There is an aptness that accompanies the publication of my first blog of the new year. Much as we aspire to review our past year and resolve improvements for the next, this book effectively plays a similar role.
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was born into tumultuous times. His life intersected with political change, social changes, two world wars, and huge changes in the way music would be written and heard. His life and the above mentioned changes in the world are the subjects of Harvey Sachs’ relatively brief review of Schoenberg’s life and career. But the relative brevity does not sacrifice the apparent aim of presenting this composer’s work in the context of the times thereby providing the reader/listener with a perspective that aids an understanding of the man, his music, and his (arguably still evolving) place in history.
“You can see it isn’t easy to get on with me. But don’t lose heart because of that.”- Arnold Schoenberg
At 272 pages this book wisely focuses on the composer’s published work and the drama of its performance along with critical and audience responses. This is not a comprehensive review of all things Schoenberg. While Sachs makes references to the composer’s earlier works, he focuses primarily on the published music and the responses of musicians, critics, and audiences. More importantly he focuses on the massive socio-political changes that paralleled the music thereby providing a useful context for future listeners and performers to better understand Schoenberg and his place in musical history.
Sachs places less emphasis on the composer’s paintings and even his writings. What the author achieves is a very readable and understandable essay that listeners (your humble reviewer included) can use to take another look/listen and to come to a new reckoning of Schoenberg and his place in the world. To, as the subtitle suggests, better understand, “Why he matters.”
I must admit that I did not understand and appreciate the music of Arnold Schoenberg immediately, and even when I ventured to read this volume, I found that my familiarity with this composer was limited primarily to “Transfigured Night”, “Pierrot Lunaire”, the “Second String Quartet”, Moses und Aron” (the Solti recording), Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the String Trio, and a fleeting listen or two to the piano music.
The joy of this book was in its chronological exposition of all of the composer’s major works and their historical and political contexts. As a result I found myself listening for the first time (or at least the first in many years) to the two chamber symphonies, the other string quartets, etc. It was an opportunity to reset my perceptions/misperceptions and acquire a better understanding and appreciation of his oeuvre.
As Sachs concludes:
“There are cycles in the arts. Perhaps we have reached the end of one great, centuries long cycle of individualistic European Art Music and its global offshoots. We cannot know. But, in the unlikely case that the subspecies Homo Sapiens Sapiens doesn’t destroy itself in the meantime, there is good reason to expect that sooner or later a new cycle will begin. And, for now, we have an enormous treasure of outstanding creations that continue to speak to anyone who is willing to listen to them.”
The primary importance of this new release is, of course, the presentation of these two major works but it also an exposition of the diversity (or do you prefer, “heterogeneity”?) that can become obscured by well intended terms like, “Latino” and “Hispanic”, or even conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s “Pan American”. All are well intended but racial, nationalist, and other categories are insufficient on their own in recognizing the rich diversity inherent in their cultures. Here we go, just in time for Latin History Month.
The concise liner notes tell us that even the album’s title, “Fandango” has multiple meanings depending on cultural contexts. The fact is that no single style or genre can be said to be representative of the marvelous diversity that exists within their intended scope which attempts to represent practically the whole of the western hemisphere as is the case with this release. So, while Fandango is certainly about the musical works presented, it also touches on the issue of diversity by the choice of two major works separated chronologically by some 80 years and representing composers from Argentina on the one hand, and Mexico on the other. Two different cultures that share a language in both words and , to some extent, music.
The centerpiece of this album is, of courses, the concerto that Maestra Akiko-Meyers commissioned from Mexican composer Arturo Márquez Navarro (1950- ). I’m sad to say that I am only now learning of this composer but delighted in his mastery of the orchestra and the grand romantic gestures of a past era along with an acute and personal appreciation of the folk idioms of his culture. At first I was skeptical of a “mariachi” inspired concerto because such attempts, even the most sincere, don’t always seem to work. Well, that is certainly not the case here. This is a strong contender for regular inclusion in the current canon of widely performed violin concertos. This one is a masterpiece which poses challenges to the soloist (which give her a chance to show her virtuosity) and surround it with rich, subtly, ultimately beautiful orchestral textures that support the soloist but which demand much of the orchestra and its conductor as well.
The concerto (written in 2020) is in the traditional three movements. The first, entitled “Folia Tropical” (tropical leaves) embraces the spirit of late romantic concerti like those of Bruch and Brahms. It is an extended movement that introduces and develops many moods and themes. It is a big symphonic movement worthy of a symphony and it gives the soloist much to do and upon which to demonstrate her musical and interpretive skills all the while with a very busy orchestra accompanying her.
The second movement, “Plegaria” (prayer) is a hugely substantive chaconne, the baroque contrapuntal variation form with a repeating bass line and thematic variations over the harmonic structures supported by those notes.. At least that is my listener’s understanding. But what is not necessary to “understand” technically is the emotional impact of this movement. This is an amazing use of the form. The soloist moves into different roles, sometimes very much upstage, sometimes an adjunct to the orchestra, sometimes not there at all. There is a slow, meditative beauty in this movement which is also characteristic of the romantic idiom in which this is written.
The third movement, “Fandanguito” (little Fandango) is a somewhat lighter and very energetic finale one might expect in a movement following the previous deeply emotional ones. And the composer does not disappoint. He writes a joyous, energetic finale which nonetheless stands up as substantially as its predecessors.
The composer Arturo Marquez with Maestro Dudamel and Anne Akiko-Meyers leaving the stage after a successful performance.
The joy, to this listener, is to hear a master composer in collaboration with a fine soloist both technically and interpretively. The composer has integrated his experiences and study of his own cultural folk musics and infuses the spirit of the music into his grand romantic idiom. That is, the concerto does not, for the most part use direct quotation from folk sources but uses structural elements in his composition. Maestra Akiko Meyers discharges her soloist duties with both startling facility and a deep understanding of the music and the composer’s intent.
Gustavo Dudamel is a joyfully rising star who brings his cultural proclivities and his own lens on western orchestral music. He is an exciting and incisive conductor. I don’t know the extent of Dudamel’s study of Latin folk musics but he really gets this work and brings out the composer’s subtleties in this gorgeous and exciting concerto.
The “B side” as they used to be called is no mere filler, it is the entirety of the Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) ballet, “Estancia” Op. 8 (1941). Here, 15 separate movements are used in a five scene scenario. The work, usually heard in its four movement suite format and, even more frequently, just the spectacular finale, the Malambo.
In addition to its large orchestra, the ballet calls for a singer/speaker soloist who acts as both narrator and as soloist with orchestra. In this performance the challenge is admirably met by baritone GUSTAVO CASTILLO, another shining light cultivated by El Sistema. He performs well in both his baritone vocal duties and his narrator task in which he speaks Spanish in an elegant and, I’d say, almost Shakespearean grasp of the beauty of the language. The man understands drama as well as music.
This ballet is clearly a masterpiece. It reminds this listener of Prokofiev if he was born in Argentina. Nothing derivative here though. This is an intensely entertaining work, as substantial as Romeo and Juliet, similarly constructed in relatively brief musical segments designed to accompany a dance whose scenario is the story of the “gaucho” or cowboy that lived and worked hard lives, lives that were romanticized into a poem by Argentinian poet José Hernández (1834-1886). (click on the word “poem” for a link to an English translation of the poem).
All that to say that this is a truly enjoyable and important release. A valuable addition to the discography of Latin classical music.
Dudamel and his LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.
Utter the name “Israel” and probably only a handful of people will think, “classical music”. As a lifelong new music fan I’ve made many wonderful discoveries by looking at work done by composers in countries that aren’t part of the typical America, Germany, Italy, France, Russia nexus. Throw in the Nordic countries, Canada, and Australia more recently and you have perhaps 90% of what is marketed (even if not efficiently distributed) as new classical music. Israel, at 75, remains a young country but its participation with world class classical composers and musicians is among their proudest contributions to the world at large and those contributions are both extensive and interesting.
Neuma 177
This fine release gives only the briefest taste with a curious selection of pieces that will likely lead listeners to the “more where that came from” path to discover a huge trove of music that really needs to be heard. The only problem with this release is that it’s not a 20 or 30 CD box set of representative western classical music from a comparatively new country in a very old artistic/cultural hotbed.
This fine Neuma release is actually a very nice taste whetting collection of three generations of Israeli composers. I wish I could call it “representative” but that would be a tall order. It is an intelligent selection that will hopefully inspire further exploration of Israel’s classical music artistic legacy. Israel is, in many ways, a country of challenges and this release is, similarly, an extension of this country’s challenges to the canon of western art music in its way and a gentle nudge to curious listeners.
Professor Robert Fleisher (photo: Darsha Primich, courtesy Navona Records)
This project began with a 1986 Israel residency by American composer/musicologist (now Professor Emeritus at NIU) Robert Fleisher. The culmination of this residency resulted in his marvelous book, “Twenty Israeli Composers” (1997) and all but one track on this disc from an earlier concert at NIU in 1987. which was fortunately recorded rather nicely. You can download the book for free by clicking on the title above. Fleisher wrote the very useful liner notes which are also available as a free download. Those two sources can help guide the avid listener to a wider range of music from Israel’s first 75 years.
Track list
German refugee Paul Frankenburger (1897-1984), better known as Paul Ben-Haim is doubtless the one name in this collection that listeners may have heard. He emigrated to the (then British Mandate of Palestine) in 1933 just ahead of the onslaught of the Third Reich in Germany. He Hebraicized his name when he became an Israeli citizen at that country’s inception in 1948. Truly, he was there at the beginning.
His pupils Tvi Avni, Eliahu Inbal, Henri Lazarof, Ami Maayani, Ben-Zion Orgad, and Shulamit Ran (to name just a few) all went on to make significant impacts on the musical world. Some made their careers in Israel, others established the Israeli artistic diaspora but that is another story.
The disc opens with one of Ben-Haim’s finest and best known compositions, his 1943 protominimal “Toccata” for piano. This brief piece is a virtuoso showpiece that this listener found immediately appealing having heard it played as an encore after a concerto performance. Here, a wonderful rendition by Liora Ziv-Li makes a strong case for this piece to be heard more often. This first release of this live performance is, happily, not the only recording of the work. Ben-Haim whose style is of a post romantic/nationalistic style somewhat like an Israeli Aaron Copland, creative and nationalist with just a dash of liturgical. His work is fairly well represented on recordings and on YouTube but he is far less known outside his adopted country where his pedagogy also sowed further seeds.
This second track is one of two (with Tsippi Fleischer’s “The Gown of Night”) that did not appear on the 1987 concert referenced in the intro. Bashrav (2004) by Betty Olivero (the first Israeli born composer represented on this recording) was recorded in Tel Aviv in 2020. The inclusion of this work can stand as a challenge to get listeners to hear one of the finest living composers from Israel. Olivero (1954- ) is very well known in Israel but less so elsewhere despite the fact that some major American orchestras have embraced her work. She is a lyrical and substantive composer whose work is quite appealing. Bashrav is an instrumental chamber orchestra piece based on a Turkish/Iranian musical form from which the work’s title is drawn. It was commissioned and first performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players. This is the first commercial recording.
Now we come to another name changer. Tzvi Avni (1927- ) was born Hermann Jakob Steinke in Saarbrucken, Germany. He, like Ben-Haim (with whom he later studied) fled Germany (in 1935) for the safety of the British Mandate of Palestine and took a name reflecting his adopted national alliance. Avni is probably the second best known Israeli composer outside of Israel. His somewhat Stravinskian (to this listener’s ears) neoclassicism is another voice seriously in need of a wider hearing. His brief Capriccio (1955/1975) for piano has had several recordings and performances and the release of this live recording provides an opportunity to hear the work as well as the opportunity to hear another artist’s interpretation of the work. Avni had the foresight to tap into the emerging world of electronic and computer music and added a stint at the justly famed Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Studio to his musical training. Sadly, though he may have name recognition, his representation in recordings is nothing short of abysmal.
