Category: Albums

Sounds Heard: Jherek Bischoff—Composed

Jherek Bischoff’s Composed is presented by its Brassland label as “orchestral pop,” and a quick review of his track-by-track collaborators—David Byrne, Caetano Veloso and Greg Saunier, Mirah Zeitlyn and Paris Hurley, Nels Cline, Craig Wedren, Carla Bozulich, Zac Pennington and SoKo, and Dawn McCarthy—makes that an obvious circle to draw. The project’s own PR points out that its “creation was informed by Jherek’s history of playing in indie bands (Parenthetical Girls, Xiu Xiu, The Dead Science and more), a fervent desire to make great pop music and a love affair with the potential of the orchestra.”

Now, if I never had to hear another clichéd discussion of “blurring genre lines” again, I would sleep just fine at night, but in this case it strikes me how comfortably Bischoff’s music achieves his stated goals—mixing and matching stylistic elements of both worlds and ending up with something uniquely his rather than just a gloss of orchestral color decorating a rock band. More than that, however, what really makes this orchestral song cycle stand out to my ear is the diverse range of timbral color the vocalists brings to their tracks (a few of which were co-written by the singer alongside Bischoff). Taken as an album-length work, the collection of unique voices Composed encompasses as part of its scheme is impressive; that it all comes together so seamlessly is a credit to the strength of Bischoff’s singular one.

Beneath these distinctive actors, the orchestra lays out an occasionally pointed but more often lush and sweeping sound bed, remarkable considering how it was assembled. According to the composer, the album was written on the ukulele and then recorded one instrument at a time using a single microphone and a laptop, with Bischoff traveling house-to-house (via bicycle, no less) to capture each part in various musicians’ living rooms. Aside from being an adorable backstory, it also makes Composed an interesting compositional project: a deep bag of puzzle pieces later assembled by the composer into (DIY-affordable) sonic images as memorable for their clever lyrical content as they are for the places their musical lines travel. Whether it’s the rhythms in “The Secret Of The Machines,” the harmonies of “Eyes,” or the tempos in the sparing duet that is “Young And Lovely,” each song is playing a game just a little more startling than anticipated. It’s an easy stretch of the ear that keeps things exciting, not a breach of expectation so severe that it provokes an aural confrontation. And if you find yourself inspired to sway along in time, I suspect the orchestra won’t mind the impromptu accompaniment.

Sounds Heard: Rebecca Brandt—Numbers & Shapes

While it’s difficult to deny that the instant gratification of being able to listen to something as soon as you learn about it can be very satisfying, it also comes with a downside. It’s a little bit too easy, somehow, and therefore feels inconsequential, threatening to make the music seem more disposable, at least to me. That’s one of the main reasons why I still prefer to listen to music on physical recordings, although I’m probably in the minority about this issue among people who spend a great deal of time online—hence most of the folks reading this. That said, every now and again something that I’ve only been able to sonically experience via digital dissemination captures my full attention. Such is the case with Numbers and Shapes, the 14-track debut album from Rebecca Brandt, a Brooklyn-based composer who is classically trained as a pianist and has also done scores for film and TV.

Though the album also exists as a limited-edition CD, it is primarily available via download and can also be streamed in its entirety on Bandcamp. Bandcamp is not a site I’ve spent much time surfing around as of yet, though that may change after listening through every track on Brandt’s Bandcamp page. It initially came to my attention via an email in which she described each of the tracks as being in “its own little world.” Her name was unfamiliar to me so I felt intrigued enough to visit her website whose navigation has a clever Java script that plays a different chord for every area. So I decided to check out her recording via the email’s Bandcamp link. I know that going through the mishigas of surfing around instead of just following that Bandcamp link in the first place might sound like a counterintuitive approach, but remember I’m the guy who worries about music retrieved too easily being disposable. So I tried to recreate some of the chase and eventual reward I’ve always associated with discovering interesting music.

And the reward is still the music. The opening track on the album, “Staying Silent,” begins in a seemingly New Age vein: soothing piano, wordless vocals. I started to have my doubts. Despite my aim to love all music and fight against personal bias, I still have something of a block when it comes to things like New Age music and smooth jazz. (You can never completely escape the aesthetic prisons that mold you in your formative years.) Thankfully, to sate my aesthetic shortcomings at least, Brandt’s music quickly moves past the New Age sound world as she piles on more and more layers of counterpoint, creating music that instead winds up sounding more akin to one of Phil Spector’s self-described “little symphonies for the kiddies,” albeit without the saccharine lyrics.

“Run” similarly begins in a deceptively simple way, at the onset sounding reminiscent of music that is clearly commercial in its design—literally, it sounds like music that you hear used in commercials (and a realm in which Ms. Brandt has worked). But soon the numerous layers of orchestration gain the upper hand as Glass-ian descending scales propel the music to a place where you are forced to pay attention to it and only it.

