Tag: new release

Sounds Heard: Keeril Makan–Afterglow

Posted on February 11, 2014 by - Albums, Listen

Afterglow cover
Keeril Makan
Afterglow (Mode 257)
Performed by ICE: Eric Lamb, flutes; Joshua Rubin, clarinets, James Austin Smith, oboe; Gareth Flowers, trumpet; Erik Carlson, violin; Kivie Cahn-Lipman, cello; Randall Zigler, double bass; Nuiko Wadden, harp; Cory Smythe, piano; Nathan Davis, percussion; Erik Carlson and Adam Sliwinski, conductors.


It is always a pleasure to encounter music that serves as a reminder of some basic creative ideas: that music is a physical thing, connected to the body and to breath; that simplicity is often the most satisfying option; that the present moment and all that it holds is important. All of these notions are present in composer Keeril Makan’s latest release on Mode Records, Afterglow, a selection of chamber music and solo works performed by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

In an effort to listen with ears as widely open as possible, I always do a first pass on a recording without reading the liner notes or considering biographical details about the artist(s) involved in any way (barring past information that I may already know). Although Robert Kirzinger’s liner notes and Makan’s New York Times essay about the link between his struggles with depression and his creative life are both excellent and well worth reading, I appreciated that my first listening experience of Afterglow was uncolored by extra input. Either way, the six compositions featured on this album communicated a strikingly beautiful sense of clarity and openness in both form and content.

The opening track, Mercury Songbirds, is scored for a Pierrot plus percussion ensemble. It opens with a smooth-as-glass, sine wave-like tone performed by clarinet, which is quickly thickened by additional long tones and peppered with short interruptions over top that build up and abruptly return the instruments to the previous spare texture. While there is a subtle and nearly constant drone emanating from the piano, percussive sounds performed inside the piano play a prominent role in marking the start and stop points of the more active material.

After the seven-minute mark, all of the instruments join together in a short, plaintive song that, while ultimately returning once again to slower, sparser content, causes a transformation in which all pitch content is raised to a higher register. At 9:25 we experience the first bit of silence in the work; the drone cuts off briefly, leaving gentle chords to make footprints of their own for a short time. Almost without noticing, the drone fades back in underneath the chord progression and is eventually overtaken by piano and long string tones that are abruptly cut off by a final wooden smack on the body of the piano.

Husk for flute, oboe, and harp is a more “in your face” affair—a study in contrast from start to finish. It begins with short yet dramatic harp gestures and flute jet tones, but still sports plenty of sustained pitches, many of which are performed by the oboe and set squarely in the instrumental foreground. At three minutes, an instrumental “panic attack” breaks in of twirling oboe, brash slaps, and glissandi from the harp and piano (played with plenty of fingernail action). This frantic outburst is quickly replaced by intensely quiet material, such as the sound of hands rubbing across harp strings and breath tones from the flute, made all the more dramatic when placed against the material before.

Afterglow for solo piano revels in the sonic landscape of the instrument’s harmonies and overtones that are created through a limited palette of harmonic and rhythmic material. Opening with one repeated note that keeps cycling around, it blooms with additional pitches and slightly altered rhythmic gestures. The progression of events is quite slow, so when new notes and different registers come into play, the sonic effect is fresh and surprising. The pace picks up just a bit at about eight minutes, but by the end it has slowed back down to the original pulse. According to the liner notes, the timing of the piece is quite flexible, allowing for differences between both instrument and performance space; I hope that many pianists will take up this work and bask in its sound world as much as the composer obviously has.

The other solo work on the album, Mu for prepared violin, also has a somewhat flexible score that allows the performer to explore the nature of unexpected and/or changeable timbres that result from her or his instrument. This close microphone recording puts the listener practically inside the violin; the proximity of the delicate yet complex sonorities of bowing strings prepared with paper clips creates a feeling of vulnerability and unpredictability. The effect is like the sound of slightly labored deep breathing.
Becoming Unknown for flute/bass flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, trumpet, and double bass, follows a fitful opening of melodic fragments with a plaintive melody that is, after a short time, smacked to a halt by double bass. The material afterwards features a combination of chordal material, textural exploration, and snippets of melodic content, both compressed into short gestures and stretched out into long tones.

