Category: Listen

Sounds Heard: Ingram Marshall and Jim Bengston—Alcatraz and Eberbach


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Perhaps it’s a symptom of our sensory-overloaded lives, but I have a special appreciation for musical works that also offer a visual focus point. Like a mandala, such pairings, when done well, can be more of an attention enhancer than a distraction.
In both Alcatraz and Eberbach, the two audio/visual compositions by Ingram Marshall (composer) and Jim Bengston (photographer) included on a recent surround-sound DVD release from Starkland, the artists offer an especially effective marriage of these two realms. The visual poetry of the architectural images provides a rich compliment to the aural landscape. Taken together, they arrive like a series of postcards relaying vivid, complex impressions of places—perhaps sent by residents now long gone.

Alcatraz opens with a long display of the infamous California prison island positioned off in the inky darkness, the light from its tower beckoning while brooding piano lines rock us rapidly forward with a liquid rush and flow. From here, images of the grounds of the penitentiary dissolve in and out of the frame, in compliment with the audio scoring but without either party reduced to a slavish game of follow the leader. Delineated by brief audio pauses between the eight movements, the work takes the listener deeper and deeper into the prison, the piano lines leaving to make way for a music built of foot falls and cell doors slamming. Processed vocals intoning about regulations and the clanking of harbor bells further put us in this place, haunted moans and decaying cells cinching the experiential noose even tighter. Towards the end of the piece, the piano returns again, and when we are let outside, the vibrant green of the grass is a shocking relief. Electronic sounds seem to suggest a certain joy and optimism as we are invited to gaze across the Bay towards urban civilization and take a deep breath.

Moving on to the second piece on the disc, Eberbach, do not adjust your volume. This time we are visiting a German monastery, and Marshall allows the sounds of the countryside and ringing church bells to patiently creep in, later accompanied by delicate, wind-like (though seemingly human) vocalizations. These voices that are not quite voices color the start and end of the work, mixed with other drones and chirping birds. The music at the center of the piece is more obviously instrumental, with Bengston apparently stepping in to play some of the material that Marshall recorded on-site and later processed. The images move from detail to detail, the dissolve transitions often making a geometric commentary of their own.

Alcatraz was by no means in your face with its narrative, but Eberbach seems to be an even more subtle and nuanced presentation. No people appear in the landscapes of either piece, but perhaps it’s possible to read both as haunted spaces in a sense, echoing still with the experiences and activities of different ghosts.

Sounds Heard: Some American Albums

In the wake of the many “Best of 2013” lists floating around, I wanted to highlight some recent album releases worthy of your time and attention. I didn’t select them for this reason, but it occurs to me that they each say something interesting and distinct about what it means to make American music right now.
William Winant—Five American Percussion Pieces (Poon Village Records)


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Winant has been a champion of contemporary percussion music for decades and can boast a personal connection to most of the composers represented on this album—Lou Harrison, Michael Byron, Alvin Curran, and James Tenney. This is a fascinating snapshot of mid-to-late 20th-century American percussion music, including pieces as early as Harrison’s Song of Quetzalcoatl (1941) and as recent as Curran’s Bang Zoom (1995), with works from the 1970s by Byron and Tenney filling in the gaps. The recordings themselves span many years, too—Byron’s Tracking I was recorded in 1976, while Tenney’s Never Having Written a Note for Percussion was recorded earlier this year. Taken together, these works lend the album the feeling of a retrospective in miniature, spanning most of Winant’s prolific career as a performer.

Song of Queztacoatl is the lone ensemble piece, and a curiously strident one for Harrison. It alternates between aggressive sections driven by unpitched percussion—tom-toms, bass drum, an insistent snare drum—and more melodious passages inhabited by bell-like muted brake drums, glasses, and cowbells. The Willie Winant Percussion Group (Todd Manley, David Rosenthal, Daniel Kennedy, and Winant) really captures the feverish energy here, and they play with an astonishing unity of purpose—if not for the many layers going on, you might be forgiven for mistaking this for a solo work.

Byron’s Trackings I for four metallophones toys with density; clangorous textures elide into skittering runs and back again. Curran’s Bang Zoom for 13 tuned cowbells immediately conjures up Balinese gamelan music, but without the frantic pace and tempo shifts. Winant maintains a steady, resolute tempo here, bringing out the emergent melodic patterns with incredible clarity.
Tenney’s Never Having Written a Note for Percussion is a bit of an anomaly here, consisting of a single tam-tam roll that crescendoes and diminuendos over the course of nine minutes. Again, Winant’s patience and precision gives the piece a magnificent arc, as disparate layers of sound from the tam-tam emerge and recede one by one.

The record concludes with another Lou Harrison piece, Solo to Anthony Cirone for tenor bells. It is understated, tantalizingly brief, and a perfect epigram for the album as a whole. One striking thing about the entire collection is its strong focus on melodic writing (with the exception of the Tenney). Running counter to prevailing stereotypes, it makes a strong case for melody as a central concern of 20th century percussion music, and Winant is an ideal ambassador for this message here.