But the real surprise comes with the third track, “The Clock Breaks at Three.” Here, the multiple instrumental layers are peeled away and all that is left is piano and percussion. But the fascinating dysfunctional tonality of the piano’s harmonies dispel the need for other timbres. In fact, so disconcerting is the initial juxtaposition of an unrelated harmony in the final two beats of each measure’s six beat rhythmic cycle, I kept thinking the music was in five or seven until I started tapping along with it.

Brandt’s layering returns, however, in “Other Places” which at times calls to mind passages from Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians albeit with a cello riff that is very reminiscent of the ostinato for the opening “Knee Play” of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, somehow reconciling two large-scale monuments of 1970s minimalism in only three minutes. “Blackbox,” similarly filled out with multiple orchestration layers as per the earlier tracks on the album, also includes some almost Richard Wright-like synth action of circa 1975 Pink Floyd.

“Jivko” opens with a very recorder-like flute solo, performed by Ashley Bozian-Murtha, hovering over a series of punctuated string trio chords reminiscent of the Beatles’ use of a string quartet in “Eleanor Rigby.” Soon, however, the flute is buried in layers of counterpoint with oboe, English horn, and soprano saxophone, but before it develops further it suddenly ends at barely two minutes in. I could have listened for at least another 20 minutes. The next track, “54,” actually is in quintuple time. It would not be out of place on one of Brian Eno’s ambient recordings, but don’t assume that means that it is consists exclusively of quietly flowing music; some pretty heavy percussive thwacks plus some bass guitar riffs assertively rendered by Benjamin Jacobs intrude on music that starts out deceptively serene.

On the other hand, “Aline’s Song,” in which Brandt’s piano is accompanied only by double bass and Marc Plotkin multitracked on several guitars (acoustic, electric, and bass), might perhaps be too serene for my own aforementioned aesthetic proclivities. Therefore it was my hope that the next track, with its intriguing title “The Twelve Tones,” would take me into somewhat gnarlier terrain. Not quite. The predominantly diatonic and harmonic language herein hardly references the total chromatic, at least to my ears, though in a brief email Q&A exchange with the composer during preparation for writing about her music she actually said it was her “take on the twelve-tone technique created by Arnold Schoenberg, and was written using a twelve tone matrix.” Of course, as composers from Rautavaara to Mikel Rouse have shown, twelve-tone rows can be pretty malleable and so I’m eager to see the matrix she used to generate this piece one day! But whether it’s tonal or dodecaphonic, I thought that the careful layering of the somewhat unusual combination of harp, flute, bassoon, string trio, and double bass was very exhilarating. Notably, this is the first time where there is no keyboard; the composer does not play on this track at all. She returns, however, on “Jewelry Box,” only here she exclusively plays celesta and glockenspiel. I’m a total sucker for both of these instruments, and they work nicely here in an ensemble of string quintet and winds, particularly when the strings are playing pizzicato. At about two minutes in, electric bass and drums enter, morphing the whole compositional edifice she has created into something more overtly pop-oriented. But these concessions to pop music sensibilities are completely eroded in “Phylum” which is scored exclusively for string quartet.

On “Rouge,” Brandt throws a sitar into the mix, performed by the NYC-based Hindustani classical sitarist Indro Roy-Chowdhury, but don’t assume that means that this is an example of Indofusion à la Shakti or George Harrison raga rock. Rather the sitar is just another timbral color for Brandt’s palette of sonorities. In fact, for me the highlight of the track is when everything—guitars and drums, as well as the sitar—drops out and all that remains are Brandt’s sustained Fender Rhodes chords. The most unadorned track in the entire collection, however, is “Kill The Messenger” which is an unaccompanied piano solo performed by Brandt. While the short composition (approximately two minutes) has a Glassworks-era Michael Riesman feel to it, it is somehow less tonally stable. The concluding track, “The Moment” begins as a solo piano waltz with unassuming um-pah-pahs which gradually builds to the largest ensemble assembled for the entire album—the blurb on the Bandcamp page describes it as a 32-piece orchestra but only 15 musicians were listed. It’s still an impressive-enough large ensemble which, through multi-tracking, sounds extremely full. Still, the overall effect sounds more prog-rock than symphonic. It’s mostly an acoustic ensemble, but once you throw in an electric guitar with feedback, that’s the sound that dominates. It also has the last word.

All in all, Numbers & Shapes offers an interesting range of sonic vignettes which navigate between quite a few genres. But the fact that none of these tracks seem beholden to any genre makes them ultimately a new music listening experience, one that I will hopefully encounter again as I wander the web. However, I still hope I can track down one of the copies of the limited-edition CD.

