Category: Listen

A tribute album is a convention much more common in the pop world, but it is one warmly taken up here in gratitude to Andrew Imbrie on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The disc features a mix of works—some penned by Imbrie, others in his honor. John Harbison’s Chaconne for piano and four instruments is among the pieces carrying a dedication to Imbrie. Taking a small pattern, then turning it over and developing it during the course of the work’s five-minute run time, Harbison’s ear seems to have been born aloft by a leaf caught up in the wind, the sort that never quite comes to rest on the ground. An overly sentimental image perhaps, but a simple one fitting to this wistful, almost nostalgic piece.

—MS

Cold shower? A cup of joe? Maybe a slap in the face? Nothing is more effective than the opening of Elliott Carter’s third string quartet—guaranteed to wake you up faster than smelling salts. The Arditti Quartet manages to capture every bit of potential energy contained in Carter’s score—feel the wallop! Of course Carter is no one trick pony, so the music evolves, tensions get released. You bet you’re going to be lulled and jerked in a million directions at once. Rollercoaster enthusiasts take note: this CD is for you.

—RN

Though having forsaken the Boston jazz scene for Rome last year, Greg Burk teams up with the one-two punch of Steve Swallow (bass) and Bob Moses (drums) for his first release on Chicago-based indie label 482 Music. Without in any way ignoring the strengths of the trio, the disc’s second track leaves Burk alone at the piano to rewarding result. Labeled “Prelude to Surrender,” Burk does not go gently. More like a very precocious six-year-old, he argues, debates, drags his feet, begs, and promises before eventually consenting to go to sleep.

—MS

In the never ending avalanche of John Cage CDs on Mode comes the 6th volume of the composer’s piano works. The disc’s centerpiece, Music of Changes, is preceded by the economical Seven Haiku, which clocks-in just under two minutes. Although not intentional—we’re talking Cage after all—the side-by-side pairing lends the Haikus a sort of Cliff’s Notes air. Can nearly 45 minutes of chance be summed up into a few select gestures? Listen to both and find out.

—RN

Performed by Alarm Will Sound

It seems like a composition assignment from that really cool young prof. who’s intent on shaking up the department: Take an Aphex Twin track (which is to say one created by electronic-pioneer Richard James) and translate it into the acoustic. The project is actually not all that unprecedented (Philip Glass arranged an orchestral version of “Icct Hedral” released in 1995).

Alan Pierson and Alarm Will Sound have more than earned their concert hall and their street cred with challenging and well-executed programming, and those unfamiliar with Aphex Twin in the original will likely enjoy the same spirit here. Fans, however, may find the whole experiment a little silly, along the lines of the Chris O’Riley/Radiohead project. Of the arrangements turned in here by twelve composers working alone and in teams, Caleb Burhans’s “Blue Calx” is the least giggle inducing, but that’s because it sounds the least like a traditional chamber ensemble.

—MS

How much new music, or any music for that matter, can you think of that is scored for bass trombone and piano? Not even Hindemith wrote a sonata for the combo! But, now, thanks to bass trombonist Charles Vernon and pianist Eric Ewazen, there’s a whole disc of this stuff out there. The disc features everything from Halsey Stevens’s Sonatina and Alec Wilder’s Sonata, both mid-century I-would-imagine-bass-trombone-and-piano-repertoire-staples (if such things could be said to exist) to two short lyrical pieces by Robert Spillman, known primarily as the conductor of the Boulder Bach Festival in Colorado.

The highlight, however, is believe it or not, a “concerto” for bass trombone, presented humbly here without the orchestra, by John Williams, undoubtedly known to most of you primarily for his more than 80 film scores and conducting the Boston Pops. Stripped to a piano reduction, Williams’s concerto is transformed into a formidable piece of chamber music, a remarkably exciting and virtuosic dialogue between two very dissimilar instruments.

The pianist Eric Ewazen is also represented on this disc as a composer by an orchestra-less version of his bass trombone concerto. It’s one of five works he’s composed thus far for the instrument, all of which have been previously collected in fully orchestrated versions on an earlier Albany CD, cheekily titled Bass Hits.

—FJO

This haunting track by Chicago-based Joshua Abrams evokes a tactile dreamland where giant church steeple carillons melt into millions of discombobulated music boxes which continue to chime the passage of time. In this strange darkened landscape of infinite fireworks displays, tiny digital purrs saturate the air, stirring the gossamer aura of this tranquil nightmare. Abrams beautiful juxtaposition of electronic tweaks and field recordings made on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is pregnant with foreboding disaster, with just enough hypnosis thrown in to simulate utter apathy. Yeah, I know, the sky is falling…isn’t it pretty though?

—RN

It’s hardly shocking that New York music critics, the self-proclaimed arbiters of musical taste, panned the premiere of Paul Creston’s brilliant 1960 Second Violin Concerto at its New York premiere in 1962. They usually never get it right about new music. I imagine it must have shined in the hands of legendary violin prodigy Michael Rabin for whom it was written. (Rabin’s Paganini Caprices are still the only ones I’ve ever heard that are 100 percent flawless as well as musically moving.) Wish I could’ve been there, alas. What is shocking is that it took 35 years for this formidable work to be released on a commercially available recording.

Luckily, Gregory Fulkerson is up to the challenge, and a challenge it is with cascading scales and multiple stops galore. The CD booklet notes gush on about the daredevil cadenza in the second movement, but my moment of fixation is earlier in the movement when the tempo picks up and the violin soars amidst cycling impressionistic brass harmonies. It’s hardly avant-garde by any stretch of the imagination. But, so what! Nearly a half century later we can deal with it as a great work from our past and not be worried about whose zeitgeist it doesn’t neatly fit.

—FJO

Visit Mason Bates’s website and you’re faced with a choice right off the bat: electronica or classical. I imagine this decision is a cinch for some, but what if classical is your cup of tea just as much as electronica is your shot of vodka and Red Bull? Looks like your mouse is going to get a workout toggling between pages, but it’s worth the effort to see how one genre informs the other. On the classical page you’ll find an acoustic mashup of Beethoven’s 9th, and along with the excerpt of the Ludwig-laden Ode are a couple more MP3s to checkout. Navigate over to the electronica portion of the site and be greeted by a less introspective, slightly more pimped-out photo of Bates in a sporty red windbreaker. Here the MP3s showcase intricately constructed tracks with a slight jazz lounge vibe. The track “No Masterpiece” actually sounds more like classic Michael Torke from his “color music” days, rather than something you’d here spinning in a club. But no matter, just enjoy the free samples.

—RN

The organ generally gets short shrift outside of baseball fields and liturgical settings these days, but Harold Stover has created a whole disc of secular music and, in doing so, attempts to recapture a time in America when the organ was closer to the center of popular entertainment. Recorded on the 1928 Ernest M. Skinner organ housed in the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Portland, Maine, Stover plays through work of early 20th century composers such as Sowerby, Alter, and even a Gershwin arrangement. The other half the disc, however, is devoted to original compositions by the soloist. The long tones and sparsely ornamented melody of the opening movement to his Mountain Music will definitely allow the listener to leave all memories of Sunday services behind.

—MS