Scott Worthington—Even the Light Itself Falls (Populist Records)


Scott Worthington’s Even the Light Itself Falls also looks back to the 20th century in a way, recalling the sparse, gentle textures of Morton Feldman’s music. Scored for clarinet, percussion, and double bass, Worthington’s piece unfolds at a remarkably patient pace—the bass does not even enter until several minutes in. The ensemble et cetera (Curt Miller, clarinet; Dustin Donahue, percussion; Worthington, double bass) plays with noteworthy restraint and control here. Miller’s playing is the most immediately ear-catching, with plaintive yet precise variations in vibrato. Nearly an hour and a half long, it is tempting to put this album on as background music, but the rewards for active listening are plentiful as well.


Various Artists – Rounds (the wulf. records)
Rounds
Purchase directly from the wulf. records
There have been countless free concerts of experimental music at the wulf., a local Los Angeles venue. Rounds is the first release on the organization’s recently launched recording label, and it’s a very interesting choice for a first album. As the title implies, each composition is in fact a round, a melody that overlaps with itself. Of course, this immediately conjures up memories of nursery rhymes, but while many of these pieces do trade on a certain childlike simplicity, the composers also find diversity and depth in these limitations. Most tracks are a capella, though occasionally an instrument or two will double a line for extra support. There are bluesy inflections in Daniel Corral’s Your Storm, raucous nonsense syllables in Eric KM Clark’s Rhythmic Round, clever numerology in Jessica Catron’s Four 3 And, ominous chromaticism in Larry Polansky’s Scarlet Tanager, and so on.


The performances feature a beautifully heterogenous mix of trained and untrained voices, giving individual lines a timbral uniqueness that adds both clarity and character. It also connects the experimental tradition to folk music traditions—in particular, it reminds me of the Sacred Harp tradition of choral singing in the American South in its rawness and realness.

Sounds Heard: Zevious—Passing Through the Wall

Zevious

Zevious
Passing Through the Wall
(Cuneiform Rune 367)


While it would have been particularly appropriate to begin the New Year with a write-up of a recording released in 2014, there’s actually still plenty of great 2013 music to catch up with. Greeting me upon my return to the office yesterday morning was a stack of goodies from the old year including a package from the always intriguing Cuneiform label. I was immediately struck by the cover of one of the discs therein, Passing Through the Wall, credited to a group called Zevious. Its repetitive sequences of diagonal lines in stark back and white, different but equally hypnotic patterns on both the front and back of the CD booklet cover as well as the tray card suggested that the music would be simultaneously primal and mind altering. And it indeed it is.


This trio of guitarist Mike Eber, cousin Jeff Eber on drums, and bassist Johnny DeBlase makes spare, taut music that is also chock full of dueling layers of angular counterpoint couched in polymeters. But despite its austerity and complexity, it’s surprisingly easy to listen to—perhaps an appropriate irony for a band whose name rhymes with devious! What might also be “zevious” is that the group began its performing career in jazz clubs as something of a straight-ahead trio, with DeBlase on upright bass. Then around five years ago they decided to go completely electric and even added effects pedals to the mix. Yet they’re still garnering rave reviews from the likes of All About Jazz which opined that the group now “leans more toward technical metal than jazz” but praised them for still “retain[ing] the skills of a jazz band.”

The opening track of Passing Through the Wall, “Attend to Your Configuration,” goes beyond a transition from jazz to fusion to rock to something that has a distinctly heavy metal feel to it, albeit without anything remotely resembling an attention-grabbing guitar solo. After about two and a half minutes, they slow down a tad and then simply stop playing. It sounds like these jazzers, unlike earlier generations of fusion-minded musicians, came to rock via punk. However, I was not fully prepared for what happens next—a six-minute track named “Was Solis.” It starts innocently enough, with a single guitar line moving in parallel motion with taps on a high-hat. The bass comes in, again mirroring every beat of the guitarist’s line, at first with a single note ostinato and then with a complimentary phrase. But then the guitar veers off into more syncopated terrain, actually not terribly far away from what a contemporary jazz guitar solo could sound like, but by a minute and half in, gnarly harmonies bathed in distortion take over. When individual voices again emerge they are much more menacing, with overtones screeching out against a throbbing beat. Then, the real surprise; the music gets extremely slow, with each individual long sustained note sounding more and more ominous. Although the pace finally picks up in its closing thirty seconds, the music has gone to a place from which it is not easy to return.

In a live performance of “Was Solis” from 2011, it comes across as slightly less dangerous, perhaps because they look so assured as they play through it, but you can still get the idea.


The remaining eight tracks on Passing Through the Wall navigate between these polarities. At first, “Pantocyclus” melds the angularity of Red-era King Crimson with the circular counterpoint of the reformed KC’s subsequent Discipline. But midway through it sounds a lot closer to Sunn O))); the music reaches a point of heightened dissonance and just stays there! “White Minus Red,” perhaps a nod to the aforementioned Crimson LP, is similarly relentless, alternating linear movement with big dissonant chords.