Sounds Heard: Mary Halvorson Quintet—Bending Bridges

One of the most excellent things about the music of guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson is that every composition percolates with a charming sense of unpredictability. Bending Bridges is the second release from Halvorson’s quintet, which features members of her original trio—John Hébert on bass and Ches Smith on drums (plus, of course, Halvorson on guitar)—and adds to the ensemble Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet and Jon Irabagon on alto saxophone. Although there are plenty of groups comprised of this instrumentation, Halvorson’s preference for a very dry, close recording style lends a hand in giving this album a unusual sound, and in bringing to light instrument balances that serve to highlight her quirky (in a good way) melodic and harmonic sense.

Sinks When She Rounds The Bend (No. 22) begins as a relaxed, even lounge-worthy chorale scored for the whole quintet, giving way to solos for guitar and bass. Before you know it, Halvorson has quietly flipped the distortion switch on her guitar, and busts out a series of fat, grunge-laden power chords propelling trumpet and saxophone through an altered version of that initial chorale, which transforms before our ears into full-tilt improvised chaos.

Hemorrhaging Smiles (No. 25) has a catchy opening groove, with rhythmic guitar and a repeating melodic series for sax and trumpet. The energy continues with a sax solo, and then another for trumpet, placed in front of tinkling guitar and percussion textures. The improvisation sections are contrasted with the initial musical material in a verse/chorus format. Ches Smith contributes interesting and tasteful drum set performances throughout the disc.

Four of the nine tracks on Bending Bridges set aside the brass instruments and feature the original trio of Halvorson, Smith, and Hébert. Stepping-stone style bass and drums in Forgotten Men In Silver (No. 24) follow an impressionistic opening guitar solo, and later a background wash of guitar serves as a blanket for an energetic bass and drum improvisation, rife with extended techniques on both instruments. The next trio work, The Periphery of Scandal (No. 23) features a wacky guitar melody that becomes increasingly intense and distorted throughout the course of the track. The aptly titled That Old Sound (No. 27) does indeed open with an ever so slight Western twang—I kept visualizing a dusty corral and cacti during this mellow track, which sports an elastic sensibility, with instrumental lines expanding and contracting in turn. Deformed Weight Of Hands (No. 28) is an energetic back and forth between a spunky guitar and drum figure, and noisy, frenzied improvisation.

Returning to the quintet format, Love In Eight Colors (No. 21) is one of the more traditionally “jazz” sounding composition on the disc, and there might even be some quotes lifted from other tracks to discover in this one (I will leave that part to you!). All The Clocks (No. 29) also seems to fit well within the realm of guitar-based jazz, featuring lead guitar with spinning melodic material that is complemented by the ensemble performing driving, rhythmic music.

Sea Cut Like Snow (No. 26) strikes my ear as especially thoughtfully composed, and showcases the most successful brass writing of the entire disc. A winding guitar line is offset by shifting repeated-note riffs in the brass that develop gradually and are later joined by a funky, almost Latin beat. The established groove is then again transformed into a rollickingly fast drum and sax duet, and winds up in a bending, spindly solo guitar line.

Halvorson has cited in interviews how large a role the simple element of time—spent playing and performing together—plays in her compositions for the quintet. She is gaining confidence in writing for the entire group, and they are all playing together increasingly well. Although I think the trio sounds more musically integrated (and indeed it should, since they have been together longer), the addition of saxophone and trumpet as she treats them in her compositions brings a wonderfully offbeat sound world into the music. It will be very interesting to hear how her writing for the quintet evolves in the future. Whatever form it takes, I have no doubt that there will be plenty of surprises in store.

Sounds Heard: Meehan/Perkins Duo—Travel Diary

If I’m completely candid, the two large dinosaurs dominating the cover were what first attracted my attention to Travel Diary, a CD of works for percussion duo composed by Tristan Perich, Nathan Davis, David Lang, and Paul Lansky. Flipping the jewel case over to find the image of an airliner cruising through the clouds, I couldn’t imagine what sort of Jurassic Park-meets-Lost storyline this music might be treading. But was there any way this album could end without someone being eaten alive?

Ultimately, of course, it was the artistry of Todd Meehan and Douglas Perkins, the two percussionists behind this title, and not the surreal illustrations which truly hooked my interest. Opening with Tristan Perich’s work for crotales and six-channel 1-bit sound (the composer’s aural calling card), men and machine show themselves to be well paired. If you have ever lain awake in a canvas tent during a light rain, you can conjure a hint of the sound world Perich has created in Observations, the bubble-pops of tone relentlessly sparkling throughout the track’s nearly 12-minute runtime. The span of pitch being rather neatly fixed, the real game to watch here is in the intricate play of steady rhythmic evolutions.

Where Observations keeps up a hummingbird’s pulse rate, The Diving Bell by Nathan Davis stretches the line out to cast an echoing shimmer. Using microphones and electronic processing, the work demonstrates just how exotic and fascinating a sound world lives inside a simple triangle. David Lang, on the other hand, blows up the palette to encompass entire racks of instruments, all of which sound in Table of Contents (the title mirroring Lang’s original image of how the instruments would be laid out for performances).  In this case, the music is drawn in the contrasts of timbral color.