Ami Maayani (1936-2019) is, in this writer’s opinion, the third best known composer of those represented here outside of Israel. He was the founder of several fine Israeli music ensembles including the Israel Youth Orchestra. Like Avni, he chose to supplement his traditional music studies at the fledgling Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center. He also counts Paul Ben-Haim among his teachers. His musical style derives from Arabic traditional music (one of the few folk musics routinely incorporating the microtonal quarter tone) as well as Ashkenazi and Sephardic folk music. In addition to training in music, he studied architecture and has written several books.
While he has written more experimental work, the majority of his available music sounds basically tonal with folk and sometimes electronic elements. Maayani was a prolific composer who, like his “best known” colleagues, suffers from a distribution problem. His architectural work is represented in several portions of Israel’s infrastructure. His three volume study in Hebrew of Richard Wagner challenged Israel’s (understandable) dislike of Wagner’s music. And now time is nigh for a fair reckoning of Maayani’s own music. This is not the first recording of his Arabesque No. 2 (1973) scored for flute and harp. His sister Ruth Maayani (1948-1921), herself an accomplished musician plays the harp in this 1987 performance. His orchestral work, “Qumran” (1970) was the first Israeli composition to be performed in Germany after World War II (even that took nearly thirty years to achieve).
Now we come to another refugee from early to mid century European fascism. Abel Ehrlich (1915-2003) was born in east Prussia and took a more circuitous route to Israel, arriving in the Palestine Mandate in 1939. Unlike some of his predecessors he made no changes to his name. He did study at the Eretz-Israel Conservatory in Jerusalem and went on to write music and teach at Israel Conservatory, the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem; the Rubin Academy of Music, Tel Aviv; Bar-Ilan University and Oranim Academic College. He was of an age that didn’t create a web page but even Wikipedia has very little to say about him except that he was recognized during his lifetime with various prizes and I was able to find this laudatory 2004 concert review in Ha’aretz which reports a count of some 3500 compositions (sic)! It also makes mention of one of his best known compositions, his 1953 “Bashrav” for solo violin. This is a piece based on the Arabic musical form for which it is named. Astute listeners/readers will recognize the name from the earlier Betty Olivero work with which it shares both its name and structure. Would that a performance could have been included here but listeners can easily find several recordings of that other Bashrav on YouTube.
Abel is represented on this recording by two works, both from 1986 and both world premiere recordings from the 1987 concert that forms the core of this album. Track five documents a piano work called, “The Death of Dan Pagis”. It is a sort of lament for Pagis (1930-1986) some of whose poetry Abel set musically but was sadly never heard by the poet. Track eight gives us a hearing of Ehrlich’s “The Dream About Strange Terrors” for two flutes. Both are brief but effective works and, like much of the music here (and a lot of art) seem to be a form of sublimation, a Freudian derived term which refers to an adaptive psychological mechanism, a transformation of pain, anxiety, anger, etc. into something positive. The otherwise informative liner notes say little about these two works but given the composer’s history, both works would seem to fall into that category. Both are in a sort of mid century post romantic style that challenge the performers but speak pretty directly, in a musical sense, to the listener.
Track six introduces us to another native born Israeli composer, Tsippi Fleischer (1948- ). This one is a graphic score which is realized electronically. “The Gown of Night” (1988) is a setting of a poem. It is performed in the original Arabic. The English translation is below.
THE GOWN OF NIGHT Muhammad Ghana’im
The gown of night Envelops the desert Engulfing tent and well From the boundaries of night The howling of jackals descends To raise the dawn Engulfing tent and well Then came the dawn …
A portion of the graphic score is reproduced in both physical and digital formats of the album. It is one of the pieces that has actually been released before but those releases on small limited distribution independent labels has likely remained obscure to all but the most tenacious listeners and collectors. It is a fine example of purely electronic music and was composed using recordings of Bedouin children reciting the poem.
I was astounded and oh so pleased to learn that all of Fleischer’s recorded output (including liner notes) is available for free downloads via her website the link for which can be accessed by clicking on the composer’s name in this review. Well, brava Maestra Fleischer for striking a blow against obscurity.
Arie Shapira (1915-2013) is another substantial and prolific composer with no personal website, no government generated website, no publisher generated website, and a way too brief Wikipedia page. In fact Professor Fleisher’s book remains the “go to” resource for this man’s work. A quick look on the discogs site, not surprisingly, list only two CD releases.
He is represented in this collection by “Off Piano” (1984) written for the Michal Tal who performs it here. The 1984 premiere was broadcast by Israeli media. This all too brief work immediately suggested the pianistic fireworks of Frederic Rzewski.
Tracks nine, ten, and eleven comprise the second largest offering by time of all the composers on this album. The “Three Romances” (1986) for piano by Ari Ben-Shabetai (1954- )The works, premiered in 1986 and were written for Liora Ziv-Li whose 1987 performance are on the present disc. Ostensibly an homage to Robert Schumann’s similarly titled work are a modernist and highly virtuosic set of pieces.
Lastly we have by far the longest offering of music of all the represented composers with Oded Zehavi’s “Wire” (1986) for chamber orchestra and soprano (Zehavi plays the piano part in the ensemble). Born in 1961, he is by far the youngest composer this collection. Wire is a setting of a poem in Hebrew by Chaya Shenhav, English text given below.
In those awful shadowless minutes before sunset when greenish lights rise from the valley When the trees on the slopes glow with a sudden great light but beingless, perhaps, And the children slowly climb the path, their faces shining with a strange brightness . . . Call out to them quickly, “speak,” “shout,” like the partridges screaming in the valley scream, You see, you know, don’t you? that they are moving away
This release is a testament to Professor Fleisher’s musicological efforts that help raise awareness that Israel has some truly world class composers of new classical music. It is also a fine place for listeners to begin their explorations of this repertoire.
Roger Reynolds (1934- ) turns 90 next year. This prolific American artist’s work is being collected and preserved by the Library of Congress. The present recording is the most recent release documenting Reynolds’ music, now numbering about 30 CDs and DVDs. And this is but a fraction of his musical works.
I first encountered Reynolds’ music when I heard a broadcast of the first commercial recording of his music. The disc, released in 1969 on Nonesuch records documented performances of Frederic Myrow’s “Songs from the Japanese” (1964) paired with Reynolds’ “Quick are the Mouths of the Earth” (1965), a work that actually uses the text of the title to derive the music. I recall that the sound of this music sent chills up my spine and sent me to a record store to purchase a copy. This first encounter was a visceral experience, one of many I would encounter as I heard his subsequent music, and that of his contemporaries.
Reynolds has been a prolific composer, writer, and reader. His father was an architect, Roger would go on initially to study engineering and then also encountered some of the new interest in experimental music at the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the early 60s. His studies in music and literature continued to be wide ranging and the fine liner notes by Thomas May in “For a Reason” are extremely useful in grasping the range of inspirations that inform Reynolds’ music. This is one of those gorgeous new music releases that will likely become one of those odd but much sought after collectibles. The booklet jdesign by Karen Reynolds, Stacie Birky Greene, and producer Philip Blackburn is by itself, worth the price of this release.
While listeners can certainly appreciate Reynolds’ work without those details, they add a dimension of understanding and provide contexts as well. In some ways, Reynolds is unclassifiable but this writer finds him to be the consummate experimentalist and modernist, two aspects that appear to have been in his work from the very beginning. His work is rarely easy listening but, even if you don’t get it on first hearing, his compositions tend to reveal weight and substance with repeated listenings.
That said, Reynolds’ music produces sounds that might be heard as romantic, expressionist, and even classical at times. Much of his work, as is the case with most of this 2 CD set, is electroacoustic. It is not heavily dissonant or overly complex to the listener’s ear but his music presents unique challenges to performers. And, as mentioned, this beautifully designed set includes a decent set of liner notes to help navigate this voyage.
Three of the four works here are “electroacoustic”, meaning that some form of electronics interacts with the performer. The one work that does not fit that category pretty much needs it’s own category. Pieces for speaking pianist are getting more common in the last 20 years or so but pieces for speaking percussionist are far less common. Frederic Rzewski’s “To the Earth” for speaking percussionist playing on clay flower pots comes to mind. Of course John Cage also wrote in this genre but Reynolds’ essay is the longest, most complex work this listener has encountered for solo percussionist with speaking duties.
The first track is “Dream Mirror” (2010), the first of Reynolds’ “Sharespace” series of compositions in which an instrumental performer interacts in the shared performance space with a computer musician in a duet. This first sharespace work is for guitar and computer musician. It features the fine Mexican guitarist, Pablo Gomez Cano. The fact that Cano is not a familiar name is likely that his work has focused on challenging new music such as this. Dream Mirror is a big work, at over 20 minutes in performance, but it has a chamber music quality consistent with the composer’s focus on the interaction of this duet in their shared performance space.
The second track introduces listeners to the fourth in the Sharespace series, this time, for violin. “Shifting/Drifting” (2015) was written for Irvine Arditti, one of the finest working musicians of our time supporting new music via his solo efforts and his work with his esteemed “Arditti Quartet”. Like the preceding track, this big duet takes some 20+ minutes in performance.
On to CD 2 for the third offering, “Here and There” (2018), both the longest work and the most recent. This one is for solo percussionist with a substantial speaking part designed to be spoken by the percussionist (in this case, Steven Schick, one of Reynolds’ fellow faculty at UCSD). Solo percussion works are relatively uncommon, though readers will want to familiarize themselves with volume one of Mr. Schick’s ongoing series of the solo percussion repertoire Hard Rain.
This will likely become a showpiece but, at the time of this writing only Schick and the ubiquitous William Winant come to mind as being both willing and able to perform this work right now. And it is apparently a beast of a challenge for the performer but remarkably engaging for the listener. The texts, from Samuel Beckett, are referenced in the liner notes. Not surprisingly, Schick delivers a stunning performance, setting a bar for successive performers and performances. The texts are non-narrative and have a more musical than didactic or dramatic function.
Last but not least is the earliest work on the album, “Sketchbook”(1985), originally written for Joan LaBarbara but never performed. Here, singer, Liz Pearse effectively took a page from Irvine Arditti (whose doctoral studies resulted in research that culminated in John Cage being able to finish his partially completed solo violin work, “Freeman Etudes”). Pearse, also pursuing doctoral studies came upon this work and collaborated with Reynolds in creating a performance. His texts here come from Milan Kundera. The work, while dramatic and challenging, is not a species of opera or monodrama but, like the preceding works, a piece that, like Reynolds, thrives on collaboration. In addition to requiring some pianistic skills, the singer collaborates with interactive computer electronics.
These four works, despite their differences, clearly fit Reynolds’ interest in literature, collaboration, and in various technical aspects described in the well documented liner notes. Those notes provide technical detail and insights beyond the scope of your humble reviewer’s skills but what I can tell you is that this release is a marvelously engaging experience revealing fascinating aspects of this composer’s work.
The experience of listening and reading and the visual experience of the graphics was an immersive one and a delightful use of my time. Heads up to all my fellow new music aficionados. This is truly spectacular.
Every solo artist, regardless of what instrument they play seeks to define themselves. Generally that means setting limits. Some set limits by specializing in an era (baroque, classical, etc.). Some specialize in working with electronics, some with jazz, some with experimental music, some with standard recital repertoire, etc. Seth Parker Woods (1984- ) seems almost unaware of such limits. He plays what he chooses. And, oh, what choices. From standard classics to the leading edge of musical creativity woods is poised at the beginning of a very promising career.
Seth Parker Woods (photo from his faculty page at USC Thornton School of Music)
This album is in fact the musical portions of what was produced as a staged presentation with Woods playing, singing, talking. No doubt something is lost without the staging but Woods’ asserts himself with great clarity on the sonic aspect alone. Think of this as a sort of cast album, though it is more than just a souvenir. It is Woods’ second album and it has this writer enthralled at where he may go next. You will be too.
Parker’s first solo release “asinglewordisnotenough” available on bandcamp reveals his dedication to new and recent music.