The final work on the disc, titled After Forgetting, is a big change, as the biggest, brightest (in terms of instrumentation), and most accessible composition of the set. A pulse is established right away that continues throughout the work, but the music never rushes—all of Makan’s work exhibits a sense of patience, even at its most frenetic. Bright, open orchestration is also a hallmark of Makan’s music, with every sonority fully present in its own space, and After Forgetting is particularly lush and engaging in this regard, with vibraphone adding a metallic sparkle.

What I find most notable in this music is its complete lack of pretension; there is nothing flashy or forced, nothing trying too hard. It’s an unexpected kind of exciting music, of the fiercely quiet sort, that will greatly please discerning ears.

Sounds Heard: Florestan Recital Project—Early Songs of Samuel Barber

Posted on October 29, 2013 by - Albums, Listen

One of the more endearingly paradoxical indications of compositional success is that interest gets piqued in music that even the composer had largely forgotten about. Unpublished works, unfinished works, juvenilia—when even that becomes fair game, you know you’ve (posthumously, usually) made it. The latest recordings from Florestan Recital Project pay that tribute to Samuel Barber (1910-1981), collecting six songs, mostly written during Barber’s teenaged years.


The group first reclaimed the songs for posterity in 2009; their multi-concert survey of all of Barber’s songs included a host of then-unpublished works preserved in manuscript at the Library of Congress. (Since then, most of them have made it to print via a collection published by G. Schirmer.) The six recorded here make it clear just how much Barber was at home in vocal music from an early age, primed by temperament and family ties. (His aunt and uncle were Louise and Sidney Homer, Metropolitan Opera contralto and art-song composer, respectively; Louise Homer premiered many of Barber’s earliest efforts.) “Three Songs from Old England” show a precocious confidence: spare harmonic and melodic sequences for John Wilbye’s “Lady, When I Behold the Roses”; off-balance phrasing and contours in Thomas Wyatt’s “An Earnest Suit to His Unkind Mistress Not to Forsake Him”; cheerfully persistent diatonic suspensions in an anonymous “Hey Nonny No.”

“Fantasy in Purple” (with words by a then-up-and-coming Langston Hughes; Barber probably got the text through a friendly English professor) and “Watchers” (text by the prolific and forgotten Edgar Daniel Kramer) are both grim, high-drama scenes; if they lack the embellishment of unpredictability that marks so many of Barber’s songs, the skill on display is uncanny for a 15-year-old. Interestingly, the only dud dates from Barber’s twenties: “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” ca.1935, which sets Robert Frost’s famous poem in almost diffidently prosaic fashion. (That Barber left it unpublished is at least a testament to his critical standards.) The performances, by Florestan artistic directors Aaron Engebreth (baritone) and Alison d’Amato (piano) are first-rate—stylish, lived-in interpretations with high technical polish. (The former vocal coach part of me could listen to Engebreth’s diction all day long.)

Still, even given Barber’s considerable and continuing popularity, this is obscure, old repertoire—awfully old for a publication called NewMusicBox, certainly. But the release is interesting in itself: the recording is free. It was funded by a grant—the first such—from Thomas Hampson’s Hampsong Foundation. Recording grants are nothing new, but a grant for a recording designed to be given away is a sign of the online streaming, post-record-store state of recordings going forward, I think. Florestan Recital Project’s first recordings—a two-CD set of the complete songs of Daniel Pinkham—were self-produced, self-released physical products, but since then, they have opted for the free download, first with Libby Larsen’s The Peculiar Case of Dr. H. H. Holmes (a Florestan commission), and now with these Barber songs.

At a symposium last weekend I heard a panel discussion on music publishing and recording during which Jim Selby, the CEO of Naxos, did his best to finesse the same paradox that his pop counterparts sidestepped at the “Rethink Music” conference I wandered around a couple of years ago: labels are increasingly interested primarily in artists who engage in a high degree of self-promotion, a criterion that would seem to preemptively make moot one of the basic advantages of signing with a label in the first place. In the meantime, the philanthropic apparatus of classical music is beginning to create funding channels for completely different models, high-quality DIY recordings sent into the market as a freely available resource. The give-it-away model has its own disadvantages and pitfalls, without question, but give Florestan Recital Project credit for using it in a savvy way. Glimpses of the teenaged Barber’s raw talent and potential would probably be an extreme niche product; for free, its road-less-traveled aspect feels special enough to be more than usually generous.