The Meehan/Perkins Duo performs an excerpt from Paul Lansky’s Travel Diary (Movement III: “Lost in Philly”)

Meehan and Perkins devote the bulk of this record to its namesake, Paul Lansky’s Travel Diary. A work in four movements, Lansky sets the stage in the opening “Leaving Home,” which is part “hmm, what shirt should I take along?” leisurely mallet work on marimba and vibes and part “oh my god, what the hell did I do with the damn tickets” anxiety, the deep echo of struck drum heads speeding the beat of the listener’s heart in sympathy. In the end, it’s out the door and on to “Cruising Speed,” the time and miles ticking by in a steady stream. The road is not always smooth (the drums again stepping in as the disruptors) but it is in the third movement that the composer, the music, and therefore the listener all find themselves “Lost In Philly.” The emotional undercurrent here reads primarily as curiosity to my ear, with only shades of nervousness over the sudden dislocation. If Lansky had found himself lost in Pittsburgh, I suspect that balance would have been swapped and it would have been quite a different composition. The piece lands on “Arrived, Phone Home,” the landscape perhaps less familiar, but the goal safely achieved. Throughout the journey, Lansky’s subheads imply the route, but the music itself delivers postcards to the ear that leave plenty of room for listener exploration.

According to the ensemble, this album was intended as a way to showcase the duo’s “on-going efforts to commission and collaborate with an eclectic mix of contemporary composers to create a new and unique body of percussion duo repertoire.” In this case, I’d say the goods on offer each sound so intriguing that I’d volunteer to play them all. At least until I remember that I don’t actually play percussion. For those who do, I suspect you’re going to discover something you might want to try out for yourself.

Sounds Heard: Narong Prangcharoen—Mantras

For centuries, Western classical music has incorporated elements from beyond its original geographical borders (think of the orientalism of Rameau or Mozart), but only more recently have people who have actually grown up in all corners of the world created music within a Western classical music framework which incorporates elements of their own indigenous musical traditions in a way that is authentic. The seemingly inexhaustible musical traditions of the vast continent of Asia have proven to be particularly effective fodder for new solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire as composers from nations whose own music dates back millennia have forged an extremely effective synthesis from the syncretism of East and West.

Perhaps the greatest flowering of such music has occurred here in the United States where there has never been a dominant musical tradition; our traditionlessness has made this country the ideal environment for creators who shun all traditions as well as those who embrace various combinations of them. While there have been many composers who have explored combining Western musical forms and orchestrations with elements from the art music of China, Japan, Iran, India, and Indonesia, very few have attempted a similar rapprochement with the music of Thailand. Eua Sunthornsanan (1910-1981) started blending elements of classical music and jazz into Thai musical idioms in the 1930s. More recently, S. P. Somtow (b. 1952), who in additional to composing music also writes horror and science fiction novels, has composed operas in the Thai language based on Thai themes. But the music of a younger Thailand-born composer now based in Kansas City, Narong Prangcharoen (b. 1973), has perhaps been the most effective thus far in seamlessly weaving Thai and Western classical idioms. His 2009 debut album on Albany, Phenomenon, is an exciting collection of six works scored for solo piano, solo cello, orchestra, and symphonic winds. Albany’s just-released 2012 follow-up, Mantras offers another six works—one for solo viola, an additional band piece, and four chamber music compositions—revealing the depth and breadth of Prangcharoen’s unique sound world.

While the compositions featured on his earlier disc demonstrate how comfortable Prangcharoen is with the sweeping gestures of orchestral music and how the subtle application of extended techniques on various instruments can help to convey a world very different from that of the Western orchestra that is playing it, the more intimate medium of chamber music showcased on the new CD arguably serves Prangcharoen’s aesthetic gambits even more effectively. In Whispering (2010), a quartet scored for soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, piano, and percussion, the winds weave pentatonic figurations around clacks from the piano—played both normally and prepared—and a wide range of other percussion instruments, of both precise and indeterminate pitch. The work, presented here in a performance by the newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, is a deeply moving response to various natural disasters that have occurred in the last decade—Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the cyclone Nargis in Burma/Myanmar, and the earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province.