I feel privileged to have known this artist via digital media and to have watched with increasing interest his development as a true rising star in the new music world. I only recently acquired his first album via bandcamp. It was released “across the pond” when he was completing his Ph.D. at the University of Huddersfield.
Born in Houston, his father, a jazz and gospel singer, Woods was exposed to a great deal of music. He rehearsed in a home studio and somehow came to a fascination and deep appreciation for a wide variety of repertory.
His affiliations continue to be wide ranging from Peter Gabriel to George Lewis. He has appeared on many recordings but this is only the second disc dedicated entirely to Woods as performer and the first such solo efforts on a US label. Woods is apparently able and willing to tackle music of all eras and genres including the wildly experimental, like his “Ice Cello” homage to Charlotte Moorman and the theatrical, which brings to the the album at hand.
Track listing.
Four of the seven works presented are world premieres. And, despite this being a sort of “cast album” which lacks the visuals, this is a major release that presents a characteristic variety of musical choices and is a fine calling card for the artist. This is one classy production.
Frederic Gifford (photo from composer’s website)
He begins with the title track, “Difficult Grace” by Chicago based composer Frederic Gifford (1972- ). It is a setting of poetry by Dudley Randall subjected to some Cageian mesostic like manipulation. This first track tells us we are dealing with modern music and sort of sets the tone of this project. This is a complex work in concept (lucidly described in the composer’s notes) and involves projections of the texts onto the performer as well as electronics which, by careful use of both the sounds and the spoken text (spoken by the cellist) which then contributes to the musical structure. Photographs in the booklet show some of the striking visual design for this project.
Coleridge Taylor Perkinson (photo from Wikipedia)
Woods follows with what is to this listener a stunningly beautiful piece, “Calvary Ostinato” (1973) by the late, sadly neglected Coleridge Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004), a black American composer (actually represented admirably in a fine earlier Cedille release CDR 90000 087). The Ostinato is one movement from Perkinson’s “Lamentations: Black/Folk Song Suite For Solo Cello” (1973). Woods’ performance is available on YouTube. It’s truly enthralling. One gets the feeling that Woods really gets inside the music he performs and that deep feel for the music is delightfully obvious in this track, the second oldest work on the disc and one that is for the solo cello sans electronics or vocals but using a dazzling variety of extended instrumental techniques, none involving a bow.
Monty Adkins (photo from electro cd website)
Then we hear Monty Adkins’ (y. 1972- ) “Winter Tendrils” (2019) written for cellist who, in addition to playing his instrument, is asked to use his voice and work with electronics, albeit in a different manner than the title track. Adkins worked closely with Woods on the creation of this work. The work essentially an impressionistic piece with clever use of counterpoint to depict fresh fallen snow on the branches of a tree.
Nathalie Joachim (1983- ), a Haitian-American vocalist, flautist, and composer, is represented by two works. The first, “The Race 1915” (2019), a work that contributes to the Chicago centered Cedille label by its use of historical quotations from The Defender, a major and influential black newspaper in Chicago. Woods is again asked to use his vocal skills in this work which celebrates efforts to undo social inequalities.
The multitalented Joachim lends her vocal skills to Woods’ performance in Joachim’s second piece on the album, “Dam Men Yo” (2017). The title is Haitian Creole for “they are my ladies”. It is a sort of black feminist peaen celebrating the strength of the women with whom the composer was raised in her native Haiti. (NB: Haiti is the site of the only successful slave revolt in history, a fact that continues to be reflected in their turbulent politics).
Alvin Singleton (photo from Schott website)
In between those two pieces we get to hear perhaps the best known composer in this mix, Alvin Singleton (1940- ). Singleton is represented by “Argoru II” (1970) for solo cello (the Argoru series is a set of pieces for solo instruments akin to Luciano Berio’s “Sequenza” series). The title is from the Twi language (spoken in Ghana) and translates as “to play”. It is a virtuosic piece employing extended instrumental techniques which Woods accomplishes with almost supernatural ease. He does honor to this living elder statesman of American music.
Ted Hearne (photo by Jen Rosenstein from composer’s website)
And here we are back in Chicago now with Maestro Woods’ performance of a work by Chicago born composer Ted Hearne (1982- ), a name which did make it to this writer’s musical radar but one whose work I have just begun to explore. But this is a fine example of one of the reasons for my admiration for Woods’ scope of musical interest. I think he is one of those artists to whom I will turn to look for good new music. His instincts for repertory choices are amazing.
This is perhaps the most unusual entry on this disc as well as one that, if any controversy is forthcoming, it will likely originate with this set of songs to poetry by Keri Alabi. A casual listen to some of Hearne’s music on YouTube suggests a sort of post minimalist ethic but this last work is not discernibly minimal. Like the music that preceded it, this cycle is overtly about politics and equality.
Hearne’s little 6 movement song cycle is a combination of poetry, electronics, cello (of course), and the voice of said cellist. Hearne’s expletive title, “free fucked”, is apparently very much in line with the composer’s assertive and playfully humorous style.
We return in these tracks to the avant garde and complex with which the album opened. Again we have a multitasking role for the cellist demanding his vocal participation and working in a distinctly electroacoustic genre. Hearne lends his voice to the final track of this unusual work.
While political themes and references abound in this release it is as much about black politics and civil rights as well as feminist, gender, and global equality issues. But ultimately this recording is a landmark in the career of this fine young musician who works fearlessly with a variety of composers, poets, designers, political activists, progressive ideas, and new music in general.
Cedille is one of my top favorite new music record labels and has been since they first started in 1987. Their releases (not limited to new music) are consistently well recorded and produced but producer James Ginsburg really pulls out all the stops on this one. From concept to recording, from lucid liner notes to gorgeous package design this has all the marks of a classic and collectible release. I mean, the music is great, but the whole package is something you’ll want to own. That’s right, I’m calling for “collector’s item” status here. Now is the time to get your copy.
Being asked to review this retrospective of the work of this virtually uncategorizable dancer, singer, composer, dramatist is the telling of my personal experience of growing up nurtured by this artist. Monk is not, of course the only artist whose presence has nurtured me and so many friends but her work is a case where I learned how to tune my curious radar to find more of the music that touched me deeply.
I first discovered her work when I purchased her album, “Key” (1971), self released and marketed via the late lamented New Music Distribution Center in New York. That album, later released on the Lovely Music label along with two releases on the great German avant garde label Wergo (Our Lady of Late, 1973 and Songs from the Hill/Tablet, 1979), constitute the minimalist, SOHO loft music which characterizes her style even now. But with her first ECM release she clearly hit her stride. Those early albums are definitely worth hearing but her mature style blossomed on ECM. It was, in retrospect, a sort of quantum leap, if you will.
LP album cover of “Key”“Our Lady of Late”“Songs from The Hill”
In that first album one can find Dick Higgins among the singers and Colin Walcott producing and playing percussion (as well as singing). Walcott, along with the yet to be known Julius Eastman would later participate in the Dolmen Music release. Monk, who studied dance at Sarah Lawrence College along with fellow student Alwyn Nikolais established “The House”, her flexible performing group in 1968 at a time which saw a great deal of artistic energy in and around Manhattan’s SOHO district where she encountered musicians like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and performers sympathetic to new innovations and ideas. She also taught and continues to teach her characteristic extended vocal techniques. Monk, along with John Cage, Philip Glass, and Robert Ashley was featured in Peter Greenaway’s “Four American Composers (1983).
The release of her first ECM disc, “Dolmen Music” (1981) can now be seen as a sort of watershed event. It was followed by “Turtle Dreams” (1983) a work which was prominently featured at New Music America 1982 in Chicago along with Robert Ashley’s “Perfect Lives”. Monk’s appearance on ECM occurred at about the same time as Steve Reich’s masterful “Music for 18 Musicians”. Monk found her mature voice more or less at the same time that Steve Reich and Philip Glass had found theirs. And anyone following new music in those years will recall the flow of new musical ideas that established many now acknowledged masters as legitimate artists.
While the major masterpiece, “Dolmen Music” dominates the album, Monk’s quirky mix of humor and pathos in pieces like “Gotham Lullaby” and “Biography” remain signature pieces in her oeuvre. And Turtle Dreams was made into a performance film for public television by visual artist Ping Chong in 1983, now available on YouTube.
She followed with “Do You Be” (1987) and “Book of Days” (1990) which also exists in at least two film versions and the CD itself which has been described as a “film for the ears”.
Following “Facing North” (1992) Monk released her only opera (though she refers to much of her works as “operas” this is the only one that comes close to the more generic concept of western music operas) to date, “Atlas” (1993) which was commissioned and subsequently performed at the Houston Opera. This represented another phase in her artistic development as she utilized her structured improvisation techniques along with her now familiar extended vocal techniques with an expanded set of performers both vocal and instrumental. Atlas is arguably similarly creative (and transgressive) as Philip Glass’ 1976 “Einstein on the Beach”. Both were developed in an unconventional manner and uses a similar harmonic language with really none of the standard conventions of western music in opera. Would that we can some day see a filming of this work.
I was privileged to see Monk in person for the first time when she performed excerpts from “Volcano Songs” (1997) in Chicago. Those images involving, among other things, light sensitive areas where Monk lay down and left a ghostly shadow upon arising. In addition to her engaging minimalist inflected music, Monk is a master at creating compelling images.
“Mercy” (2002) was followed by “Impermanence” (2008) which I was thrilled to see at Stanford. “Songs of Ascension” (2011) was another landmark in this piece conceived and performed in conjunction with installation artist Ann Hamilton in her tower in Northern California. Attendees to this event were brought in by bus due to the lack of actual parking facilities in that tower. I wish I could have experienced this but hopefully a cohesive video release will be forthcoming. Excerpts are available for viewing on YouTube and on Monk’s website.
“Piano Songs” (2014) by the wonderful new music championing pianists Bruce Brubaker and Ursula Oppens filled an inexcusable gap in the documentation of Monk’s piano music. And following her receiving the National Medal for the Arts in 2015 she released “On Behalf of Nature”(2016).
Monk is a well documented artist largely due to her productive affiliation with Manfred Eicher and ECM and, while gaps remain these recordings represent a major artistic accomplishment and an enduring legacy for new music, for women composers, for western art music. This lovely box set is truly a joy to behold.
Meredith Monk performing an encore at the final concert of OM 21 (2016) in San Francisco
Aaron Jay Myers’ third album grabbed my attention immediately and didn’t let go til the album ended. Working un-self consciously in a stunning plurality of styles (this guy clearly paid attention to his 20th century music history classes) he has produced some mighty substantial works. His ability to integrate a wide variety of techniques and styles into his artistic persona is simply astounding. His references to other composers’ works, rather than sounding derivative, evoke nostalgic homage, at least in this listeners ears. Indeed there seem to be more references per square inch than in a Thomas Pynchon novel. And the fact that he shares this writer’s passion for Star Trek, Deep Space Nine only endeared him more to me (more on that later).
His very listenable music seemingly embraces the whole of the twentieth century stylistically and his very judicious use of extended techniques for pretty much all instruments including voice demonstrate a firm understanding of where those techniques best serve his artistic vision. Fortunately he has managed to find performers who both meet his technical demands and have a real grasp of his musical vision. This Neuma release is truly something special.
There are six works divided among the thirteen tracks. These chamber works were written between 2011 and 2021. None require more than ten minutes or so of your time and left this listener satisfied with the music and optimistic for the future of classical music in general.
“Save One Life, You Save the World Entire” (2017) for the unusual combination of flute and baritone saxophone opens this album with a surprisingly engaging work. It sounds like a challenge for the musicians who handle those challenges seamlessly and engage the listener in this rather brief essay.