Sounds Heard: Rebekah Heller—100 names

Posted on August 13, 2013 by - Albums, Listen

It’s refreshing to hear the bassoon edging its way towards the sonic foreground in contemporary music. Anyone with doubts about how cool the instrument can be has perhaps not yet heard bassoonist and core member of ICE Rebekah Heller perform; in her hands, the oft-underappreciated woodwind is transformed into a fierce creature that cannot be ignored onstage. Whether the music being performed is a cadenza from a Mozart piece or a new work by an ICELab participant, she will make you wonder how you never noticed the instrument before.

Her first solo CD, 100 names, features six work for solo bassoon, both alone and paired with electronics. All of the composers represented make use of Heller’s virtuosic playing abilities, loading up their compositions with the most extended of extended techniques. The potential “gimmicky” feel is absent though, because the pieces were obviously created in collaboration with Heller, who is clearly comfortable handling such musical material. The first piece by Edgar Guzman, ∞¿?, opens the disc with a bang; a thick, low electronic tone with rough edges cuts in and out, is quickly joined by the bassoon in its lowest range, and from there the two engage in an undulating dance of rollicking multiphonics, beating tones, and multi-tongued, staccato interruptions. The texture thickens and becomes increasingly complex as it reaches a climactic, abrupt ending.

Marcelo Toledo’s Qualia II employs a totally different sound world, beginning with high-pitched squeaks, dramatic, close-miked breath (and breathless) sounds, and amplified key clicks. Low range melodic cells are underscored by Heller’s “helicopter” technique (in which the bassoon actually does sound like a helicopter hovering at a distance), interrupted by a dramatic set of her vocalized yelps and groans. The mood then calms to slower, more extended wind and noise drones. The piece is like solo instrument musique concrète.

Dai Fujikura’s Calling is an artful construction of multiphonics wrapped around a beautifully mournful melodic line that slinks through the sound field, gradually incorporating the multiphonics into itself. On speaking a hundred names for bassoon and processing also shows off a lyrical side; fellow ICE member Nathan Davis deftly combines multiple layers of bassoon that expand and contract within the stereo space, shifting in mood from happily frenetic to angry to tranquil. Ultimately the story ends with the bassoon being swallowed in its own electronic processes, flying away into high frequencies, like a helium balloon let loose into the sky.

…and also a fountain falls the farthest from the sound worlds presented on 100 names, brought to you by Marcos Balter. It features more of Heller’s voice—this time reciting passages from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein—heavily reverbed, and punctuated with small percussion instruments in addition to fragile bassoon textures. It shows a sparse, stripped down side of the instrument, and also reveals Heller’s willingness to try anything.

The bonus track (a sip of espresso to end the program?), Du Yun’s 10pm, ixtab is a dramatic pile-up of bassoon tracks and recorded found sound. It’s a speedy, intense roller coaster ride that slams to a halt as abruptly as it began.

For a thorough tour of the capacities (and extremes) of the bassoon, 100 names is the recording to check out. Hopefully other bassoonists will also start to perform these works (not to mention commission new works and make albums of their own!) and continue to expand the available repertoire for the instrument. Bassoon is not just for inner orchestra voices anymore.

Sounds Heard: The Art of David Tudor (1963—1992)

Posted on June 11, 2013 by - Albums, Listen

One of the very first significant pieces of electronic music I ever heard was a performance recording of David Tudor’s Rainforest. Although I can’t recall which version it was (this was in my first electronic music class during my freshman year of college), I have never forgotten how blown away I was by that chirping, squeaking, clanging, banging, blooping wall of sound that did indeed give the impression of a living, breathing, electronic jungle.

Tudor was one of the pioneers of “DIY electronics”—the plugging in of things to other things (often constructed from scratch by the plugger in-er) to the point where the beastly tangle of gizmos, cables, and wires leaves control of the instigator’s hands, creating an independently generated sonic world. He started out as a gifted pianist, who premiered important works (many of them indeterminate) by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown, but eventually changed his focus from interpreting acoustic music to creating his own live electronic works. However, he continued to work with these artists in a collaborative role, on pieces such as the 1972 Mesostics re Merce Cunningham/Untitled. He also spent many years touring with and composing for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which proved to be an ideal vehicle for his work. The recently released boxed set of Tudor’s work, The Art of David Tudor (1963—1992) on New World Records, charts his transformation from interpreter and co-composer to composer/performer, presenting a selection of full performance recordings of many of his groundbreaking works.