While Between Heaven and Earth (2009) is a duo for flute and piano (herein performed by Jonathan Borja and Christopher Janwong McKiggan), the music often feels like two completely independent yet co-existing solos, largely due to extensive passages in the first part of the composition during which only one instrument is playing at a time. One of the boundaries between Thai and Western traditions that seems insurmountable is tuning—Thai music is based on an equidistant seven-tone scale which shares no intervals in common with Western 12-tone equal temperament. Prangcharoen’s always practical orchestral music strictly adheres to 12tET; it probably would be nearly impossible to get it performed by most orchestras otherwise. But while the piano in Between Heaven and Earth remains standardly tuned, the flute’s intonation is frequently altered with various pitch bends to take it out of Western listeners’ comfort zones. When the two instruments finally come together toward the end, it makes for some visceral clashes. (Unfortunately, there are no program notes for Between Heaven and Earth in the CD’s booklet; it would have been interesting to learn more about the inspiration for this extremely effective piece.)

The brief Antahkarana (2010) also explores a wider pitch continuum than that of standard 12tET. The unfretted solo viola, technically capable of producing an infinite gradation of pitches, is the ideal vehicle for Prangcharoen’s explorations. The work also very effectively exploits harmonics, which are expertly rendered here by violist Michael Hall; such techniques inevitably conjure up the mysterious, the exotic, and the sublime. According to Prangcharoen’s program notes, Antahkarana is an ancient symbol used as a tool for healing and meditation.

The overall serenity of Antahkarana is shattered by the frenetic opening of Bencharong (2002), a trio for flute, cello, and piano in five short movements. But the seeming anxiety of the first movement doesn’t last very long (slightly over a minute). The other relatively short movements conjure other moods from stillness to rapture to calm to anticipation. Prangcharoen has written that the work is inspired by the traditional five-color porcelain that was made for the royal courts in Ayutthaya and Bangkok in the 18th and 19th centuries. (For the performance on the present disc, flutist Borja, who also performed Between Heaven and Earth is joined by cellist Ben Gitter and pianist Brendan Kinsella.)

The work that follows, Verdana (2011), is also a trio but is a single continuous movement. Scored for violin, French horn, and piano—a combination that has inspired a broad range of composers, including Johannes Brahms, Ethel Smyth, Lennox Berkeley, György Ligeti, and Yehudi Wyner—Prangcharoen’s contribution to the genre (here performed by the Third Angle New Music Ensemble) is as different from these works as they are from each other. Largely an exploration of sonority, the melody from which the piece’s pitches are derived does not appear in full until near the end.

The disc closes with Mantras (2009), which is a concert piece for solo soprano saxophone and symphonic winds. The grand gestures familiar to listeners who have heard Prangcharoen’s previous disc on Albany make a triumphant return in this virtuosic showcase performed here with élan by saxophonist John Sampen accompanied by the Bowling Green State University Wind Symphony conducted by Bruce Moss. Like many composers of our era, Prangcharoen proves that the wind band is as capable of nuance as a symphony orchestra; through his assured navigation of the combinatorial possibilities of this large ensemble which build to a tumultuous climax, Prangcharoen creates an exciting and very effective listening experience.

Sounds Heard: John Bischoff—Audio Combine

John Bischoff is a composer celebrated for his work at the cutting edge of live computer music, explorations that can be traced back all the way to the late 1970s and his experiments with his first KIM-1. Audio Combine, the recent New World Records release of Bischoff pieces spanning 2004-2011, is an undeniable reminder that, though his roots run deep, his music hasn’t been anchored.

As a recorded document, Audio Combine is one of those discs well suited to the “dark room/good headphones” listening experience, each track representing an opportunity to get lost inside a foreign landscape. Bischoff’s live performance of the music was recorded at The Mills College Concert Hall and mixed by Philip Perkins, in collaboration with the composer. Due to the unique way Perkins staged the recording—via three microphones placed around the hall in addition to Bischoff’s direct feed—there is much to feel aurally compelled to “look” at in the sonic field.

To begin with, the title track plays a teasing game of Whac-A-Mole using a host of delicate sounds—most memorably the plucked pitches of a music box—which slide into view with a gauzy grace before slipping quickly around the next corner and out of earshot. Sidewalk Chatter is a bit more glitch and crackle, while Local Color is built around the ring of struck metallic tones and the wavering and decay of pitches. In all of the aforementioned cases, the music is careful in its development; never overcrowded with sound or a blurry chaos of ideas. Bischoff remains patient, not afraid to punctuate with silence. There is air left in the room for reflection and exploration. It’s a framework taken to its sparest extreme (and, frankly, most Lynchian eeriness) in Decay Trace. Perhaps because of that, it also proved to be a personal favorite. This restraint is then somewhat shrugged off for the final track, Surface Effect, when the combine goes into hyperdrive, all breakers thrown, and luxuriates in the sum of the sounds that have been generated in the course of the hour-long disc.

As might be expected when dealing with such non-traditional sound creation and construction, there is a great deal of interesting background to be explored beyond the recordings themselves, information thoroughly outlined in the liner notes penned by Ed Osborn. Though his behind the curtain insights definitely provide illuminating added value, it’s also worth noting that they also aren’t strictly necessary. Bischoff’s music is not a sterile sonic experiment reporting its results, but a kind of conversation between man, machine, and the surrounding environment. The method is intriguing, but the resulting sound world is really all that matters.