When I listen to “Late Night Banter” (2011 rev. 2015) now, I do so in bare feet (it knocks my socks off). This piece for ten musicians with a conductor is a finely crafted piece that grabbed this listener’s attention by that craftsmanship but also by what seem to be a plethora of sonic references to 20th century music. The style of Stravinsky, an homage to Luciano Berio, etc. These brief references evoked emotional responses which led me to recall similar emotions I had attached to the apparent (at least to me) object of said reference. Even minimalist references occur matter of factly. Such efforts can sound derivative or at least imitative but not so in this piece. Rather it had the quality of a tour of the twentieth century in respectful jogs of memory. But even if you don’t get the references, this is a substantial and entertaining work. The evanescence of those references had me questioning whether they were actually there or just my mental figment. (I guess I’ll just have to listen again). Either way I was thrillingly engaged.
Avery Brooks as Captain Benjamin Sisko, commander of Deep Space Nine
“You Get On My Nerves, And I Don’t Like Your Hat” (2020) is the Deep Space Nine reference mentioned at the beginning of this review. If you haven’t seen this series I highly recommend it. And so, apparently, does Aaron Michael Myers. This work for vocal quartet (SATB) takes its title from a witty utterance by Captain Sisko (my fave Star Trek Captain). Of course you don’t have to know Star Trek lore to appreciate this work, but it helps. It is a challenging work for four unaccompanied soloists which reflects the composer’s sense of humor as well as his connection to pop culture.
Aaron Jay Myers
“Lichens III” (2018) is scored for soprano voice but the singer also does the work of a percussionist. In addition to the vocal challenges the singer is asked to perform on “body percussion”, the various sounds one can make by percussing (pounding) on one’s body. It is more commonly an idiom of folk and blues but soloist Stephanie Lamprea handles both the singing and the percussing as though it is her everyday practice accomplished with ease.
Clairsentience (2016) is another wind instrument duo, this time for clarinet and alto saxophone, a similarly unusual choice of instruments. This one is about twice the duration of that first piece and every bit as engaging as well as challenging.
The last track is a marvel of multitasking. Other than Aaron Trant (who does a fine job) on drums, all of the parts (three electric guitars, and bass) are handled by the composer. “Perception Stains Reality” (2002) is a tour de force consistent with the other works on this disc. Here he shows his rock/pop sensibilities, clearly as essential a part of his artistic endeavors as his “classical” training.
Myers is one to put on your hot list. He is certainly on mine. If you can hear a performance of his work, whether live or recorded, you would do well to check it out.
This album is satisfying on several levels. It is a return to the label that contained the composer’s his first big release, the three disc set on DG which contained “Drumming” (1971), “Six Pianos”, and “Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ” (both from 1973). Of course it was the ECM release of “Music for 18 Musicians” (1974-6) that became his signature work incorporating the experimentation heard in the music in that DG box set into the composer’s now familiar mature compositional language. The present release, also available on vinyl, seemingly reflects the post experimental composer’s grappling with the oh, so classical form of the string quartet. It’s a truly fine release and an homage to the composer.
DG 2740 106
Like many of his peers, Reich eschewed many of the conventions of western art music. His work at the San Francisco Tape Music Center helped him discover “phasing” and use of the speaking voice as a compositional element. His study with master drummers in Ghana taught him about quasi improvisational large ensembles and his subsequent study of Hebrew cantillation further refined his understanding of speech and song in his compositional contexts.
As he is quoted in the accompanying booklet, Reich never thought of attempting to use the string quartet form in his work. But along came the delightfully forward looking and genre breaking Kronos Quartet. That collaboration brought forth his landmark, “Different Trains” (1988). And the rest is, as they say, history. “Triple Quartet” for string quartet and tape (but no voices) came in 1998 and his WTC 9/11 (2010) which used sampled voices much as he did in Different Trains.
To be fair, Reich never appears to have intended to engage with the classical form of the string quartet (or any other classical forms for that matter). He uses the convenient availability of musicians sympathetic and sufficiently skilled to perform his compositions. The fact that they happen to be in string quartets is incidental. Much as the inclusion of a singer (as Schoenberg did) bent the quartet to fit his compositional goals, many have subsequently done similar alterations and additions to that classical ensemble. The difference is that Schoenberg adding a soprano, Kirchner (among others) adding electronics, etc. did so but clearly defined their works as “string quartets”. Reich did not do this but this disengagement with classical forms (string quartet, concerto, symphony, etc.) does not detract from the absolute quality of his music.
It would be unfair and would miss the point to try to judge these works via comparison and contrast with Haydn, Beethoven, Bartok, etc. In fact these works are not a part of that canon. Ultimately they stand on their own as part of Reich’s unique vision as a composer and, as such, they succeed very well.
WTC 9/11 and Different Trains are political statements with specific spoken word samples entered into a musical counterpoint. They succeed very well as protest and memorial for the respective events they frame. Triple Quartet, however, is absolute music concerned solely with Reich’s largely contrapuntal techniques of shifting repeated patterns. All three works succeed very well in their ability to engage audiences. All three are finely wrought compositions by by a major composer true to his maverick, experimental beginnings, true to the artist’s personal vision.
The Mivos Quartet does a fine job of navigating these technically difficult works and produce a fitting homage to a wonderful composer and make a strong case for the deeply substantial nature of this music. This is a great release. Highly recommended.
I had previously reviewed an Innova release by this fine Italian pianist whose compelling musical choices and interpretive skills make him one of the bright lights on the current musical scene. And his European perspective (and affinity for) American composers provide an extremely valuable perspective for both listeners and performers.
It comes as no surprise that that Innova album was produced during Philip Blackburn’s tenure and this release is another illuminating journey guided by Arciuli’s finely tuned curatorial and interpretive skills. The journey here focuses on the late post-minimalist William Duckworth (1943-2012).
The first 12 tracks comprise book I (of two) of Duckworth’s genre defining work, “The Time Curve Preludes” (1977-8). These have been recorded three times, first in 1983 by Neely Bruce (who premiered them in 1979 at Wesleyan). Bruce Brubaker recorded Book I in 2009 and R. Andrew Lee recorded the entire set in 2011.
In addition to Arciuli’s take on this composition (I expect a future release will contain Arciuli’s interpretation of Book II) we get a previously unrecorded set of songs for voice and piano, “Simple Songs About Sex and War” (1983-4) to texts by Hayden Carruth. Here Arciuli is joined by Costanza Savarese, a classical guitarist and vocalist, an artist new to this writer. Here she displays her vocal prowess in these pithy little songs reminiscent in some ways of Barber’s “Hermit Songs”.
Track list
Duckworth deserves more exposure and Arciuli’s work is always revelatory. So what Duckworth will be paired with the Book II recording? Delighted listeners want to know.
Every Starkland release is an event and this one is no different. This is a composer new to this writer and likely new to most of the new music community. But fear not of the unknown. Advance praise from the likes of John Chowning (one of the reigning bright lights of electronic music) of Stanford certainly add a heady air of anticipation as we are now privileged to hear what is definitely leading edge and the future of electroacoustic composition. And Starkland releases always feature carefully chosen repertoire which is not infrequently a harbinger of success for the chosen artist. This young Japanese composer reveals a distinctive voice that heralds her as a rising star in the field of what is called by some “electroacoustic” music.
The only problem for listeners or reviewers is the fact that this is a new composer. And though she is clearly a rising star we know very little about her and her work so a bit of background is necessary.
Suzuki was born in Japan. She studied at the estimable Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University where she earned a B.A. in music. She followed this with a D.M.A.. from Stanford University where she was mentored by the late great Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012). Another stellar antecedent and influence, John Chowning, the composer and sound engineer whose work has virtually defined electronic music synthesis as we now know it. He provides appreciative and insightful liner notes on this former student.
I do feel the need to express a disclaimer here regarding the musical genre known as “electroacoustic”. This has been, for me personally, an entertainment minefield. Attempts to join electronics with acoustic instruments go back at least to Edgar Variese (1883-1965) who used electronic interpolations (produced on magnetic tape) between the orchestral sections of his work Deserts (1950-54). This parallel construction strategy (electronic segments performed/played separate from acoustic instrument sections) seems to have had an echo in the so called “Third Stream” music promoted by Gunther Schuller. Third Stream compositions sometimes similarly segregated the jazz combo with the orchestral sections of a given work. This strategy, now seldom used, was innovative in its time but sounds very dated in this new millennium, There are, however, shining examples of more successful integration of electronic and acoustic media such as Mario Davidovsky’s (1937-2019) ten “Synchronisms”and some of Milton Babbit’s (1916-2011) works. There are others of course but that discussion is beyond the scope of this review.
Suffice it to say that many attempts at combining electronics with acoustic instruments have failed to tickle this listener’s fancy and made me skeptical of this genre though that is changing the more I listen (so its not clear if my perceptions are due to better composition techniques or my learning curve). But be not afraid.
This album, no doubt due to the many successful antecedents of works by the likes of Mr. Harvey and Mr. Chowning, is successful enough in its construction as to suggest it may be a landmark in the evolution of said genre. It certainly works for this listener and explains my title for this review. In fact this album is a new statement, tantamount to a manifesto on “electroacoustic” music. In addition to clearly having mastered the electronics (including judicious use of technology), Suzuki also writes for acoustic instruments from her native Japan. She even uses paper instruments. And in music that deals with elegy, evanescence, and impermanence her choices are most apt.
Kataro Suzuki
This is the first disc devoted entirely to Suzuki’s work and no label, save for Starkland, Innova, and the newly revived Neuma can be said to be more notable in their attention to electronic and electroacoustic work. Works do appear on other labels of course but Starkland Innova, and Neuma seem to have a more efficient curatorial radar with this genre. I certainly feel confident that we will hear much more from this hard working, emerging artist.
There is a theme of darkness, homage, mystery, and sadness that pervades this album. It is about night, darkness, loss, and cherished memories. But darkness does not here translate to sadness, rather it seems to be about what follows sadness and honoring those memories.
There are 7 compositions represented on 7 tracks:
Epiphyllum Oxypetalum (Queen of the Night) (2009) takes its title from the Latin taxonomic name of the above pictured Dutchman’s Pipe or, more elegantly, Queen of the Night cactus. It is a nocturnal blooming species, a perfect choice for this non-narrative tone poem about the composer’s dreams. These aural images stand in for the visuals that only the dreamer can fully recall but can hopefully elicit in the listener.
Inspired by a 1933 essay, “In Praise of Shadows” (2015), is a eulogy about evanescence. It is simultaneously about the visual importance of shadow in eastern visual art and the relative loss or obscuring of those images as they are impacted by modern technology. We lose the shadows when we light them but lose their impact as they succumb to it. In a marvelously clever parallel metaphor the composer makes use of paper instruments as a part of the sonic fabric. Their impermanence is also their value here.
Minyo (1997), the earliest composition here incorporates Japanese folk songs commonly sung by workers and incorporates some of the acoustic instruments which commonly accompany these songs. Here the use of electronics is fairly subtle, sometimes imitative augment the acoustic string quartet. Doubtless the songs used would be more familiar to native Japanese but this hardly detracts from the beauty of this work, an homage of sorts to the Melodie’s and instruments of the composer’s native land.
Automata (Mechanical Garden) is an homage to the late Folkmar Hein, former director of the Electronic Music Studio at TU Berlin. The piece uses mechanical sounds of increasing complexity, mechanical devices evolving in complexity to become automatic, perhaps a mechanical analogue of a golem not (at least not yet) out of control as the golem of legend.
Reservoir (2013) is a 24 channel work for voice and electronics. It was inspired by an anonymous post on a “suicide blog” (I didn’t know such things existed). The text of the anonymous poster, the replies, and presumably the poster have all disappeared. This, perhaps the most complex and ambitious piece featured here, is a remarkably powerful work and, appropriately, the texts are provided in English.
Sagisō or White Egret Flower
Sagisō (2012) is a miniature representing this fringed orchid species native to Japan. It is said by some to represent a White Egret in flight.
White Egret (photo by Allan J. Cronin)
Shimmer, Tree (In Memoriam Jonathan Harvey) (2014) is a two movement work in honor of one of Suzuki’s cherished mentors who died in 2012. It is a sort of mini concerto for piano and electronics. This is the longest and, to this listener’s ears, the most forward looking and substantial work on the disc. Harvey would have been proud.