One of Tudor’s specialties was working with feedback within a live performance context. This method later became known as “no input” electronic instruments, in which all sound is generated via internal electronic feedback scenarios. Because of the nature of his electronic setups—picture tabletops overflowing with electronic devices, both commercial and homemade, which would be arranged in varying configurations from performance to performance—every performance was a one-of-a-kind event. So the recordings presented on this seven-disc set are single performances of works that resulted in many, many realizations. While a number of the compositions have been presented on other albums in excerpted form, this set is special in that the works are featured in their entirety as much as possible—a bit of a feat, given that Tudor’s music tended towards long-form statements and developed slowly over lengthy time spans. According to friends and colleagues, he always had more that he wanted to say.
Volume 1 opens with Tudor as interpreter, with Cage’s Variations II, Wolff’s For 1, 2, or 3 People, and Tudor’s own Bandoneon ! (A Combine). Volume 2 documents three works that Tudor performed at the 1970 Pepsi Pavilion Expo in Osaka, Japan, charmingly titled Anima Pepsi, Pepsibird, and Pepscillator. As the big, hearty book of liner notes describes, “These are ‘remix’ works, exploring distribution of prerecorded material sent through the Pavilion’s network of 37 speakers, moving along programmable pathways.” Volume 3 is a performance by Tudor and Cage together of Mesostics re Merce Cunningham/Untitled. Volume 4 contains the works Weatherings and Phonemes, which, according to Tudor’s sound engineer in the Cunningham Company, represented a creative shift in which Tudor’s mastery of the medium started to allow for increasing control over the elements of performance. Indeed, in these recordings (which are also of higher quality than those on the earlier discs) there is a great deal of movement and frenetic sonic activity, such as sounds bouncing around the stereo field or shifting from foreground to background.

In addition to Webwork and Virtual Focus, featuring Tudor on live electronics, Volumes 5 and 6 include two different performances of Rainforest IV, performed by Tudor and the group Composers Inside Electronics. This large-scale “performed installation” began as a workshop led by Tudor for New Music New Hampshire in 1973; several young musicians showed up to partake in this event, including John Driscoll, Phil Edelstein, Linda Fisher, Ralph Jones, Martin Kalve, and Bill Viola. Together they accepted Tudor’s challenge to create a piece without the use of oscillators or pre-recorded material, instead finding objects to be used as acoustic filters. As they got enthused and found ever larger objects with which to experiment, they ended up “super-sizing” the project and creating an enormous, immersive sound environment presented in an almost sculptural format, with oil drums suspended from rafters and mobiles made of bedsprings (for example), all sporting contact microphones and emitting unbelievable chirps, squawks, and ringing tones. The performances here, from Stockholm and Berlin respectively, are recorded in a binaural format that, when experienced with headphones gives an impression of the immersive environment they created.
Tudor’s final works marked a return to his explorations with field recordings and “no input” feedback instruments. Volume 7 of this set features an hour-long 1992 performance of Neural Network Plus, performed by the composer with Takehisa Kosugi, both on live electronics. This time the tools were slightly different though—this work was one of his first forays into computer music, commissioned especially for Merce Cunningham’s first computer-assisted choreographic effort Enter.

By the end of the seven discs, it seems that it would be quite possible to identify the characteristic field recording-oriented chirp-and-bleep style of Tudor’s musical language in any listening situation, and yet each work creates its own special sound world. This is an important set of historical recordings in that Tudor was always so focused on the experience of live performance; most of all, he wanted “…that the audience senses the presence of a live musician.” With that thought in mind, I would highly recommend purchasing the physical box, as it is beautifully presented, with each disc in its own photo-laden sleeve, packaged with a substantial book of liner notes (including some sketches and diagrams of Tudor’s various setups) written by electronic musician/performer/educator Matt Rogalsky. Despite the fact that most of these works cannot be recreated, they are nevertheless of great importance to the development of electronic music and its performance history. Here’s to hoping that colleges and universities, as well as musicians involved in electronic music around the world, will add this set to their recording collections.