At the onset of “A Crime of Separate Action” a progression of two chords repeats over and over, but rather than establishing a tonality, it actually obfuscates it in a way that would have made Captain Beefheart proud. Two minutes in, however, the music transforms to something much murkier and trippier, which is somehow magical but hardly Magic Band, but it doesn’t stay there for more than 40 seconds, opting instead for another musical dead end. The music keeps morphing but it never resolves. “Entanglement” continues in this harmonically unstable terrain, with a single throbbing polytonal chord forming the basis of the melodies and harmonies. In “A Tiller in a Tempest,” the melodic instruments act as punctuation to insistent percussion riffs. The title track “Passing through the Wall” has something of a march-like feel to it, but it’s like a march off a cliff. But just when you might think the unremitting intensity will never let up, there’s a brief respite of relative calm before it starts up again. “This Could Be the End of the Line” is the shortest of all the disc’s offerings, just barely over two minutes, but it is by no means lighter fare. Insistent asymmetric ostinatos make it difficult to determine exactly where the downbeat it much of the time. By contrast, “Plying The Cold Trade,” is the longest, clocking it at slightly over eight minutes. It is also, by far, the slowest. From its mysterious, almost other-worldly opening salvo, it builds extremely gradually and mostly remains surprisingly low key given all the agitation of the nine previous tracks; it is further testimony to the remarkable range of this group.

There is precious little information on the disc or booklet besides the fact that Mike Eber composed all of the tracks except for “Was Solis,” “White Minus Red” and “Entanglement” which were composed by Johnny DeBlaze. But according to the press release that accompanied their disc, both composers have completely scored out all of the parts for their music—going still further afield from their jazz origins and ostensibly leaving little to chance. This is quite surprising, given how in the moment it all sounds. But what surprises me even more about Zevious is that I hadn’t known about them before listening to this album, yet the group hails from NYC, just played a gig in Brooklyn last month which I missed (damn it!) and this is their third album. Well, I’ll be making up for lost time by keeping this disc in rotation as well tracking down the rest of their discography.

NewMusicBox Mix: 2013 Staff Picks

As a fond farewell to 2013, the intrepid New Music USA staff has chosen some of their favorite tracks from the past twelve months for this edition of the NewMusicBox Mix. Below you will find each track streamed separately on this page, as well as a continuous playlist of all of the tracks at the bottom of this post. Information about the recordings and purchasing links is intended to encourage further exploration and continued listening.
These artists have very generously donated their tracks to this project, and we encourage you to support them by purchasing their albums and letting them know if you enjoy what you hear!
Happy Holidays to all!—AG

Dawn of Midi: Dysnomia
Dawn of Midi: Algol
Dysnomia
Thirsty Ear
Purchase via Bandcamp
With Dysnomia, Dawn of Midi have confirmed that we no longer think about electronic music in terms of instrumentation; today’s definition has much more to do with content, sensibilities, and aesthetics. Though the Brooklyn-based trio’s percolating, slowly-permuting jams suggest minimal techno, they are created entirely by three acoustic instruments, performed live in a room together. There’s a drum kit, cymbal-less save for clicky hi-hats; a double bass, conversing with itself across registers; and a grand piano, performed so as to remind us why we call the piano a percussion instrument. Dysnomia is my album of the year, and “Algol” is one of its finest moments. Listen loudly and on the best speakers or headphones you can find.
Rafiq Bhatia, Development Manager for Institutional Giving


Son Lux: Lanterns
Son Lux: Lost It To Trying
Lanterns
Joyful Noise
Purchase via Bandcamp
I first encountered the music of Ryan Lott (Son Lux) this past year when he and Stephen Petronio Company applied for and were awarded for their project Like Lazarus Did. At the premiere I was totally blown away by the creative synergies he and the ensemble yMusic drew between acoustic and electronic sound—a difficult feat to accomplish in live performance, let alone in performance that is paired with such stunning choreography. I’ve been paying attention to this composer ever since, if anything for his totally unique voice and approach to sound. This densely layered and energetic song, “Lost it to Trying,” from his new album Lanterns, has been one of my favorite aural dissections since it was released in October. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.—Emily Bookwalter, Program Manager


Rose & The Nightingale
Rose & The Nightingale, I write you a love poem
Spirit of The Garden
Sunnyside
Purchase via Bandcamp
Jody Redhage’s cello playing is well known in jazz and new music circles, as is her singing voice. Jody put together Rose & The Nightingale after a year of touring with Esperanza Spalding to play her own garden-inspired songs, using poetry from all over the world. The musicianship is impeccable, and the songs are beautiful. Also they will get stuck in your head. Catch one of their concerts in a botanical garden, or just buy the album for everyone you know.—Kevin Clark, Communications Manager


Three-Mountain Pass
Van-Anh Vanessa Vo, Three-Mountain Pass
Three Mountain Pass
Innova


Evocative vocals and enticing sonic landscape take you on an interesting, if short, journey.
Eddy Ficklin, Technology Manager and Developer


Brooklyn Babylon
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society: Missing Parts
Brooklyn Babylon
New Amsterdam


I keep coming back to this album for Darcy James Argue’s stunning large ensemble writing (how often is it possible to hear an 18-piece jazz ensemble anymore?), and for the cornucopia of musical references that are smartly woven into the work. Though originally created as a multimedia work with stop-motion animation by Danijel Zezelj, the music on it’s own is truly a listening adventure!—Alexandra Gardner, Associate Editor, NewMusicBox


Build Me Up From Bones
Sarah Jarosz: Fuel the Fire
Build Me Up From Bones
Sugar Hill


As a “classical” violinist just beginning to break into the folk music scene, I am inspired by the melding of traditional and contemporary ideas—both musical and lyrical—in this powerful, original track by Sarah Jarosz.
—Ethan Joseph, Development Manager for Individual Giving


Hexgon Cloud
Erika: North Hex
Hexagon Cloud
Interdimensional Transmissions
Available on vinyl!