The Spektral Quartet (in Minyo), tenor/countertenor Javier Hagen (in Reservoir), and pianist Cristina Valdes discharge their duties admirably. The album is mixed and produced by the composer and mastered by the inimitable Silas Brown.
This listener looks forward with eager anticipation to more from this fine composer.
DISCLAIMER: Though I received this album well before it’s 2022 release date, I was unable to complete my review in a timely manner. I did, however, include this release in my “best of” for 2022.
It is thanks to the ever industrious Guitarist/composer/producer (et al) John Schneider for doing the research and navigating legal quagmires to obtain permission to release this marvelous private recording of a lecture/demonstration of Harry Partch’s musical theories in a sort of lecture/recital given on November 3, 1942 in Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music. This (apparently stereo) direct to disc recording languished in an archive and has now been liberated and released to Partch historians, fans and friends of new music..
First let me say that the physical product here is both a valuable historic artifact and a “fetish level” collectible. And by that I mean it is a hardcover book measuring 6 x 8 inches with boards and spine covered tastefully with images and text. Save for the heavy stock end papers the pages are glossy satin coated pages. They contain the liner notes, relevant texts as well as historical photographs and some fascinating historical material that helps put this sonic document in its proper context. It is a beautifully conceived and executed release on the ever adventurous MicroFest Records. (Of course you can get the excellent recording and the texts, learned liner notes, and historical photos on a pdf file, the recording on a digital file, but collectors will long cherish this museum quality document. Suffice it to say that some of my Christmas shopping is done now.)
This is in effect a sort of appendix to the Bridge Records Volume I, (“Bitter Music” released in 2011) of their visionary complete Partch recording project. Both “Bitter music” and “Harry Partch, 1942” are basically variations on Partch’s work with “speech music”.
Partch’s work here seems to be anchored not only to ancient Greek antecedents for the tunings and the performance practices of poetry but also in the genre of “sound poetry” as practiced in the early twentieth century and even perhaps forward to later incarnations of this genre like Charles Dodge’s pioneering 1980s “Speech Songs” using computerized vocal synthesis algorithms. All are plays on the intertwining of speech and music, the artistic territory that exists between music, poetry, and spoken word.
Partch is connected to sound poetry via his explorations of early Greek culture which had a tradition of performing poetry with music. He is a contemporary of Thomas Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg (maybe even Bob Dylan), and can be said to be in the lineage of beatniks, folk singers, street theater, sound poets, and an exponent of music theater. And Partch’s work on tunings precedes and informs the later work of Ben Johnston (who played in Partch’s own ensemble) as well as La Monte Young. This hour with the master sheds light on his theories, his art, and his genius which will thrill fans of his work. This is one exciting release.
That “Bitter Music” of the Bridge release (Bridge 9349A) is a contemporary performance version, a faithful realization of a written diary but the present document is a chance to hear the mid-career Partch (the Bitter Music journal dates from 1935-7) showing and telling his audience how its done. Partch did some speaking in a lot of the CRI discs which contained digitally remastered transcriptions of the 78 rpm discs released on the composer’s Gate 5 label but these were largely brief, scripted, and informational comments preceding the recorded performances. By contrast Partch, 1942 is a lucidly informative lecture demonstration with an (mostly) unscripted Partch speaking in his own voice, a professor presenting his research. Partch’s exposition of his theories is well constructed and his musical performances are heartfelt and, well, definitive.
The disc (which sits neatly in a pocket on the inside of the back cover) clocks in at about an hour and, for reasons likely lost to history, the recording begins with the introduction “already in progress”. This single CD contains the material on the four original direct to disc live recordings. The sound is surprisingly good.
So whether you just want to hear the performance or want to own this objet d’art in all its glory this is a fine way to introduce yourself or a friend to this unique American genius.
I thought I knew this music. After falling in love with György Ligeti’s (1923-2006) work having heard it so aptly used in Stanley Kubrick’s, “2001: A Space Odyssey” I eagerly purchased both of the complete works surveys on Sony and Telefunken but these fresh, insightful performances by the Danish National Vocal Ensemble under conductor Marcus Creed have made me fall in love again. And, while I have some familiarity with Zoltán Kodály’s (1882-1967) music (he is underappreciated) I did not know his unaccompanied choral works. So this encounter was an absolute revelation.
This release succeeds on several levels. First, it is one of the always reliably fine productions from Lars Hannibal’s OUR Recordings. So, from the physical design to and the the choices of repertoire and performers as well as the sound of the recording, this is a thoroughly enjoyable experience for the listener.
But what brings this release from competent to outstanding is the interpretive skillset of conductor Marcus Creed and the disciplined Danish National Vocal Ensemble. These are fresh, insightful readings that shed new light on these masterful composers and their work. Looking at Creed’s extensive discography it is clear that he commands a wide range of repertoire with a penchant for the twentieth century and beyond. His reading of Ernst Krenek’s massive 12 tone contrapuntal a capella masterpiece from 1941-2, “Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae” Op. 93 remains perhaps this challenging work’s finest interpretation in the 1995 Harmonia Mundi recording and a personal favorite of this reviewer. So it should come as no surprise that he is able to breathe new life into these works.
The opening work is probably the most familiar here. Ligeti’s “Lux Aeterna” (1966) was first thrust into the spotlight via its (unpermitted at the time) inclusion is the Kubrick film. This is mid-career Ligeti and one of the most effective uses of his “micropolyphony” and cluster chord harmonies. It is first heard in the Clavius Moonbase scene fairly early in the film. It accompanies the otherwise silent animation of a sort of space shuttle bus as it glides along the lunar surface. Along with the Kyrie of Ligeti’s 1965 Requiem and his orchestral “Atmospheres” (1961) work beautifully in telling the story in this film with its well known paucity of dialogue.
This opening track grabbed my attention immediately. The text, which appears in the traditional Catholic Mass and Requiem Mass is a communion hymn with the following words:
May light eternal shine upon them, O Lord, with Thy Saints for evermore: for Thou art gracious. Eternal rest give to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them: With Thy Saints for evermore, for Thou art gracious.
But the experience of this music is positively otherworldly. Its wall of sound ambiance belies a rather complex construction which has become a landmark in the development of compositional practice. And it is vitally that this music, now nearly synonymous with the film, be heard as originally intended. It exists in both worlds now and this reading helps reaffirm it as the masterpiece it is.
The next six tracks are by Ligeti but this is the Ligeti still composing under the powerful spell of Bela Bartok. All date from 1955 but are a quantum leap back from the sound world of the first track. The two brief a capella choruses (the second includes solos for bass and soprano voices) are settings of words by Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres (1913-1989). These settings are ostensibly influenced by the composer’s early encounter with modern music in Vienna (Ligeti ultimately relocated from the artistically and socially oppressive Hungary to Austria). The second of these choruses had to wait until 1968 for a performance which provides some notion of how oppressive the Hungarian regime had been.
Those brief choruses are followed by four folksong settings which take the listener back into the sound world of Bartok and Kodaly with their respective folksong transcriptions. These are very enjoyable travels into Ligeti’s excellent but markedly more conservative beginnings.
Next is another Ligeti work but one from his later years demonstrating that he never stopped evolving as a composer. The “Three Fantasies after Friederich Holderlin” (1982) are themselves a quantum leap stylistically from the 1966 Lux Aeterna. These are also more complex settings and, suffice it to say, they are a powerful experience. What was micropolyphony in the earlier work is replaced by a more traditional style of polyphonic writing but one that could not exist were it not for those earlier efforts.
And then we come further back again to early and mid-career Kodaly in three a capella works, “Evening Song” (1938), “Evening” (1904), and “Matra Pictures” (1931). I say at the beginning of this review that I believe Kodaly’s music to be underappreciated. Indeed but I find myself with no excuse given the easy availability of so much music on You Tube and other online sources. And this is why the inclusion of this fascinating selection of the composer’s significant cache of a capella choral music is so very welcome.
Like, I suppose, many listeners I mostly know Kodaly’s work via his Peacock Variations and excerpts from his opera, “Hary Janos”. Of course I had also been aware of Kodaly’s pedagogy and his methods for learning music (and I was aware even before I saw it in “Close Encounters).
But my encounter with these fine choral works revealed to me the depth of the composer’s skills. This is marvelously written music by a composer intimately familiar with this medium and it has already sent me to exploring more of this composer’s work in all genres. It is not difficult to see Kodaly’s work as a logical predecessor to that of Ligeti. he same skill and invention the same ability to convincingly set text to music. This is a terrific release, highly recommended to lovers of choral music in general and, of course, of these two composers.
The new singing sensation here is a Julliard trained soprano whose debut at the Met in 1991 has resulted in several return engagements. In addition to grand opera she apparently has experience with zarzuela and flamenco as well. The show, titled, “Y Volveré” (“And I’ll be back” in English) will also feature flamenco artists. They highlight the inclusion of song settings of Federico Garcia Lorca suggesting a program of some political conscience.
The opportunity to see this rising diva in a smaller setting singing a variety of vocal works, some from her background may make this one of those “I was there” moments. Below is the press release. And though this artist is a rising world star on the big stage it is delightful to see her other interests and talents featured.
Your humble reviewer/blogger is unable to travel to this one I eagerly await the reviews.
Verónica Villarroel González
OPERA HISPÁNICA PRESENTS FAMED OPERA STAR
VERÓNICA VILLARROEL
IN Y VOLVERÉ AT EL TEATRO OF EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO
ON APRIL 7, 2022
Performing with Verónica Villarroel are ‘Zarzuela King’ Pablo Zinger and Flamenco sensations Sonia Olla and Ismael Fernández
Opera Hispánica is proud to present the great Chilean soprano Verónica Villarroel in a romantic recitaltitled Y Volveré at El Teatro of El Museo del Barrio on April 7th at 7:30 PM, 1230 Fifth Avenue along Museum Mile. The performance will feature popular boleros, tangos and songs from Spain and Latin America along with selections from the Canciones Españolas Antiguas by Federico Garcia Lorca.
This special recital will feature songs including Violeta Parra’s Gracias a la Vida, Armando Manzanero’s Cuando estoy contigo, Maria Grever’s Muñequita linda, and Garcia Lorca’s Las morillas de Jaén. The widely respected music director/pianist Pablo Zinger will lead an instrumental ensemble, with guest appearances by star Flamenco dancer Sonia Olla (who choreographed Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour Flamenco numbers), and cantaor
This special recital will feature songs including Violeta Parra’s Gracias a la Vida, Armando Manzanero’s Cuando estoy contigo, Maria Grever’s Muñequita linda, and Garcia Lorca’s Las morillas de Jaén. The widely respected music director/pianist Pablo Zinger will lead an instrumental ensemble, with guest appearances by star Flamenco dancer Sonia Olla (who choreographed Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour Flamenco numbers), and cantaor Ismael Fernández.
Y Volveré is part of Opera Hispánica’s star-studded 2021/2022 season featuring new opera productions, an America premiere, several recitals, traditional and new repertoire, internationally renowned opera stars, fresh young artists, important collaborations and exciting venues.
For additional information and to purchase tickets, please visit www.operahispanica.org or write to info@operahispanica.org. This event is made possible with the generous support of Annabelle P. Mariaca.
About Verónica Villarroel
Verónica Villarroel, arguably the most successful South American soprano of recent times, is regarded as one of the finest singing actresses of our day. She brings passionate intensity to the stage and “her big, forward tone has a Callas-style drama.” (The Guardian, London) Ms. Villarroel has been the recipient of the Plácido Domingo Award as the most important lyrical artist in Latin America (2002), the Medal of Women (2007), the Bicentennial Art Critics Circle Award (2011), and recognition as one of the top 100 women leaders in Chile (2010), among many others.