Sounds Heard: Sean Hickey—Concertos

Posted on June 4, 2013 by - Albums, Listen

Although I have always known that he is also active as a composer, I’ve principally known Sean Hickey as the national sales and business development manager for Naxos of America. His “day job” (which actually seems more like a 24/7 job) has him listening to and promoting literally hundreds of new recordings every month that are either released by or distributed through Naxos, as well as traveling all over the world to broker various deals. Amidst this seemingly all-consuming work, I’ve always found it remarkable that he has had time to create any music of his own at all. But his website lists 25 compositions created during the last ten years—clearly he’s a role model to all of us who wear multiple hats. But what is perhaps even more extraordinary is that despite his seemingly never-ending immersion into so many other people’s music, he has found his own distinctive compositional voice in the fusing of a wide range of musical elements.

In a 2010 interview published by the web magazine Notes on the Road, Hickey explained how he was able to find that voice. It’s actually great advice for other composers:

“Don’t deny ANY influence you hear, see, or feel. Everything is important in the creative sense: your relationships, your loves, heartbreaks, geography, family—and all the music you hear, popular or otherwise. I would advise composers to absorb it all—and try to make something of it. The more open a composer is, the faster they can find their unique voice and the more they can grow.”

In that same interview, he also described the formative influences of recordings by Frank Zappa, as well as hearing a live performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments when he was 16 years old. And certainly, if you listen closely enough, you can hear the Zappa and the Stravinsky filtered through a post-modern sensibility on the first CD devoted exclusively to Hickey’s music, a disc of mostly short chamber works (much of it for winds) on—fittingly enough—Naxos American Classics. But all these elements fuse with an even greater stylistic sweep on a new Delos CD devoted to two of Hickey’s concertos, one for cello and one for clarinet. On the surface they seem extremely formal, almost old fashioned. Both are cast in the traditional three-movement concerto form that has been the norm since the 18th century. But behind this scaffolding is a very personal artistic response to the huge breadth of music that was created in the 20th century when every tradition was challenged. In its reconciliation of these seeming polarities, it is very much music of our own time.

The Cello Concerto (2008) was commissioned by the Russian cellist Dmitry Kouzov, who premiered the work under the baton of the St. Petersburg-based conductor Vladimir Lande (who both appear on the present recording). From its almost militaristic brass opening through its frequently anguished solo lines, the music seems to follow in the footsteps (perhaps appropriately) of the extraordinary Russian cello concertos of the Soviet era—e.g. works by Shostakovich and Kabalevsky. But Hickey’s completely un-Slavic orchestration—where a constant array of different combinations of instruments keep suddenly rising to the surface—reveal this to be music written long after Perestroika. It certainly is music that is inspired by 21st-century events—though he does not intend it in any way to be listened to as programmatic music. Hickey confesses in his program notes that the cello’s mournful sounding melodic passages in the second movement were his personal response to the war raging in Iraq as he was composing the work. In the third movement, Hickey’s modular scoring techniques become even more prominent, almost turning it into a bizarre cross between a cello concerto and a concerto for orchestra.

While there are no such orchestrational oddities in Hickey’s earlier Clarinet Concerto (2006), originally composed for clarinetist David Gould but performed on the recording by Alexander Fiterstein, it is a formidable work chock full of instantly appealing melodies—including fragments of several traditional Scottish airs—that is a significant contribution to the concerto literature for this most malleable of reed instruments. Given the fact that the clarinet is equally comfortable in classical and jazz contexts and also in many different forms of folk music, there is a long tradition of clarinet concertos showcasing the instrument’s polyglot possibilities—including the famous concertos by Copland and Stravinsky. Hickey is clearly aware of these works. However, the other extraordinary attribute of the clarinet is how different it sounds in its various ranges—from its sultry lower register to its angelic upper limits. It somehow makes beautiful music even more beautiful, something that has been exploited to full effect in chamber and orchestra works featuring the clarinet by composers ranging from Mozart, Brahms, or Reger to Nielsen, Feldman, or contemporary Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist. This is certainly the case with the ravishing clarinet melodies that pervade the slow middle movement of Hickey’s concerto. It is something that makes me think in my wildest dreams—or maybe they’re not so wild—that this piece could actually become standard repertoire one day.