I saw Erika play a live set at the abandoned, re-appropriated Leland Hotel in downtown Detroit over Thanksgiving weekend as part of the homegrown Interdimensional Transmissions techno label’s “No Way Back” night of chaos. Imagine a decaying, decadent 1920’s gigantic ballroom, no heat to fight the bitter cold, completely dark except for a few disco lights flashing underneath a deflated hot air balloon sprawled behind the stage halfway covering the floor-to-ceiling windows. Erika had about 20 feet of gear lined up, and mesmerized the scant, but dedicated audience with her minimal, process-driven techno. She has defined herself as an electronic musician, and has become one of the focal points of the current Detroit techno scene.
Lorna Krier, Program Manager


Mobious Loop
Mathew Rosenblum: Sharpshooter
Boston Modern Orchestra Project conducted by Gil Rose
Mathew Rosenblum: Möbius Strip
BMOP/sound
Purchase from BMOP


Orchestras rarely take on microtonal music, except when certain members of the string and brass sections inadvertently play music intended for performance in 12-tone equal temperament with less than accurate intonation. This alone makes Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s perfectly in-tune performance of Mathew Rosenblum’s Sharpshooter, which is crafted from an idiosyncratic 19-pitch scale with equally beating minor thirds, a thing of wonder. But the fact that the music shimmers and grooves and that these otherworldly intervals are almost hummable make it an extremely satisfying, if slightly mind-altering, listening experience. For added enjoyment, try singing along with it!
Frank J. Oteri, Composer Advocate and Senior Editor, NewMusicBox


Inuksuit
John Luther Adams: Inuksuit (excerpt)
Inuksuit
Cantaloupe


When word came down that Doug Perkins was producing a recorded version of John Luther Adams’s powerful outdoor percussion piece Inuksuit, I wondered if committing such an expansive and variable work to something so fixed was really going to do the music and its underpinning ideas justice. After all, a big part of the live listening experience involves actively moving through the performance space and among the 9 to 99 percussionists involved, allowing you to hear “your” unique version of the music. However, while this recording (offered both on CD and high resolution surround-sound DVD) won’t change from play to play, the surround sound option and the excellent performances of the 32 musicians who bring it to life make it a powerful version all its own. To my mind, this is definitely not intimate headphone music. You’re going to want to find the best stereo equipment available to you and fill the space up with sound. Things may start off in the midst of peacefully chatting birds, but there are musicians with mallets coming up behind them and it will get loud!—Molly Sheridan, Executive Editor, NewMusicBox


A Lorca Soundscape
Alexis Cuadrado, “Danza de la Muerte” from A Lorca Soundscape
Sunnyside


There was a lot of great jazz released this past year, reflecting a huge range of music in this genre, but I was asked to choose one, and Alexis Cuadrado’s Lorca Soundcape spoke to me. The poetry Lorca wrote more than 80 years ago during his time in NYC at the start of the Great Depression resonates still, and it becomes even more contemporary through Alexis’ cohesive and deeply personal rendering, which is influenced by Flamenco, African music and contemporary jazz. The selected track, “Danza de la Muerta” is an example of how well text and music are working together, as it opens with “The mask! Look how the mask comes from Africa to New York”. The performances, from Claudia Acuna’s both raw and silky voice to Miguel Zenón’s virtuosic saxophone, drive this profoundly moving work straight into our hearts.—Deborah Steinglass, Director of Development


Sounds Heard: Alvin Lucier—Still and Moving Lines

Still and Moving Lines
Alvin Lucier
Still and Moving Lines
Decibel:
Cat Hope – artistic director, flute, alto flute, organ;
Lindsay Vickery – saxophone, organ, MaxMSP programming;
Stuart James – piano, organ, recording, mixing, mastering;
Malcolm Riddoch – electronic playback, live recording, MaxMSP performance, networking, organ
(Pogus 21072-2)
Order directly from Pogus


[Ed. Note: This year, as part of the staff exchange program of the International Association of Music Information Centres, New Music USA is hosting two staff members from music centers in other countries. You may recall that Caio Higginson from the Welsh Music Information Centre, Tŷ Cerdd, was with us a month ago and during the time he was here he wrote about Navigation by the Taylor Ho Bynum’s 7-tette. This past week we hosted someone else from the United Kingdom, Kealy Cozens, who is the Digital Development and Communications Assistant for Sound and Music in London and we also asked her to write about a CD for NewMusicBox. Since Kealy has been part of the team involved with SAM’s fascinating Minute of Listening, a program that offers children aged six to ten 60 seconds of creative listening for every school day, she was immediately drawn to yet another new disc featuring works by Alvin Lucier, a composer who has long explored the relationship between acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. —FJO]