NMBx FLASHBACK: The last time I caught up with John Bischoff, New World Records had just released The League of Automatic Music Composers, 1978–1983. Bischoff, a co-founding League member, stopped by to chat about what made-at-home computer music involved before the invention of the laptop. You can listen to our conversation here:

Sounds Heard: Six MTC Studio Concert Videos

MTC Studio performancesThe six pieces showcased below were all performed at the kick-off event for the MTC Studio, held at 92YTribeca on October 15, 2010. The evening featured performances, videos profiling the featured composers, and on-stage conversations with each of them. Now New Music USA is going back into MTC’s archive and bringing these performances out for the world to see.

These videos were shot by Jeremy Robins, Hope Hall, and Steve Taylor and the audio was recorded by Zach Herchen. They were produced and edited by Jeremy Robins.

Included in the video gallery below:

—Tim Feeney plays Binge Delirium by Yu-Hui Chang.
—Claire Chase and Eric Lamb of ICE play Edgewater by Marcos Balter.
—Wendy Richman and Tim Feeney perform Two Hand by Ken Ueno.
—Yevgeny Kutik and Tim Bozarth perform Supernatural Love by Kati Agócs.
—Glenn Kotche performing his own piece, Projections of What Might.
—Dohee Lee performs her Gut Ritual, inspired by Korean shamanism.

Sounds Heard: Paul Lansky—Imaginary Islands

For almost 40 years, composer Paul Lansky has been using computers to generate some of the most magical as well as immediately appealing electronic music around. Part of the excitement in listening to the pieces he creates this way has always been in how he takes material from the acoustic realm (e.g. the sound of a human voice speaking or singing, a piano) and then does things with it that are just slightly beyond the edge of human possibility. The results have been simultaneously otherworldly and completely down to earth.

While Lansky’s computer music compositions have always very effectively exploited the extended timbre possibilities of electronically generated sound, all of his pieces have still first and foremost been about melody, harmony, and rhythm. At one point he even did a series of computer arrangements of classic folk tunes (which are collected on the disc Folk-Images). Even Lansky’s earliest computer piece, the heady, hard-core mild und leise created at the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1973, channeled Wagner and, as a result, somehow seemed more approachable than most of the music created there at that time. (Decades later it remains an extremely appealing piece, so much so, in fact, that 27 years after Lansky composed it, Radiohead wound up sampling a portion of it on their song “Idioteque” released on their 2000 album Kid-A.) Some of my personal favorite Lansky compositions have been the 1978-79 Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion which creates psychedelic layers of myriad timbres all from a brief recording of a woman reciting a poem (his wife, actress Hannah McKay), and a series of pieces collected on the 1994 Bridge CD More Than Idle Chatter which take recorded fragments of conversation and render them incomprehensible as language yet make them utterly compelling as music. As technology improved over the decades, the level of Lansky’s manipulations seemed increasingly subtler. Parts of the compositions collected on the 1998 disc Conversation Pieces really are not terribly far away from symphonic music in the breadth of timbre combinations that sound remarkably like winds, brass, and a giant string section. In the notes for that recording, Lansky coyly acknowledges this remarking that “any impression that this is an attempt to emulate the luxurious sound of a large orchestra is entirely justified.”

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that the new Bridge CD Imaginary Islands, the latest entry in their now rather extensive Lansky discography, is composed expressly for and performed entirely by a symphony orchestra with no electronic elements whatsoever. Throughout his life, Lansky actually has composed for corporeal performers on acoustic instruments, or—as he jokingly describes them in his notes for the present CD—“carbon-based life forms,” even though his reputation as a composer was established almost exclusively on the basis of his electronic music. The three compositions collected on this new disc, all of which were composed within the last five years, nevertheless reveal a remarkable new compositional direction for him. They are his very first compositions for orchestra, despite sounding like they were written by someone who has had a lifetime of experience taming this behemoth ensemble!