Sounds Heard: Big Farm

Posted on May 28, 2013 by - Albums, Listen

In the booklet that accompanies the debut release from Big Farm, that includes Rinde Eckert (voice), Mark Haanstra (electric bass), Steve Mackey (guitar), and Jason Treuting (drums), there is a sort of artistic statement, which reads:

Big Farm is a place where serious counterpoint can meet burlesque, earnestness meet abandon; a place where they can kick it or take it to tea, reflect, attack, mourn, dance, pray, or mock with ease or determination, joy or fervor, using any and all means necessary. This world is a big farm–lots of different crops, changing weather, livestock, and a duck pond for good measure.

After a few listens, I would expand that statement to a safari-style farm, adding a giraffe, a tiger or two, and maybe even throwing some exotic underwater creatures into that duck pond. The mission of the group revolves around expressive freedom for each artist, and as a result, “eclectic” would be an understatement. The album has an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feel—but with classically trained composers at the helm, good spacial relations replace the sense of chaos that statement might imply. Indeed, each of the nine songs is rigorously constructed, often with gobs of musical information packed into relatively small spaces.
A prog-rock sound serves as the thread connecting all of the tracks (just check out the openings of “She Steps” or “Like An Animal” for clear and present examples) lending an inherent intensity and melodic bustle to the music. But there are plenty of other stylistic tidbits that peek out here and there; a touch of The Sea and Cake in “Margaret Ballinger,” or the gamelan-tinged percussion of “Ghosts.” Rinde Eckert’s vocals range from grungy-processed, impassioned, semi-spoken word, as in the off-kilter bluesy track “My Ship” to a lovely, pure countertenor in the refreshingly spare “John Knows.” While Eckert’s vocals often have a distinctly “trained” singer feel to my ears, the way they are juxtaposed with the rock-oriented instrumental music renders the full musical picture disarmingly unusual.

Mackey, Haanstra, and Treuting form a virtuosic instrumental team, performing all manner of contrapuntal twirlings and asymmetrical-yet-still-grooving rhythms. One of my favorite tracks is “Break Time,” which begins with recorded ticking clocks and a funky drum rhythm, upon which are gradually piled more and more unsynchronized clock sounds with loopy banjo and toy piano lines as Eckert delivers singsong lyrics. “Lost in Splendor” is perhaps the most chamber music-y of the tracks, adding on string quartet, but eventually it transforms into a fantastic, hard-driving drum set solo grounded by a thick wall of guitar and bass.

Lawson White’s production sounds, in a word, amazing. Every detail can be heard, and because there are a lot of details, repeated listening is rewarded with new sonic insights. I’m curious to know how a live performance will translate—if the exactitude present throughout the album can be captured live—as well as how much of the music is written down. A Big Farm concert might actually be the sort of performance where one could find audience members cradling drinks and scores.

Sounds Heard: Simone Dinnerstein / Tift Merritt—Night

Posted on April 23, 2013 by - Albums, Listen

The collaborative album Night, which pairs classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein with rootsy singer-songwriter Tift Merritt, is a smorgasbord of songs cherry-picked from various corners of history and culture. Classical music, jazz, American traditional songs, and a smattering of brand new compositions are included on the recording. It is an interesting and revealing sonic journal of a musical partnership in which both artists embrace elements of risk and experimentation.

As might be expected, it is possible to hear somewhat of an inverse relationship between the artists’ comfort levels, depending on what song is being performed. According to interviews with the two, Merritt, who learned her art by ear, was not accustomed to reading music when she and Dinnerstein began working together, while Dinnerstein had never really improvised before. So in Schubert’s “Night and Dreams,” “Dido’s Lament” by Purcell, and Bach’s Prelude in B minor from the Clavierbüchlein, Dinnerstein sounds as if she is very much in familiar territory, while Merritt seems less so. The singer substantially calms down the more pop/country-ish inflections in her voice for these songs, but the resulting delivery feels a little stiff. However, she effectively conveys the emotional content of those works, and it would be interesting to hear how her interpretations develop over repeated performances.

But put a guitar in Merritt’s hands, and she breaks out of that shell to let her voice fly free, most notably on the traditional song “Wayfaring Stranger” and on her own compositions “Still Not Home” and “Colors,” which incorporates a delightful, spare background of plucked piano strings, rendered by Dinnerstein.

Dinnerstein gets her moment—though I kind of wish there were more moments just for her on this disc—on Daniel Felsenfeld’s “The Cohen Variations.” Originally commissioned by Dinnerstein, the work is a poignant fantasy on Leonard Cohen’s iconic song, “Suzanne.”