The overwhelming feeling that comes from Still and Moving Lines, a new Pogus disc featuring four compositions by Alvin Lucier performed by the Australian new music ensemble Decibel, is that it is an exercise in listening. It invites you to explore the world sonically beyond the immediate aural experiences normally presented to you. By challenging and subverting listening conventions, these pieces of music open up minds and ears to push the listener into deeper realms of sonic perception.
The first piece on the disc, Ever Present, places a flute, saxophone, and piano with a slow sweep pure wave oscillator. The two sine wave generators interact with each other across the piece while the acoustic instruments resonate perfectly in places and provide contrast in others. As the electronic sounds decay and meld into one another, the instrumental sounds momentarily overtake them and come to the fore like the crest of the wave. All the pieces on Still and Moving Lines make you more aware of the external sonic world, but Ever Present also opens you up to how you receive the pieces physically. The waves flowing from the oscillators tingle your brain while the interjecting piano stirs deep in your chest.

Carbon Copies invites the players to create recordings of the environments that they are in and imitate them. In this version, we hear domestic duties, a hotel, a commute, and a house monitor. The inspiration for this piece was the ability of animals to imitate their surroundings to survive. Listening to Carbon Copies for the first time this week was extremely timely for me. While arguably not as crucial to my survival, the ideas in this piece mirror what I’ve noticed in my recent travels. When walking down a New York street earlier in the week I heard the most amazing Brooklyn accent and immediately copied it, repeating the uttered phrase until I had the sounds just right…(ish). The flipside happened to me on the flight over from London when the air steward revelled in my pronunciation of the word “water” (however to me it sounded more like he was imitating Mary Poppins). For the players, the air steward, and myself, imitating the sounds enabled us to explore particular sounds further—breaking down the composite parts and building them back together on our own.

The third piece on the disc, Hands, features four players on one electric chamber organ. Each of the players uses hand movements on the pipes while the keyboard is used to provide a sense of harmony. Sounds from both ends of the spectrum weave in and out of one another, seemingly at odds at points but in harmony at others. At times Hands is both calming and alarming, with the harmonic points creating familiarity in juxtaposition to the otherworldly feel that is also present.

Listening to Shelter, the final track on the disc, is like turning your chair around and eavesdropping on the world outside of the concert hall. Here, Lucier subverts normal listening conventions and instead of the concert hall walls acting as barriers to keep the sounds in, they become speakers for the world outside. This version of Shelter takes place in a performance space in a music conservatorium. The rehearsing musicians, air conditioning, and electrical buzzing outside the performance space become the piece as contact microphones pick up their sounds. These are then equalized and amplified and played back in to the room. Shelter presents us with the world we almost missed; the walls become the filters for what was not heard, amplifying all those seemingly negligible sounds.

Each of the four tracks of Still and Moving Lines focuses upon a different area of aural perception, extending the way you listen. After hearing it all, it’s hard not to notice the vast sonic world around you, much like having your ears cleaned.

Sounds Heard: Spektral Quartet—Chambers


Now in their fourth season, Spektral Quartet is currently ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago and already a well-known champion of Chicago composers, including the six whose works are featured on the group’s first commercial disc release. Since I heard Spektral perform at Chicago’s Empty Bottle this August, I’ve been intrigued by their homebrewed approach to contemporary music. Their first CD offering (also available on cassette, for those with an ’89 Volkswagen Golf or similar playback device) is not only a calling card for the group’s formative artistic collaborations but also a richly detailed portrait of Chicago’s up-and-coming contemporary music scene.

The album’s title, Chambers, is a wry play on the tradition of chamber music that Spektral Quartet is working so intensely to update via their performances at nontraditional venues, but it also reflects the very distinct sonic spaces that each of the six composers recorded here create with offerings mostly under ten minutes in duration. Hans Thomalla’s Albumblatt (2010) plunges us right into a fascinating space without preamble, with an initial pizzicato gesture igniting a series of melting lines that recede almost as quickly as they materialize. Familiar tricks of the contemporary composer’s trade such as extended timbral effects and microtonal inflections are made personal and fresh in Thomalla’s hands—for example, a series of glissandi combined with interesting bowing patterns make for an aural impression that is particular and sharply imagined rather than generic. At times these sliding figurations almost take on the character of mechanical sirens before fading to a whispered, chorale-like passage made tense by extremely slow bow speed, sounding something like a quiet scratch-tone. In the glissandi and spun-tone sounds, Spektral reveals a remarkable sense of control and a nuanced range of expression, qualities that place the quartet in the distinguished company of groups including the JACK Quartet and Kronos in their heyday.

Ben Hjertmann’s String Quartet No. 2, Etude (2013) is the most recently composed piece featured on this recording and also opens with a backdrop of glissandi against which an arching violin line unfolds and elaborates (one of four solos for each quartet member woven into the composition). Before long a more rhythmic section erupts, marked by pizzicato strumming (with guitar picks!) and complex, prog-ish meters giving the effect of a wild guitar jam. These percussive sections are where the piece’s personality really comes out—including foot-tapping and quartet members hissing through their teeth, deftly wedded to the sounds produced on their instruments. A dramatic violin cadenza dissolves into a sustained array of languid artificial harmonics that end with an abrupt and abortive crescendo to the faintest stirrings of mezzo-piano; surely one of the more original endings I have heard, with each gesture obsessively shaped and brought into focus by the quartet.