It opens with Shapeshifters, a double piano concerto composed between 2007 and 2008 for the Colorado-based duo Quattro Mani (Susan Grace and Alice Rybak) for whom Lansky previously created his duo piano suite, It All Adds Up. During a conversation with Justin Brown, conductor of the Alabama Symphony, Lansky proposed the idea of writing a work for Quattro Mani and orchestra and thus the new piece was born. The opening minute of the first movement is actually a remarkable sonic metaphor for going from creating chamber music to working with a full orchestra. At the onset, a single pianist is heard joined shortly thereafter by the second pianist; they continue to play together without anyone else for about half a minute. Then suddenly the strings enter, seemingly out of nowhere, and soon thereafter the flutes. It is not until roughly a minute in that a glockenspiel suddenly chimes in and then we realize we’re in the midst of something really large. Layers continue to build on top of each other, somehow all seamlessly fitting together. The entire first movement feels like it is constantly expanding, the relentless momentum never letting up, but then it just as suddenly ends. (The whole arc of this movement, which is called “At Any Moment,” is somewhat reminiscent of Lansky’s similarly titled 1997 computer piece For the Moment, a piece with electronically generated timbres that suggest the sound world of a piano concerto.) While the orchestral music of the second movement, “Florid Counterpoint,” moves much slower overall, Lansky rarely gives a break to the pianists whose interlocking runs require a real feat of virtuosity. The next movement, “Confused and Dazed,” as its title suggests, is rather amorphous not only in terms of its tempo—which seems to be always changing—but also in its kaleidoscope of instrumental combinations. (Knowing that at the work’s premiere it would be performed alongside a string orchestra composition by Radiohead’s lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Lansky includes a four chord sequence from his mild und leise about a third of the way through.) The real showstopper, however, is the finale (called “Topology”) in which Lansky pits seeming Latin rhythms against percussive pentatonicisms resulting in a strangely Gershwinesque gamelan mambo that could only be possible in the 21st century.

With the Grain, a 2009 concerto for guitarist David Starobin, also opens with the soloist unaccompanied, setting the sonic stage for the orchestra which is the exact opposite of the relationship between soloists and orchestras in the earliest European classical concertos. Also like Shapeshifters, With the Grain is in four movements, again atypical for concertos. Each of its four movements—“Redwood Burl,” “Karelian Birch,” “Quilted Beech,” and “Walnut Burl”—are named after wood grains; Lansky carries over the kinetic qualities of these different types of grains into the music he fashions for each of the movements. The opening is slow and features circular melodies that are constantly evolving. The second showcases longer wavy lines. The third is much softer and more introspective. The concluding movement is aggressively busy.

The most recent piece on the disc, Imaginary Islands from 2010, is the only piece herein which does not involve a soloist. It is collection of three movements, each of which is a self-contained sonic island. According to Lansky, his titles for the three movements “tell all”: “Rolling Hills, Calm Beaches, Something Brewing”; “Cloud-shrouded, Mysterious, Nascent”; and “Busy, Bustling, With a Heartbeat.” Most people associate the word island with isolation and tranquility, but it’s important to remember that Manhattan, Montreal, Hong Kong, and Singapore are also all islands. While Lansky’s second island offers opportunities for reflective contemplation, his first and especially his third are sprawling urban soundscapes that offer many reasons for numerous return trips. I have already come back to this piece, as well as the others on this disc, several times; one listen through them all should make you want to do the same thing.

Sounds Heard: Aeolus Quartet—Many-Sided Music

The Aeolus Quartet, late of Austin, has been making music for several years now. They came together in 2008 in the time-honored tradition—while students at their conservatory of choice, in this case the Cleveland Institute of Music. Prize winners at the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition and the Plowman Chamber Music competition among others, Aeolus was also the first resident graduate string quartet at the Butler School and they have recently begun studies at the University of Maryland. Before their return to the frozen Northeast, they entered the studios at UT Austin to record Many-Sided Music, an album of new works by American composers, its title taken from Leonard Bernstein’s description of the “many-sidedness” of American music. I’ve had the good fortune of hearing several of these pieces live, fresh, and new, but it’s great to hear them with the benefit of time and reflection.

Dan Visconti’s Black Bend begins with longing, gestural wails accompanied by the pizz. and pop of a lazy river. Stabs and runs fight for space, as abbreviated melodies push their way through a mosquito texture of sixteenth notes. Seemingly out of nowhere, a blues bar opens up “just around the bend,” complete with chromatic strolls to IV and back again. Guitar riffs straight out of the Robert Johnson songbook play out over pizzicato parts in the cello that nod to their string bass roots. A few choruses in, violinists Nicholas Tavani and Rachel Shapiro do their best “Devil’s Crossroad,” battling in the upper register as the violist Gregory Luce and cellist Alan Richardson trade in their bass lines for some new chordal duds. The final moments of this 12-bar blues section play no differently than the frozen time at the end of any blues tune, tremolo chords and flying riffs; everybody rocking out so much that you can almost see the cellist give the final downbeat, its only lacking elements the bass drum, cymbal hit, and leap from the drum riser that typically wraps this sort of thing up. Beyond that, the piece flows away, decelerating with just the slightest reference to the opening as the river flows around another bend.

Steven Snowden’s Appalachian Polaroids turns the Americana trajectory of the album towards the wide inland swath of the country where hills meet fiddles. Inspired by the photography of Shelby Lee Adams, Snowden begins with a haunting field recording of Shelia Kay Adams (no relation) singing “Black is the Color.” Quick and seamless integration of the quartet with the recording leads to a pentatonic celebration as the recording ends and the quartet steps to the forefront. Idiomatic double stops pop around all fourthy-fifthy in a frenetic eighth-note pattern as the folk melody makes its way from low to high strings. Sixteenths in the upper register up the ante as the longer lines find their way back to the bass, eventually dominating the competing sixteenths which lose a battle of attrition. The long pentatonic lines and harmonies of the opening material return to bring the piece to a close.

