingly annihilates it, instantaneously evaporating all sensibilities in one fell swoop and a mouse click.

—RN

Every now and then something arrives on my desk that is just so weird that even I can’t describe it. If you have any clues, by all means write in.

—FJO

Billy Martin, yes that Martin of usual Medeski and Wood company, breaks out on his own for this solo album recorded live at Tonic in 2002. A couple of tracks of stage chatter hike up the intimacy factor and clue the listener in on some particular Martin skills and fascinations, like his adoption of the Burundi drums. Really, though, the record is 14 solid tracks of beats and rhythms that challenge the notion that it’s just one guy behind the set. For those in the crowd who made it all the way to Finale (Part 3), the rewards of the evening were obviously well enjoyed.

—MS

Did you ever want to hop into that souped-up DeLorean with Michael J. Fox? Yeah, me neither; not unless I’m driving. If all you’re craving anyway is a little sonic blast from the past, then the mid-’80s have arrived in the form of Daniel Lentz’s On the Leopard Altar, a new CD reissue from Cold Blue Music. This Moog-heavy bliss-out is chalk full of Glass-like arpeggios, sans vibrato singing, and straight-forward chord progressions. Despite bearing clear signs of its own elderliness, the whole package has aged nicely—even the retro-sounding synth timbres get a pass. The album’s title track wears its cobwebs like haute couture, with drape of perky electronics and panoramic sound washes supporting its dreamy reverb drenched vocals. Actually, it sounds a little bit like what I’ve heard of Cory Dargel’s forthcoming album—very back to the future.

—RN

Imagine the ’70s guitar god trio of John McLaughlin, Al Dimeola, and Paco De Lucia in all their virtuosic abandon somehow captured in a completely fixed composition. While this certainly isn’t the first time the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet recorded member Andrew York’s minimalistic Andalucian-feeling composition—it was one of the first things he ever composed for the group—it’s nice to hear it sounding almost like standard repertoire when these guys play it now. York claims the title comes from “an ancient and powerful metaphysical incantation” that “should not be spoken out loud too many times.” Go figure…

—FJO

Soprano Melanie Mitrano’s new CD of recent American art songs benefits from her impeccable diction, direct collaboration with most of the composers who serve as her piano accompanists here, and smart microphone placement in the recording studio that puts the voice front and center as it should be but normally only happens on pop records. The result shows there is not a whole lot of difference between the great standards by Broadway composers and art songs by so-called classical composers including 2004 Pulitzer-winner Paul Moravec. Should there be?

—FJO

No, actually, no pure voiced choir boys or lush orchestrations turn up here. Hunt if you must and try and uncover them. At the opening pitches, your ear is plunged into an electronic search for signal playing tag with acoustic contributions from the clarinet. Sometimes the sonic clouds clear and off in the distance you see it, yes it, over there, but the fog rolls in before you can possibly get there. The lines are crossed, the vision blurred, the dream continues. But wait, over there, there it is. No, wrong again. Here is half of a cell phone call to Saturn relayed through an outdated videogame unit. Is he frustrated? Damn straight he is and he wants to go home. Please come and pick him up. He’ll be waiting, waiting over there, next to it. You know. And hurry if you can.

—MS

Hmm. Miklós Rózsa? Peter Schickele’s long-awaited variations on “Rock-A-Bye Baby?” What on earth is this? Get ready, prepare yourself for a real Folgers Crystals moment: Morton Feldman! Yup, Morty penned a violin sonata way back in 1945, and the good folks at OgreOgress want the world to hear it. And not only the sonata, but everything single bit of music the composer ever wrote for solo violin and viola, with or without piano. Fans of the composer won’t be disappointed as Christina Fong (violin and viola) and Paul Hersey (piano) deliver quality performances throughout. I’m not so sure the sonata bears any of the seeds of Feldman’s later styles, it’s more like a cabinet of curiosities. To my ears, it sounds a tad derivative, but let’s chalk that up to youth. Of course it wasn’t long before graph paper set the composer in entirely new directions. I can’t help but think the composer felt Hubbert’s peak had come to pass, as far as melody was concerned, and the only solution was to leave pitch specificity completely behind—for a while anyway. All the compositions on this 2-CD set are presented chronologically, so you can hear how stylistic shifts evolve over the decades.

—RN