Eliza Brown’s String Quartet No. 1 (2011) begins with fingered tremolos and flickering harmonics and is marked overall by the purity and simplicity of its crystalline textures. Making its argument in more direct and unadorned terms than the previous works on the album, this is no textbook minimalism but a work in which textural variety is ably engaged with a richness of sound often lacking in similar music of such apparent and beguiling plain-spokenness. Brown’s quartet has something of a surprise ending as well, with a bracing dissonance all the more rewarding because it was saved for exactly this effect, with shadings of microtonality resolving to a luminous C Major.

Chris Fisher-Lochhead’s Dig Absolutely (2010) likewise opens with an interlocking network of glissandi (perhaps the unifying sound of the entire album, although handled with different expressive impact by each composer recorded here). Straining and wailing with the inflections of pop vocalism, the piece strikes an enchanting balance between aspects of vernacular expression and contemporary experimental music. For one thing, Fisher-Lochhead writes some incredibly specific and constantly varied rhythms, giving the whole affair a sense of improvisatory looseness more characteristic of roadhouse performance than the concert hall. The members of Spektral draw this feeling into the aural foreground, playing with a kind of “reckless precision” (to paraphrase a Tuck Andress guitar album) that is often difficult for trained classical musicians to achieve with conviction. Also bearing a strong pop influence (although neither work wears this influence on its sleeve or as a form of gimmickry) is Liza White’s 2012 Zin Zin Zin Zin, inspired by Mos Def’s scatting on The Roots’ “Double Trouble.” Beginning with onomatopoeia of the titular four syllables, White’s composition employs inventive techniques such as dead bow-stops and a crunchy harmonic palette of cluster-based chords to create the feeling that we are experiencing pitchless grunts and shouts rather than musical lines. This is the shortest work recorded here and also the most kinetic; the music is passed around the quartet like a superball with great virtuosity, only to slink away at the end in four breathless puffs of sound that mimic the work’s opening. It’s a tour de force of quartet writing that manages to make a vivid impression in under four minutes.

Marcos Balter’s Chambers (2011), which concludes the disc, is—like much of the composer’s work—highly gestural in its musical rhetoric while also pervaded by a feeling of stasis; the work’s three short movements are masterful at establishing moods but do very little to develop their initial gestures as the music unfolds, opting instead to offer three snapshots that invite the ear to linger. The first movement presents faintly shimmering harmonics in a cycling pattern, almost marked with the regularity of breathing or the steady “lub dub” of a heartbeat. This is by far the most minimalistic movement anywhere on the album with an extremely slow rate of change, yet investing its near-stasis with an incredible sense of urgency and suspense. The second movement is initially marked by pizzicato, the crisp notes of the high violin strings contrasted with the rounder, boomier sound of the cello’s low strings to great effect, before a series of cluster chords emerge out of nowhere. The work’s third movement likewise begins with pizzicato in a funky, dance-like groove, against which sagging string lines in canonic imitation animate the feeling of suspended time—whereas the previous movements sometimes feel a bit confined to their respective small chambers, this one feels like a larger room where anything can happen and, as such, provides a great conclusion to this sampler of young Chicago composers.

Spektral Quartet is moving up the ladder fast, and I can only suspect that this is the first of many recording releases for the group. It’s rare for an ensemble with such a predilection for contemporary music to also exhibit such a strong lyrical impulse, and this tendency—amply evidenced on Chambers—sets Spektral apart from many other players on the new music scene. I look forward to hearing them present an album that blends contemporary music with other offerings from the traditional quartet repertoire (their live performances of Verdi and Puccini selections made an impression just as strong as the contemporary works recorded on this disc). After all, what Chicago is perhaps most in need of is an ensemble that can perform the classical repertoire with the same commitment, nuance, and ferocity with which it champions contemporary composers, and the Spektral Quartet is a more sincere and viable candidate than most in bringing these two oft-separated worlds together.

Sounds Heard: Computer-Assisted

Claire Chase: DENSITY
New Focus
Claire Chase: DENSITY
The newest album by flutist and leader of ICE, Claire Chase, uses the concept of density as an overarching theme. Varése’s 1936 work Density 21.3 serves as the springboard, and from there she explores many definitions of density in music. The various sized flutes snowball upon themselves in all of the other works on the disc: the multiple linearities we know from Steve Reich and Philip Glass; fragile, gauzy layers of texture from Marcos Balter; laser-focused swimming with sine waves from Alvin Lucier; and they even transform into a noisy heavy metal guitar in Mario Diaz de León’s Luciform for flute and electronics. As pristinely produced as this recording is, don’t miss a chance to hear Chase perform these works live—her performances are riveting, and just as tight as those on the album.