The two artists seem best paired in the Nina Simone arrangement of Billie Holiday’s “Don’t Explain,” and Brad Mehldau’s arresting “I Shall Weep at Night.” Each is a bit outside of her element, but together they power through any personally uncharted territories to make the songs work.

Especially notable about this CD is the recording quality, which is drop-dead gorgeous. The piano, Tift Merritt’s voice, and her guitar sound lush, full, and close at hand; a decadent massage for the ears of artfully captured acoustic sound. While some aspects of Night may not be completely effective, it nevertheless houses thoughtful arrangements and elegantly wrought performances, making it a rewarding listen.

Sounds Heard: Annie Gosfield—Almost Truths and Open Deceptions

Posted on October 9, 2012 by - Albums, Listen

In the liner notes of her latest recording, Almost Truths and Open Deceptions, Annie Gosfield writes of her “parallel lives” performing music with her own band and writing fully notated compositions for other musicians and ensembles. With both of those worlds represented on this recording, it seems more that her two creative worlds are deeply interconnected, influencing one another and sharing common musical elements and sources of inspiration.

One of the striking things about Gosfield’s music is its unusual combination of visceral rawness and otherworldly distance. It often has a very direct sort of in-your-face quality while her obsession with broken machinery and obsolete technology crafts a somewhat ghostly scrim around the instrumental sounds. But because her connection to the technology is personal—much of it has been inspired by her family history—it is mysterious in the way that wandering around in a grandparent’s attic searching for old letters or hidden secrets can feel haunting and nostalgic at once.

The first track, Wild Pitch, was composed for the ensemble Real Quiet, featuring cellist Felix Fan (a major player, literally, throughout the CD), percussionist David Cossin, and pianist Andrew Russo. The piece travels through episodes of strong, lyrical cello lines that spill into frenetic ensemble interludes, which do indeed give the impression of a baseball game gone mad. The instruments flail away only to exhaust themselves into new contemplative states that give rise to more cycles of stillness and activity. An enticing assortment of small percussion instruments such as cymbals and small gongs mesh well with the sound world created by the piano and cello, and the score is thoughtfully arranged with all instruments nicely balanced in the mix.

Gosfield performs often on a sampling keyboard, mapped with a selection of sounds that seems to bear no relation to a piano keyboard. (I have often wondered how she keeps track of all the samples!) It is a nice surprise to hear her playing an actual piano on Phantom Shakedown, accompanied by an arsenal of electronic sounds created out of recordings made from failing technology, such as a broken radio. Her playing contains hints of numerous styles, from Romantic era to ragtime, and this combination of piano with electronics is quite beautiful and artfully coordinated, especially when the piano lets up after periods of intense activity, allowing the electronics to shine through to the foreground.

The showcase work of this disc, Almost Truths and Open Deceptions, is a hefty chamber concerto for cello with 2 violins, viola, contrabass, piano, and percussion featuring cellist Felix Fan again in the spotlight along with the other 3/4ths of the Flux Quartet. Gosfield pulls a nice big sound out of the ensemble during several raucous tutti sections; about 11 minutes into the work, the group flits briefly into a nightclub-ish sound, evoking a more intimate, smaller space. The music again builds, up to a different shift in texture to pizzicato strings and a pounding bass drum. After another boisterous period, the cello calms everything down to a wavering drone on D that gradually fades into silence.

The following track, Daughters of the Industrial Revolution, is a big change in instrumental scope and sonic palette. Written for Gosfield’s mixed quartet, it features rock guitar and drums with sampled machine and factory sounds set to a pulsing 4/4 groove. In Cranks and Cactus Needles Gosfield brings her passion for the sounds of broken and obsolete technology directly to her instrumental writing, as the Stockholm-based ensemble The Pearls Before Swine Experience recreates the warping, uneven sounds associated with old 78rpm records through their instrumentation of violin, flute, cello, and piano. This piece is structured differently than the others on this disc (to my ear), with a smoother through-line and more subtle gradations between the contrasting spare and busy textures that characterize much of Gosfield’s work.

Almost Truths and Open Deceptions is a selection of well-constructed, carefully recorded works that show how the parallel pathways of a band member and concert music composer can gel into a singular artistic vision.