About Pablo Zinger
Uruguayan-born New Yorker Pablo Zinger is widely acclaimed as a conductor, pianist, composer, arranger, writer, lecturer and narrator, specializing in Astor Piazzolla, tango, Spanish zarzuela, and Latin American music. He accompanied Plácido Domingo at Washington’s Constitution Hall, conducted for Paquito D’Rivera’s Carnegie Hall 50th Anniversary Concert and the Moscow première of Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires, and accompanied legendary Spanish diva Sarita Montiel in NYC. He has been called “The King of Zarzuela” by Opera News magazine, and his La verbena de la Paloma (El Paso, ’96) was seen nationwide on PBS. For more information please visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Zinger
About Sonia Olla and Ismael Fernández
Hailed by The New York Times as “a furnace of earthy sensuality”, bailaora of international prestige, director and choreographer of her own shows, Sonia currently resides in New York, where she combines teaching with her performance and choreography career. Described by The Washington Post as the “most charismatic performer”, Ismael Fernández grew up performing in flamenco festivals throughout the world with his internationally renowned family, La Familia Fernández. Sonia and Ismael collaborated with the pop-icon Madonna for her Rebel Heart Tour and worked with Ricky Martin providing Flamenco choreography and vocals for his show All In! For more information please visist http://www.sonia-ismael.com/en/sonia-ismael
About El Teatro of El Museo del Barrio
Originally called The Heckscher Children’s Theater, El Teatro was built in 1921 by the architectural firm of Maynick and Franke as part of an orphanage. A proscenium arch stage with seating for 599, it has been acknowledged as a Landmark Quality Interior venue for its remarkable series of 30-foot murals and stained-glass roundels. Today, the murals and Art Deco interior give El Teatro special status as a Landmark Quality Venue by the Municipal Arts Society and the City of New York Arts Commission. The theatre was the site for a special tribute to Tito Puente as part of the 39th Annual GRAMMY awards. It is now part of New York City’s Historic Music Trail.
About Opera Hispánica
Opera Hispánica is the premier opera company in the United States exclusively to celebrate and to promote opera and vocal works centered around the Latin American and Spanish experience. Opera Hispánica’s mission is to empower Latin artists and develop our communities through groundbreaking cultural productions and musical content. Its goal is to facilitate the development, creation and performance of socially relevant content from the operatic and lyric repertoire to allow opera companies and performing arts organizations to present diverse programming and to reach traditionally underrepresented audiences.
Highlights of Opera Hispánica’s 21/22 season include Cuando el Fuego Abrasa, a double bill featuring Oblivion -a series of tangos by Piazzolla- and El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla, with Spanish opera superstar Nancy Fabiola Herrera, in collaboration with Teatro Grattacielo and the support of the Consulate of Spain in New York; Buenos Aires, Then and Now, a tribute to the diverse musical culture of Buenos Aires, in collaboration with New York Festival of Songs; a recital of South-American boleros and canciones by the great Chilean soprano Verónica Villarroel at El Museo del Barrio; and the American premiere of Ñomongeta, the first Guarani opera, in collaboration with the Americas Society and the Smithsonian National Museum of American Indian (this last event has been postponed to the Fall due to COVID concerns.)
When I learned that you had shuffled off your mortal coil putting an end to a unique and lengthy creative career I was given pause, not because you were the best or my favorite composer (though much of your music is forever a part of my internal soundtrack), but rather because of the timing of when your work entered my life. We never met, I never corresponded with you, and I am not a professional musician/musicologist. I am simply a consumer, audience member who was 14 years old when he first purchased the (thankfully budget priced) recording of Ancient Voices of Children.
The 1971 premiere recording
At a tender time in my life working on the adolescent task of forming an identity I was not enamored of rock and roll, the music of most of my peers. I was a devoted fan of classical music and it was the intelligent programming of Chicago’s WFMT which, as my daily companion, taught me much about classical music old and new. It would be at least four or five years, when I was in college, that I would find others who shared my interests so my incessant listening with liner notes in hand was a solitary experience. But rather than being what one might imagine as a sad and lonely pursuit, I found it thrilling and somehow validating. It felt like a personal discovery and those bold avant-garde sounds combined with the chilling poetry of Lorca resonated deeply with my nascent personality. It was the first modern music to engage me at a time when I had yet to develop an understanding of Schoenberg, yet to encounter Mahler, or have much appreciation for music written before 1900.
Makrokosmos I with score excerpt on cover
It is difficult all these years later to fully recall the thrill of finding this 1974 release in the record bins at Chicago’s iconic Rose Records, a place that became intimately a part of my sense of self with wooden bins in rows that sprawled to a vanishing point. Three floors of browsing ecstasy for my solitary but increasingly confident self. Finding another recording by that composer who touched me so deeply, and one with a portion of the beautiful calligraphy which I learned characterized your work was overwhelmingly compelling. Of course I had to buy it immediately.
Much as I did with that first disc, I listened intensely and repeatedly, again with liner notes close at hand, and that bolstered with what I had learned since studying that first disc. It is a nod to Bartok’s Mikrokosmos, a presumptuous thing to do but the substance of this music is arguably comparable. In addition each of the 12 pieces was named for one of the Zodiac signs, and, a nod to Edward Elgar (who appended initials of friends to each of the “Enigma” variations). I took delight in reading that these pieces were similarly dedicated by appending initials of various people, and that The Phantom Gondolier of Scorpio was the work’s composer and that of Spring-Fire Aries was the performer, David R. Burge. I recall a certain delight when my junior scholar self decoded Crucifixus Capricorn as being fellow composer Ross Lee Finney. I realize now that I don’t know the other references but again I was hooked on the whole concept.
Voice of the Whale on the premiere recording on Columbia Records, 1974
When I heard Vox Balanae (Voice of the Whale) broadcast on WFMT I had already encountered Alan Hovhaness’ use of actual recordings of whale sounds in his orchestral work, “And God Created Great Whales” (1970) and I was stunned at the use of extended instrumental techniques to successfully evoke whale sounds and seagull sounds. It was also my first introduction to your sense of theater, lighting the stage with a blue light, and having the performers wear masks (in addition to asking the musicians to do some unusual things with their instruments and also to use their voices). I’ve since wondered how many musicians rebelled, or at least grumbled, under the weight of those stage directions and then, as now, I am grateful for musicians who aren’t afraid to break boundaries.
Now, this release was on the full priced Columbia label which was out of my budgetary reach. But along comes Rose records with their always delightful “cutout bins” where I would later find this gem at a budget friendly price. It was also a time when a major label took calculated risks releasing truly innovative, experimental music. Indeed Columbia would later introduce me to Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Luciano Berio, Harry Partch, and Conlon Nancarrow and, my gateway drug, Wendy Carlos with Switched on Bach.
Lorca Madrigals 1965-69
I was hitting my stride and using what I had been learning from liner notes and the intelligent broadcast chatter of my beloved WFMT hosts. No surprise then that, when I found this budget album with the names of both George Crumb and Frederico Garcia Lorca, I knew that I was in my milieu. And this album would occupy me nearly as obsessively as the previous ones.
Makrokosmos III
The sheer beauty and distinctive design of the Nonesuch new music releases were my metaphorical dog whistle, so Makrokosmos III practically jumped into my arms at one of my Rose Records junkets. (I was and still am a bit of a completist, that is, if I buy a piece numbered “2”, I would have to find the one marked “1”, and so on). So I was somewhat upset that I had somehow missed Makrokosmos II or, heavens forbid, that no one had bothered to record it. But I easily put that obsession to the side as I became entranced by this new installment of the celestially inspired Makrokosmos series in this larger ensemble work (NB. I did not dabble in any drugs until well into my college days probably 4-5 years distant so I’m reasonably sure that the profundities I experienced were related to the power of the music, though doubtless with some adolescent hormonal effects). For whatever reason this album engulfed me most blissfully.
Robert Miller’s premiere recording of Makrokosmos II
Deus ex machina, I visited Rose records, prowling for more music that resonated with me when I found Robert Miller’s reading of the second Makrokosmos (on Columbia’s budget label, Odyssey) which, with the first Makrokosmos, comprised 24 pieces. I would some years later learn that the Zodiac pieces were in fact an analogy (or homage) to J. S. Bach whose two volumes of preludes and fugues, “The Well Tempered Clavier”, represented all 24 keys of the Western well-tempered scale and are a sort of urtext or manifesto, and which remain towering masterpieces. Now I’m not trying to suggest that Crumb’s work is of similarly immortal status. In fact the comparison is almost of an “apples/oranges” sort. But on the level of innovation in composition that Crumb’s work represents here does suggest strongly to this listener that the this set may do for extended techniques what Bach did for harmony and keyboard playing. (Crumb’s Five Pieces for Piano of 1962, which I did not hear til many years later and it is clear are sort of the “etudes” or “experiments”, if you will that later expanded into larger forms). They are clearly a truly innovative rethinking of what piano music and piano playing can be. They are also a logical successor to John Cage and Marcel Duchamp’s “prepared piano” innovations of a decade or so earlier.
In the decades of the 80s and 90s, I and my concert goin’ pals would make pilgrimages to live performances of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, AACM, Keith Jarrett, the Arditti Quartet. Chicago Symphony, Civic Orchestra, Contemporary Chamber Players, and, of course, the Kronos Quartet (who I learned were formed shortly after founder and first violin, David Harrington heard Mr. Crumb’s 1970 political/musical masterpiece), “Black Angels”. It was the Kronos, whose beautifully staged and definitively played reading I can still recall (not eidetically complete but I do recall the stage lit from above, one light over each of four music stands with their instruments hung on cables over those desks (which they took down to play after they entered the stage).
After the house lights dimmed, there was a pause which served almost as punctuation, an indicator of a silence which helped get the audience into the mystical space which is deeply embedded in the music by structure, by analogy, by sheer sound, and by the theater. The musicians played standing at their desks (cellist Joan Jenrenaud was afforded a chair, thankfully). References to apocalyptic themes, alchemical symbolism, numerology, extended instrumental techniques, subtexts, epigrams, and striking optics all joined to create a performance that continues to evoke emotional memories. This music, written in protest of the Viet Nam War, also found its way into the score of the hit horror film, “The Exorcist”. Oh, yes, the “Night of the Electric Insects” played by the Electric String Quartet” added no small amount of uneasiness to the film and the music reinforces those emotions curiously well even on its own. The (now ubiquitous) use of amplification gives an “in your face” aspect to the performance of this music. It illuminates what would be barely perceptible extended technique effects and seems to push the music right up to your face and into your ears. Not your typical chamber music experience.
To be fair, while I have continued to follow your music, Mr. Crumb, I have not done so with the same passion as in those early days but I treasure listening to the Pulitzer Prize winning Echoes of Time and the River, Star Child, the early Solo Cello Sonata, and I’m incredibly pleased that David Starobin’s Bridge Records had been collaborating on a complete works edition (still in progress). But my sort of “first love” encounter with your music has been a significant part of making me who I now am and has given me great pleasures to sustain me since those early encounters. I want to thank you for your service to the arts and to let you know that your work has touched me deeply and is forever a part of me, it lives on. Rest in peace, a fan.
Were it not for the wishes of some of my valued readers I would not produce such a list. It has no more validity other than, “These are my personal choices”. But there is some joy to be had in contemplating these past 12 months as I have lived them on this blog. So here goes.
My home base is in California, about 90 miles north of Los Angeles though I sometimes travel for work
First I have to tell everyone that March, 2022 will mark the 10th anniversary of this blog, a venture which has been a rich and exciting one. Future blogs will soon include, in addition to album/concert reviews, some articles on subjects which I hope will be of interest to the select group of people who read this material and who share my interest in this music (which I know can be anywhere from difficult to repulsive to many ears). But I have deduced that my readers are my community, a community of kindred spirits freed from the boundaries of geography, a number rather larger than I had imagined was possible and one that I’ve come to cherish. Bravo to all of you out there.
Since February of 2021 I have worked periodically in Washington State, not in a cabin in Mt. Rainier National Park but in Tacoma, just south of Seattle.
COVID 19 has reduced the number of live performances worldwide and I have not attended a live performance since early 2020. But, happily, musicians have continued to produce some amazing work, some of which gets sent to me, and a portion of that gets to be subjected to the analytic scrutiny of my blog.