Chris Arrell: Diptych
Beauport Classical
Performed by: Boston Musica Viva, Clayton State Chorale, Sonic Generator, Jacob Greenberg, Lisa Leong, and Amy Williams.
Chris Arrell: Diptych
Chris Arrell’s bustling echo electric, performed by Sonic Generator, is one of five absorbing works on a portrait CD of the composer’s music. Scored for clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and computer, Arrell uses the story of Narcissus as a creative stepping-stone. The electronic part is derived from modeling the spectral content of the acoustic instruments, creating transformed electroacoustic “images” of the instruments, a bit like the distortions that happen in funhouse mirrors. The restless instrumental textures emit long metallic sonic tails that ripple and swirl throughout the open spaces of the music, wrapping a diaphanous film of electronic counterpoint around the soundscape.



Richard Teitelbaum: Piano Plus
New World
Performed by: Richard Teitelbaum, Ursula Oppens, Aki Takahashi, Frederic Rzewski
Richard Teitelbaum: Piano Plus
Piano music is the focus of this album from interactive electronic and computer music pioneer Richard Teitelbaum. Specifically, technology is used to extend the range of the acoustic piano and to introduce textural complexities that exceed the ability of normal human performance. The six pieces were written between 1963 and 1998, and feature the composer himself playing three of the works, while the others are performed by contemporary music pianist superheroes Frederic Rzewski, Aki Takahashi, and Ursula Oppens. The piece presented below, SEQ TRANSIT PARAMMERS, was conceived with the intention of the player collaborating creatively by performing compositional tasks to determine the direction of the music, à la Cage, Brown, and Tudor—”a kind of toolkit for real-time interactive composition,” writes the composer in the liner notes.


Sounds Heard: Alvin Lucier—Orchestra Works

Alvin Lucier: Orchestra Works

Alvin Lucier
Orchestra Works
(New World Records 80755)


When David Lean’s 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia was restored in 1989, one of the best shots rescued from the vaults was a seemingly inconsequential one, a shot showing exactly what it is T. E. Lawrence (played by Peter O’Toole) is doing in the dank Cairo office where he has been initially stationed during the First World War: he is drawing a map. In fact, a close look at the shot in question—Lawrence’s hand carefully laying down a line of blue watercolor along a coast—reveals that he is drawing a map of the Gulf of Aqaba. It is the capture of Aqaba that turns out to be Lawrence’s first great military accomplishment, a feat that sets in motion the movie’s whirlwind of triumph and trauma. The clean boundaries laid down on paper turn out, in cinematic reality, to chart a glorious, horrible, bright, dark, vast panorama.

I thought of Lawrence’s mapmaking while listening to this new recording of some of Alvin Lucier’s orchestral music. I can’t think of another composer who manages, again and again, to create such an inverse relationship between the bald simplicity of the compositional plan and the crazy richness of the musical result. The more basic Lucier’s hypothesis—the more abstract the map—the more inexhaustible the experience.


The three works on this new release are especially straightforward and, thus, especially grand. Diamonds (for one to three orchestras, or one orchestra divided in three) is nothing but the title shape: one group of instruments ever-so-slowly swoops up and then down, while another group mirrors it, a shape presented in three overlapping iterations over twenty-plus minutes. Slices presents a sustained 53-note chromatic cluster in the orchestra; a solo cello works its way through all 53 one at a time, switching the corresponding ensemble note off, then works through all 53 again, switching the notes back on—a process repeated, in varied order, seven times. Exploration of the House revisits the playback-feedback acoustic winnowing of Lucier’s most famous piece, I Am Sitting in a Room, but with the source material being a live orchestra playing fragments of Beethoven’s Consecration of the House overture. Each fragment is recorded as it is performed, then sent back into the hall and re-recorded, until the acoustic signature of the space is all that’s left. In all three pieces, as in so much of Lucier’s music, the schematic is so obvious as to immediately disappear, leaving instead the repeated opportunity to focus one’s attention on what is normally so plain in music—individual notes, phrases, timbres—and realize just how restrictively framed one’s normal perception of those artifacts usually is.
The Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Christian Arming, Petr Kotik, and Zsolt Nagy) gives Diamonds a near-constant shimmer and scintillation, the microtonal collisions of passing glissandi seeming to open up a kind of infinite zoom into the nature of the sound. Members of the San Diego Symphony fill in the pre-recorded 53-note cluster in Slices, with Kotik conducting and Charles Curtis on cello—in an act of added devotion, each of the 53 instruments were recorded individually, then mixed together to maximize the sonic redolence. Kotik fashions the fragments of Exploration of the House as brisk, starched Classical-era swatches, the better to contrast with their transformation into hazy bells.

We take a lot of what goes on in music for granted, and, often, with good reason: the abstraction to more hierarchical listening is the gateway to a lot of the large-scale dramatic conceptions—triadic progressions, standard forms, dialectic give-and-take among instruments—whose by now traditional nature sometimes can disguise their continuing effectiveness. But Lucier’s music is a counterweight to all that, a useful exercise that is no less dramatic in its own way. Music history has privileged the global view. But Lucier, sitting in a room, drawing maps, is showing travelers the path to landscapes that, once moved off the paper, prove unexpectedly limitless and uncanny.