Sounds Heard: Boiling Point—Music of Kenji Bunch

Posted on October 2, 2012 by - Albums, Listen

Nashville’s all-volunteer Alias Chamber Ensemble received a Grammy nomination last year for their Naxos recording of Gabriela Lena Frank’s Hilos, and this season the ensemble—which donates 100% of its proceeds to other community-based nonprofits—has already been hard at work on a new collaboration with Nashville Opera as well as promoting their new CD for the Delos label. The plucky and progressive ensemble reflects a certain homegrown, do-it-yourself spirit, and the decision to follow the Frank release with the equally earthy and folk-inspired music of Kenji Bunch makes for an inspired follow-up.

Bunch is a violist and former member of the Flux Quartet, and his performing and composing often inform each other; Bunch’s recent viola showpiece The Devil’s Box was premiered at last year’s SONiC Festival at Zankel Hall with the composer as soloist, weaving folk sources into notated music of exceptional energy, expression, and charm.

“Boiling Point represents some of my favorite and most personal chamber music of the last decade,” Bunch explains. “These are the works that have led me to define my approach as a composer of what I like to call New American music. Just as we see a culinary movement that incorporates locally sourced ingredients and unexpected creative flourishes into traditional forms to re-imagine classic American dishes, I draw from regional vernacular musical elements, infuse them with avant-garde improvisation, Romantic lyricism, and classical forms, and humbly offer my idea of chamber music for the 21st century.”

The disc features nine tracks, although listeners are strongly encouraged to purchase the album’s digital edition which features a final duet between Kenji Bunch and ensemble cellist Matt Walker. The first work, String Circle, is a string quintet featuring Bunch on the extra viola. The work’s first movement, “Lowdown,” moves through several moods in less than five minutes, seamlessly transforming the simplest open string sounds into laid-back grooves. Folk-derived string techniques like slides, bends, and percussive “chops” lend the music a primal character. Bunch uses drones in more than one movement of the piece, and his music always has a strong tonal center. That’s perhaps because Bunch stays very close to his materials, exploring all kinds of possibilities within vernacular idioms, rarely blending them to noticeable effect and never holding them at a distance. String Circle is closer to Appalachian Waltz than to Bartók; it is folk music for classical players more so than a contemporary composition tinged with folk influences. It is music with an immediacy and authenticity that is clearly audible from the first measures.

Alias negotiates material both rough-edged and refined in this composition, capturing moments like the rickety, old-timey pizzicato fourth movement, titled “Porch Picking.” Surprisingly, for music with such a folk basis there isn’t as much outright soloing as one might expect, and the majority of the movements groove well below peak intensity. The final movement, “Overdrive,” is wilder and also draws from a crunchier harmonic palette than the other movements; it’s a great ending to a piece that serves as effective a calling card as any to introduce listeners to the range of styles Bunch has absorbed.

The next works on the disc, Drift and 26.2, find Bunch working in a less Americana-styled idiom; it’s refreshing to hear examples that blend influences more completely with his own compositional voice, yet at the same time I find myself more excited by the works that give themselves wholly and unabashedly to the particulars of folk techniques that Bunch utilizes so persuasively. Luminaria for violin and harp stands out among these less overtly vernacular works, with lots of fine dialogue and some exquisitely ornate violin playing over the work’s many trill figures.

Boiling Point for amplified string quartet, bass, and drums takes the album in a new direction, with more improvisatory playing from the ensemble and a more contemporary hard-rock feel. The work accompanies a teakettle, which is set to begin heating during the course of the piece, the whistle coinciding with the piece’s climax. It’s a clever idea that works well even without the visual cue, hinting at a path unexplored on the rest of the album.

For those who purchase the album’s digital edition, Double Down is likely the best performance of the disc, with playfulness, drama, and elan, kind of a distillation of all that String Circle has to offer. Bunch and cellist Walker engage in some friendly competition and some of the only real dirty playing on the album—it’s an electrifying mix of deft compositional choices and wonderfully intuitive soloing that also suggests the kind of skilled improviser/performer by whom Bunch’s music is best represented.

There’s a tension between the different approaches to integrating classical and vernacular traditions on this disc, and that’s why it’s so fascinating to hear Kenji Bunch at work with an ensemble as talented and dedicated as Alias. I’m curious to see whether he will likewise “double down” on any one style or notational approach or continue to explore a wide breadth of genres and approaches. The works recorded on this disc give a lot of insight into Bunch’s musical journey and the kinds of close collaborations that fuel his creative efforts.