My lack of attention to any music should never be construed as deprecatory, rather it is simply a matter of limited time to listen. So if I have provided a modicum of understanding or even just alerted someone to something new I am pleased and if ever I have offended, I apologize. All this is my personal celebration of art which has enhanced my spirit and which I want to share with others. Look what Ive found!!!
So, to the task at hand (the “best of” part):
The formula I’ve developed to generate this “favorites retrospective” has been to utilize WordPress’ useful statistics and look at the top viewed posts. From these most visited (and presumably most read) articles I produce a list of ten or so of my greatest hits from there. Please note that there are posts which have had and continue to have a fairly large readership from previous years and they’re not necessarily the ones I might have expected but the stats demand their inclusion here.
Following that I then toss in a few which are my personal faves (please read them) to produce what I hope is a reasonably cogent and readable list. Following my own description of my guiding principles I endeavor to present the perspective of person whose day job and energies are spent in decidedly non-musical efforts but whose interest and passion for new music drives this blog where I share those interests.
As a largely self taught writer (and sometime composer) I qualify my opinions as being those of an educated listener whose allegiances are to what I perceive as pleasing and artistically ideal based on my personal perception of the composer’s/performer’s intent. I am not a voting member for the Grammys and I receive no compensation for favorable reviews. I have the hope/belief that my blogs will ultimately garner a few more listens or performances of art that I hope brings my readers at least some of the joy I feel.
New Music Buff’s Best of 2021
As of this writing I have published 37 blog posts in 2021. COVID, job and personal stressors have resulted in my failing to post at all in December, 2020, January, June, and July of 2021. And only one post in February, 2021. Surprisingly I have managed to get just over 9300 views so far this year (a little more views than last year actually) and it is my plan to publish 4-5 blogs per month going forward into my tenth year.
Me with my listening buddy, Clyde
Not surprisingly, most of my readers are from the United States but I’m pleased to say that I’ve had hits from 192 countries at last count. Thanks to all my readers, apologies to the many countries who didn’t make the cut this year (you’re all welcome to try again in 2022). So, following the United States here are the subsequent top 25 countries who have viewed the blog:
Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, China, France, Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Ireland, India, Italy, Turkey, Nigeria, Japan, Brazil, South Korea, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Poland, Philippines, Ghana, Norway.
Top Ten Most Read of 2021
The following are the most seen articles of 2021. Some of these are articles whose popularity surprise me as they were written some time ago and are not necessarily, in my opinion, my best work. But readership is readership and I am grateful for that.
Top article, Linda Twine, a Musician You Should Know. Twine is a musician and composer who has worked for some years in New York theater. I chose to profile her and I guess she is well liked because this article from 2018 is one of my top performers. Kudos, Ms. Twine.
Next up is, The Three Black Countertenors, an article suggested by my friend Bill Doggett whose website is a must visit for anyone interested in black classical musicians. This one, from 2014, continues to find readers. It is about the first time three black countertenors appeared on the same stage. Countertenors are themselves a vocal minority when considered in the company of sopranos, baritones, tenors, contraltos, and basses. Being black adds another level of minority in the world of operatic voices so this was indeed historic.
Art and the Reclamation of History is the first of the articles written this year to make the top ten most read. It is about a fabulous album and I hope more people read about it. This Detroit based reed quintet is doing something truly innovative. You really need to hear this.
Centaur CRC 3836
Number four is another from this past year, Kinga Augustyn Tackles the Moderns. This album, kindly sent to me by the artist is worth your time if you like modern music. This young Polish/American violinist has both technique and vision. She is definitely an artist to watch.
Number five is a truly fabulous album from Cedille records, David Schrader Plays Sowerby and Ferko. This double CD just fires on all cylinders, a fine artist, excellent recording, interesting and engaging repertoire, amazing photography, excellent liner notes, and love for all things Chicago. This one is a major classic release.
The Jack Quartet Plays Cenk Ergun was a pleasant surprise to this blogger. The Jack Quartet has chosen wisely in deciding to release this recording of new string quartet music by this young Turkish composer of serious substance. I’m glad that many folks read it.
Number seven on this years hit list among my readers is another album sent directly to me by the artist, one whose work I had reviewed before.
Catherine’s Oboe: Catherine Lee’s New Solo Album, “Alone Together” is among the best of the COVID lockdown inspired releases that flooded the market this year. It is also one of the finest examples of the emerging latest generation of “west coast” composers. Dr. Lee is a master of the oboe and related instruments and she has been nurtured on the artistic ideas/styles that seem to be endemic among composers on the west coast of the United States. She deserves to be heard.
Number Eight is an article from 2014, Classical Protest Music: Hans Werner Henze’s “Essay on Pigs” (Versuch uber Schweine). This 1968 noisy modernist setting of leftist political poetry combines incredible extended vocal techniques with the dissonant modernism of Hans Werner Henze’s work of that era. Also of note is that his use of a Hammond Organ and electric bass guitar was allegedly inspired by his having heard the Rolling Stones. It’s a classic but warn anyone within earshot lest they be terrified.
“Dreams of a New Day”, a Landmark Recording Project from Cedille is a virtual manifesto/survey of art song by black composers. Liverman is an amazing singer and the recording by my favorite Chicago record company is pure beauty. This 2021 release ranks ninth among my most read blogs from the past 12 months.
As it happens there is a three way tie for the number ten spot:
Black Composers Since 1964: Primous Fountain is one of a short series of articles I wrote in 2014. I used the date 1964, 50 years prior to the date of the blog post, because it was the year of the passing of the (still controversial) voting rights act. As a result of this and a few related articles I have found myself on occasion categorized as a sort of de facto expert on black music and musicians. I am no expert there but I have personally discovered a lot of really amazing music by black composers which is way too little known and deserves an audience.
Primous Fountain arrives in Moldova to oversee the performances of his music.
I am pleased to tell you that this too little known composer (and fellow Chicagoan) is being recognized by no less than Michael Tilson Thomas who will conduct an entire program of his works in Miami next year. If my blog has helped in any way then I am pleased but the real honors go, of course, to Mr. Fountain and Mr. Thomas (who first conducted this composer’s music many years ago). Stay tuned.
My “comeback blog”, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger was written to sort of reintroduce myself to the blogosphere and provide some background (excuses?) for my absence. I guess it was a decent read.
And the third contender for my tenth most read of 2021 is, Kenneth Gaburo, the Avant-Garde in the Summer of Love. This is among the first volley of releases on the revived Neuma label with Philip Blackburn at the helm. Blackburn’s instincts guided Innova records to release many wonderful recordings of music rarely on the radar of larger record companies and this first volley was a harbinger of even more wonderful releases to come. Just do a Neuma search and see what I mean.
The Ones That Didn’t Make the Top Ten
I would be negligent and boringly formulaic to simply report on these top ten. This is not a democratic blog after all, lol. So here are my choices for the ones that many of my dear readers may have missed and should definitely check out. It is anything but objective. They are, in no particular order:
Solo Artist Pamela Z releases “a secret code”. This is another Neuma release, one of a truly original and interesting artist who pretty much defies categories but the territory she explores will amaze you.
Lou Harrison: Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan, a very special performance of an underappreciated masterpiece is just unabashedly excellent. It is a recording of a 2017 performance (in honor of the composer’s 100th birthday anniversary) in Cleveland by performers who have had a close relationship with this major American composer. I love the music. I love the performers. It’s a digital only release but you can get a download of the album and the fine liner notes from Bandcamp.
Fixing a Hole to Keep the Music Playing: Starkland brings back Guy Klucevsek’s “Citrus, My Love” is also a digital only release, also available on Bandcamp of an album long out of print but essential to the oeuvre of Guy Klucevsek. Like Philip Blackburn, Tom Steenland (who heads Starkland records) is a musical visionary who has released some of my personal favorite albums. If Tom (or Philip) likes it I will at least give it a listen.
Dennis Weijers: Skill and Nostalgia in an Auspicious Debut Album is a sort of personal discovery for me. This reworking of Philip Glass’ “Glassworks” and Steve Reich’s “Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards” scored for solo accordion and electronics pretty much knocked me over as soon as I heard it. Read the blog to see why but you have to hear this. This is NOT your granddaddy’s accordion.
Vision, Virtuosity, and Interpretive Skill: Igor Levit’s “On DSCH” is an album I just can’t stop listening to. I raved about his earlier set of piano variations by Bach, Beethoven, and the late Frederic Rzewski and I look forward to this man’s musical vision as he expands the concert repertoire with works you probably haven’t heard or at least haven’t heard much. You owe it to yourself to watch this artist.
Black Artists Matter: The Resurrection of the Harlem Arts Festival, 1969 is one of the relatively few times when I write about so called “pop” music. It is wholly unconscionable that these filmed performances from 1969 (many of which predated Woodstock) languished for 50 years in the filmmaker’s basement and were nearly lost. One of the recurring themes in this blog is the lament over unjustly neglected music and this is a glaring example. I was delighted to see that the filmmaker Questlove received an award at the Sundance Festival for his work on this essential documentary of American music.
Less “flashy” but sublimely beautiful is Modern Tuning Scholarship, Authentic Bach Performance: Daniel Lippel’s “Aufs Lautenwerk”. This is a masterpiece of scholarship and a gorgeous recording on a specially made Well-Tempered Guitar played with serious passion and interpretive genius by a man who is essential to the productions of New Focus recordings as well as being a fine musician himself. Read the review or the liner notes for details but just listen. This is another one that I can’t stop listening to.
Unheard Hovhaness, this Sahan Arzruni album really rocked my geeky world. Arzruni, a frequent collaborator with Hovhaness turns in definitive performances of these previously unheard gems from the late American composer. A gorgeous physical production and a lucid recording make this another disc that lives on my “frequently played” shelf.
Only the Lonely, Frank Horvat’s “Music for Self Isolation” is yet another release from this emerging Canadian composer. This is one of my favorite COVID Isolation albums, a unique response to this pandemic from an eminently listenable and endlessly creative composer.
OUR 6.220674
New Music from Faroese Master Sunleif Rasmussen with soloist Michala Petri is an album of world premieres by this master composer from the Faroe Islands. It is also a tribute to the enduring artistry of Michala Petri. I had the honor and pleasure of meeting both of these artists some years ago in San Francisco and anything they do will demand my attention, they’re that good.
Last but not least, as they say, Robert Moran: Points of Departure is another triumph of Philip Blackburn’s curation on Neuma records. I have personally been a fan of Moran’s music since I first heard his work at the Chicago iteration of New Music America in 1982. Blackburn’s service to this composer’s work can be likened to similar service done by David Starobin at Bridge Records (who have embarked on complete works projects with several contemporary composers) and Tom Steenland’s work with Guy Klucevsek and Tod Dockstader at Starkland records. Blackburn had previously released the out of print Argo recordings of Moran’s work and now, at Neuma has released this and a few other new recordings of this major American composer’s work.
My apologies to the albums I’ve reviewed which didn’t make it to this year’s end blog but I have to draw a line somewhere. Peace, health, and music. And thank you for reading.
Pamela Z first came to this writer’s attention when the fine Starkland label under the very insightful guidance of Tom Steenland released a cutting edge, surround sound 5.1 DVD release in 2000 which featured her along with other similarly interesting musicians in a forward looking recording.
Starkland ST-213
The first CD dedicated entirely to Ms. Z’s work was also a Starkland release (A Delay is Better, 2004) was quickly added to my music collection when I was still a Chicago resident. Since moving to California in 2005 I have had the pleasure of seeing Pamela’s work live on numerous occasions (something which I highly recommend). She is a fascinating performer to watch as well as hear. These releases are the only ones dedicated entirely to her work currently available to the general public though her crowd funded DVD, Baggage Allowance may be obtainable through her web site. Much of her presence on recorded media is as a collaborator so this new disc of largely new work is a truly welcome addition to her catalog and an opportunity to see a unique talent.