Sounds Heard: Taylor Ho Bynum—Navigation

[Ed. Note: Last week at New Music USA, we hosted Caio Higginson from the Welsh Music Information Centre, Tŷ Cerdd, as part of the staff exchange program of the International Association of Music Information Centres. During the week, I arranged for Caio to visit a variety of music organizations in the city as well as to hear live performances of American music every night in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera to (le) poisson rouge, the Jazz Standard, and the Church of St. Luke in the Fields. Caio also worked with each of our departments here, learning about what we do and how we do it. As part of a way to understand what we do at NewMusicBox, I put a pile of new CD releases in front of him and told him he could write about one of them for us if he was so moved. After an afternoon listening bonanza, Navigation by the Taylor Ho Bynum’s 7-tette, inspired these thoughts from him.—FJO]
Navigation
Taylor Ho Bynum 7-tette: Navigation
(firehouse 12 FH-12-04-01-019)
Taylor Ho Bynum: cornet; Jim Hobbs: alto saxophone;
Bill Lowe: bass trombone, tuba; Mary Halvorson: electric guitar;
Ken Filiano: acoustic bass; Tomas Fujiwara and Chad Taylor: drums, vibraphone

Navigation, Taylor Ho Bynum’s recent CD release, seems particularly relevant to my own experience of visiting New York this week. I can bare no claim to navigating the airplane over the Atlantic, of course, but to me at least, this improvisatory multi-sectioned work reflects the adventure of experiencing a specific city for the first time.

Bynum has laid this work out in six movements—ISH, WUK, ZADE, TRIST, MANCH, and KID—each with some predetermined elements planned, but from there the music relies on the independence of the performers as it weaves from one scenario to another. These movements can be played in any order, simultaneously, and even multiple times within a single performance, as they are in the two realizations featured on this Firehouse 12 2-CD release. Diagrams printed on the digipack outline the specific paths taken.

In the first track, MANCH, Tim Hobbs’s alto saxophone and Bill Lowe’s tuba spar with one another before Mary Halvorson’s electric guitar and Tomas Fujiwara’s snare drum and cymbals kick in; it reminded me of my arrival to this city—e.g. depending heavily on maps at first and gradually feeling more confident of where I was going. This sets the stage for the second track, MANCH-ISH, which, after the heaviness of the proceeding interplay between the musicians, sounds relatively tranquil. It begins with an electric guitar solo that made me think of the sounds of dial-up internet connections from the 1990s. As a backdrop, bell-like percussion sounds kick in occasionally; although it might not have been the musicians’ intent, to me it felt like the subway rumbling underneath me from time to time! But there is a constant gradual build-up to a flurry of passion from Lowe’s saxophone and then Bynum’s cornet. The MANCH movement reappears on the last track of the second disc. In that performance there is a calm sense of confidence, with the saxophone taking the lead accompanied by the cornet while in the background the guitar lays back and strums away as if just observing the world go by.

The ZADE and WUK movements are each performed twice on the first CD. In the first performance of ZADE-WUK, the vibraphone (played by Fujiwara) is very prominent in deciding the path that the sax and cornet then follow. The subtlety of the vibraphone and bass (played by Ken Filiano) contrasts very effectively with the harsh and brash interferences, particularly from the guitar and tuba. The second performance, which opens with a bleak bowed bass solo, eventually builds to an ensemble interplay that has an almost traditional jazz feel to it, but not for long. In this performance, however, the navigation of the journey seems clearer and more confident due to its familiar landmarks.

There is an additional performance of ZADE on its own on the second CD. Here is a barren and sobering version of the movement with low and hanging sounds from the bass countered by both low and screeching expressions by the cornet which create a weird sense of uneasiness. About midway through, the saxophone enters and the tensions that had been building up to that point finally evaporate.

Throughout the piece, Bynum doesn’t allow the listener to dwell too long in any moment, choosing to steer back and forth from the traditional to newer waters. In my view, of the six movements it is TRIST and MANCH that reflect the traditional and fond essence of travelling and the confidence in your navigation that allows for a pleasurable journey.


In the first performance of TRIST there’s almost a sense of a strong, cold wind blowing across the landscape, but shelter is provided in the form of the guitar and warmth from the bass and drums. These foundations allow the performance of the wind instruments to thrive in a carnival-like atmosphere, yet at the end we are still made aware of the raging storm. But in the second performance of TRIST, there is no lingering threat from Mother Nature; this is reflected in a colorful cornet solo. It is the wind instruments rather than the guitar that take the initiative at the beginning of this performance. Those festive sax and cornet elements are more subdued in this performance, allowing the guitar to take center stage midway through the track.
The KID-WUK movement begins with the guitar and cornet playing in tandem, both shadowing the other. Suddenly the bass trombone appears (played by Lowe) which gradually builds a sense of tension. The cornet plays over it, responding differently throughout the movement, sometimes challenging the tension and sometimes embracing it.

From the beginning, this album challenged ideas that I’ve had about jazz and made me realize that there is a lot that I have to learn. I’ve listened to it many times during the last five days, and though it is a cliché to say it, every time it evokes a different emotion in me. This is actually the intention of Taylor Ho Bynum. In addition to having recorded two versions of most movements, he states in the CD’s program notes that he “wants to ask listeners to consider the composition as a set of possibilities rather than a fixed document.” And it is just that.

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

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.