Lady Isabelle by Alexandra Bryant was written for Aeolus as a companion piece to Appalachian Polaroids. Also inspired by a field recording, Bryant uses the quartet to voice the song. Recorded here with separate microphones, the brief vocalizations give a stark, broken quality to the introductory material, a quality that is echoed in the quartet writing which doesn’t fully arrive until nearly two minutes into the piece. Shortly after this arrival we hear the first plaintive melody of the piece accompanied by arpeggiated harmonics and the breathing rise and fall of cello and viola. This dies and is replaced by double stops with glissandi on one of the strings of the cello played over a small range. Just before the halfway mark the melody returns over a newly vibrant texture which is followed by another section recalling the broken elements of the opening. A return to the cello glissando punctuated by pizzicato and wide open chords leads us to a recap of the opening material, vocalizations and all.

William Bolcom’s Three Rags for String Quartet, the oldest music on the album, matches well with the other offerings while fully embracing the characteristics of the rag. “Poltergeist” is playful while flirting with the dark side, occasional whole tone scales threatening to fully pull the piece into a modern idiom, only to turn at the last minute back to the diatonic scales that bring us home. “Graceful Ghost” is a melancholy waltz, firmly diatonic yet still nimble enough to perhaps raise a few eyebrows if it were played in the late 19th century. “Incineratorag,” however, sounds like it could be right out of the Joplin songbook, a fantastic study in the form and characteristics of that music and among the first works of its kind that Bolcom wrote.

Many-Sided Music is very well played and recorded and is extremely approachable. Populated and played by a mostly under-thirty crowd, it’s a welcome indication of the creativity and potential of Aeolus as well as that of the composers. In fact, I think that Bolcom guy has a real future.

Sounds Heard: Eric Moe—Kick & Ride

Kick & Ride proves an apt title for composer Eric Moe’s recent BMOP Sound release, highlighting his use of drum set and percussion throughout the three compositions represented. The high energy works, characterized by Moe in the liner notes as “cantankerous sisters,” indeed deliver shots of dramatic flair and suspenseful anxiety that could nearly persuade a listener to skip that all-important morning cup of coffee.

The first work on the CD, Superhero, is scored for Pierrot ensemble, and musically traces the trials and tribulations of an imaginary comic book character as planets are saved, evil twins are vanquished, and existential crises are survived. It is possible to hear within the work’s five movements the car chases, the personal anguish, and the sonic representations of the KA-POWs and BLAMMOs associated with favorite comic book superheroes. Before any assumptions are made about the somewhat lighthearted theme of this piece, rest assured that this is serious, thoughtfully rendered music, that Moe says is an affectionate, rather than an ironic, glimpse into the concept of the superhero. The musicians give beautifully crisp, tight performances, reflecting both energy and repose in their allotted places.

Eight Point Turn begins with the pulse of sand blocks paired with a low-register contrabass ostinato, onto which other instruments gradually pile to create obsessively winding circular patterns. These motions are interrupted at many points, but persevere in shifting orchestrations and harmonic schemes, giving a sense of navigating narrow switchback trails up a mountain.

Although the title track of the CD, Kick & Ride, is a drum set concerto in two movements for the percussionist Robert Schulz and BMOP, Moe reimagines the concerto format in his own fashion. The opening features call-and-response patterns between drum set and orchestra, but overall, rather than composing a competitive, back-and-forth dialogue between drum kit and orchestra, their relationship has to do with whether they are in sync or playing independently of one another. In the first movement, “The Cracked Tune that Chronos Sings,” the drum set often plays delicately, very much behind the orchestra, allowing long, lean string melodies to come to the forefront. Eventually, filigree patterns between cymbals and drums erupt into a full drum kit cadenza, which abruptly cuts away to a sober conclusion in winds and brass.

The second movement, “Slipstream,” opens with a reference to the “Wipeout” rhythm, which is quickly farmed out to various pitched instruments and continues to color the entire movement. Again the drums travel from foreground to background and back again, almost without pause, carrying on independent conversations and occasionally chiming into the group talk, ultimately joining the orchestra in an intensely romping final climax.

All of the pieces on Kick & Ride feature idiomatic, finely wrought writing for all of the instruments, but it is especially notable that the drum set music sounds completely natural and fits organically into the different ensemble settings. Although it is possible to hear whispers of many different types of music—rock and roll, African, jazz, etc.—Moe has made the music his own. This disc is a treat for percussionists, for composers on the lookout for effective drum set writing, and for contemporary music listeners in general.