Pamela Z performing at Other Minds 23 in 2018
Her visual presence and gestures are an important part of her work but it is the hearing part with which we are concerned here. Philip Blackburn at Neuma records has chosen to release a new disc consisting of performances of more recent compositions. Z maintains a busy schedule of composing and performing world wide and her quirky creativity has not failed her. Let me say that I use the word “quirky” just to indicate that her work is unique, a technological expansion of the tired “one man band” cliché in which she uses a variety of compositional electronics (some made exclusively for her) to facilitate her uniquely recognizable style. It is difficult to describe her work in a way that can easily be understood without actually having heard her work. Suffice it to say that, generally speaking, she works with live recording and subsequent looping of those sounds. She is able to turn loops on and off as the piece progresses. Her texts come from a variety of sources, including found texts. And the presentation of these texts are sometimes sung and sometimes spoken.
She has had great success as a collaborator with spoken word narration, singing (she also has a beautifully trained soprano voice), and performing with other musicians. These collaborations are listed on her web site and are worth your time to explore.
The photo of the back cover of this new album serves both to provide a listing of the tracks but also to display one of the wearable electronic devices mad for her which she uses (to pleasantly theatrical effect) in performance. From her web site: “She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures.”
Z is a vocalist, an operatically trained singer and voice over artist who has pioneered the use of complex delay and looping systems to produce her work. She is apparently enamored of language (she has studied English, French, Italian, and Japanese). Her combination of spoken and sung passages combined with the looping/delay technology, and, increasingly, writing for other instrumentalists is the basic medium(s) with which she works.
In my mind she shares conceptual space with artists like Amy X Neuberg, Meredith Monk, and Diamanda Galas, at least that is the way I have them filed in my collection. In fact, each of these performers has their own distinct style and aesthetic, each a separate origin story. What they have in common in this listener’s mind is the fact that they are women, the fact that their voice is their primary instrument, and the fact that each uses that voice, sometimes with some augmentation, to achieve their compositional and performance goals. (I nurture a personal fantasy of some day hearing one or all of these women doing their cover of a piece like Rzewski’s “Coming Together” or some similar speaking pianist type work but that’s a topic for another blog).
The ten tracks on this release represent Ms. Z’s more recent work. Taken as a whole this album has an almost existential/apocalyptic character at times. There are 10 tracks ranging from about 4 to 10 minutes each and they span the years from 2003 to 2018 with one track from 1995. The overall feel of this is rather darker in tone than the Starkland disc but it also reflects her further artistic development and that alone is worth the purchase price. The album is recorded, edited, and mixed by the artist who also supplies the brief but clear and useful liner notes.
The first track, Quatre Couches/Flare Stains is a studio mix of two pieces (Quatre Couche from 2015 and Flare Stains from 2010), two works she has combined in her live performances. So this is mix is a 2021 artistic mashup reflecting what she has gleaned from her live performances and incorporating that learning into a new compositional experience.
Unknown Person (2010) is an excerpt from the aforementioned “Baggage Allowance” (2010) which uses found texts collected during the composition process as lyrics and is a work with many metaphorical dimensions that touch on existential ideas that touch us all.
Other Rooms (2018) is constructed around vocal samples of an interview with playwright Paul David Young.
A piece of π (2012) utilizes the first 200 digits which express the value of that mathematical constant. Z recounts further details of her process in the liner notes.
Site Four (2017) is a section of music which was composed for a dance work.
He Says Yes (2018) is an excerpt from music for a theater piece.
Typewriter (1995) is the outlier here. It is one of Z’s live performance staples which utilizes the beautifully designed MIDI controllers which she wears and which control the electronics as she moves her body through the performance space. Even without the visuals, one can get an idea of this seminal work and how it influenced her later developments.
The disc ends with a trilogy of works, The Timepiece Triptych, which consists of Declaratives in the First Person (2005), Syrinx (2003), and De-Spangled (2003). This trilogy is a virtual compendium of the techniques which Z has thus far developed. Using sampling, linguistics, spoken voice, singing voice, and her signature electronics this artist presents work which functions on many levels. It is entertaining, it is thought provoking, it is funny, it is sad, it is personal, it is self referential, it refers to us all. Denotation, connotation, musical/electronic alchemy, language (both spoken and sung) all come together to create art which is engaging and, watch out, sometimes subversive.
Though I earlier made reference to my filing preferences for this and (what I consider) similar artists there is, in the end no one quite like Pamela. She is the Alpha and the Omega, the A and, of course, the Z.
Ah, those sneaky Canadians. This disc was surreptitiously slipped in with another mailing of a disc sent for review. The sender, aware of my interest and admiration for Canadian art music sent me this little gem of a recording. It is a fine example of cultural incorporation (as opposed to the pejorative, “cultural appropriation”). It is about the celebration of “first nations” people and their culture rather than the exploitation of it.
“Take the Dog Sled” (2008) by Alexina Louie is in eight movements that clock in at 21:48 total time making this a sort of CD single. And I’m happy to say that this is a happy little musical journey much in the spirit of Leopold Mozart’s “Musikalische Schlittenfahrt” or (“Musical Sleigh Ride” in English), an unusual piece of program music from 1755 (the year before the birth of his ultimately more famous son, Wolfgang). In fact these two works might make for an interesting program heard back to back.
Alexina Louie (1949- ) is a justly much lauded Canadian composer. Her prolific output includes orchestral, chamber, solo music, and film scores. She is a living artistic treasure and the recipient of Canada’s highest civilian honor when she was named an “Officer of the Order of Canada” in 2005. This is just one of many awards and she continues to produce exciting music in a variety of genres and has demonstrated facility with electronics as well as conventional acoustic instruments.
But first a word about “throat singers”. Many people familiar with this term have probably heard the singing of Tibetan Monks who produce multiple tones via their ability to emphasize one or more of the natural overtones of the fundamental note they are singing. (The process is beyond this writer’s understanding of vocal physiology and, if you haven’t heard it, you probably can’t imagine it.) But the point of this is that there are different varieties of “throat singers” and, while I can’t tell you the specifics of what makes them different, the listener should be aware that the singers heard here do not sound like Tibetan Monks or Tuvan Throat Singers or David Hykes and his Harmonic Choir. Rather you will hear the Inuit style of throat singing.
The throat singers are featured in movements 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8. Movements 1, 4, and 6 are given solely to the seven piece chamber orchestra, the amazing Espirit Orchestra. All are conducted by the the wonderful conductor, educator, and advocate of Canadian composers, (and spouse of the composer) Alex Pauk. The singers Evie Mark and Akinise Sivuarapik are both natives of northern Quebec (“Nunavik” in their native language) and life long throat singers and their collaboration with Louie is a delightful accomplishment.
This piece was written in response to a commission from the fine conductor Kent Nagano in conjunction with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (where he was principal conductor at the time) for a performance in three towns (Inukjuak, Kangiqsujuak, and Kuujjuuaq) in far northern Quebec (Nunavik). Ms. Louie worked with the throat singers, listening to their songs, talking with them and, ultimately, choosing the songs which would become a part of this piece.
Not surprisingly these performances were well received and listeners are in for a treat with this recording. It does honor to first nations folk artistry and effectively includes them in the definition of music as a whole, incorporating traditions and instruments in the traditional classical sphere while still doing honor to the traditions from which they sprung. The music is accessible but never trite and reflects what appears to have been a respectful collaboration. One hopes that this will not be their last collaboration. You may or may not want to take a ride on a dog sled but give a listen and find the delight from which it draws.
I first encountered the work of Michael Harrison (1958- ) while searching for Lou Harrison CDs. I came across the New Albion release, “From Ancient Worlds” (1992). It is a disc of short piano compositions played by the composer on an instrument of his own invention, The Harmonic Piano, which was conceived in 1979 and built by1986. Harrison was a student/apprentice of the Godfather of American Minimalism and Guru of non-western tunings, La Monte Young. He has also enjoyed a close relationship with yet another icon of contemporary music and non-western tunings, Terry Riley. Via these associations, Harrison has also studied with Pandit Pran Nath (famously a teacher of both Young and Riley) and Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan.
He holds a B.M. in composition from the University of Oregon, and and M.M. in composition from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Reiko Füting. His collaborations put him in touch with progressive musicians on both the east and west coasts of the United States and he seems to derive a great deal of joy sharing his enthusiasm with many talented artists imparting his knowledge and learning from them as well.
Mr. Harrison’s major opus, “Revelation” (2002-7) for solo harmonic piano is a sort of manifesto or “urtext” and has been the source and inspiration for much of his subsequent work both directly and indirectly. At his 2009 appearance at the Other Minds Festival 14 he premiered “Tone Clouds” (2008) which incorporated a string quartet (Del Sol Quartet) along with the composer at the piano utilizing material from Revelation. Subsequent recordings with cellists Maya Beiser and Clarice Jensen further expanded his use of string instruments along with the piano.
So here we come to Harrison’s second release on Cantaloupe Records (his first was the Maya Beiser release in 2012) this time incorporating Tim Fain (violin), Caleb Burhans (viola), Ashley Bathgate (cello), Payton MacDonald (vocals), Ina Filip (vocals), Ritvik Yaparpalvi (tabla), and Roomful of Teeth, the Grammy winning vocal ensemble in a work which strikes this listener as a grand nearly symphonic effort reminiscent of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Also, like Mahler, the composer uses non-western (Sufi) texts and (unlike Mahler) non-western tunings derived in part from Hindustani and Carnatic influences, and from his studies with Pran Nath, Terry Riley, and Mashkoor Ali Khan.
The eight sections vary in style but have echoes of Arvo Part, Hindustani/Carnatic musics, minimalism, etc. all integrated into a large form neatly bookended by a prelude and epilogue. It is, in effect, a song cycle and, guess what? It’s about the earth, well, sort of. It is, according to the liner notes by W.H.S. Gebel, music which corresponds to the seven stages of universal awakening outlined in that author’s book, “Nature’s Hidden Dimension”. Maybe Mahler for the New Age?
Only the second movement, “Hayy: Revealing the Tones” derives directly from the aforementioned Revelation but it is clear that Harrison has integrated his diverse musical studies into a personal style descended from artistic and philosophical ancestors. The work struck this listener as being a successfully unified whole and a landmark in this composers still burgeoning career. This is grand and gorgeous music.
As I write this I am seeing images of the 20th anniversary commemoration of the twin towers attack and can’t help being reminded of another of Robert Moran’s works designed for resonant spaces like cathedrals. His “Trinity Requiem” (2011), written for the 10th anniversary of this tragic event, was written for the space in which it was subsequently performed, Trinity Cathedral in New York. Its setting of Psalm 23 lingers in my head as I write. The present work was written for and performed within the Kollegienkirche in Salzburg, Austria.
These two very different works serve to demonstrate the range of Moran’s creative palette and his ability to use disparate techniques to achieve remarkably personal and effective results. In the Trinity Requiem we hear a composer using fairly conventional tonal harmonies but with the unusual orchestration of children’s chorus, organ, cellos, and harps. His compositional methods, his harmonies are friendly and familiar, sweet and poignant without being saccharine.
By contrast, in Buddha Goes to Bayreuth” (2011/14), the composer uses a chamber orchestra, chamber choir, and the distinctive sound of a countertenor. And the orchestral writing involves the use of chance operations of the Chinese classic text, I Ching. As he tells it in his liner notes, the composer had been introduced to the I Ching by his friend John Cage. What is most interesting is how Moran is able to use a Cagean technique to produce his desired result and come out sounding nothing at all like Cage. It is a mark of Moran’s skills that he is able to draw on a wide variety of compositional techniques and a thorough knowledge of the subtleties of orchestration to create a sound which achieves his compositional goals.
The second part of this work, as you can see from the track listing, is nearly twice the length of the first. The second part was composed in 2011 and the first part to fulfill the request for an evening length performance piece.
Stylistically this work has more in common with Moran’s earlier mystery play, “Game of the Antichrist” than it does with the Requiem, though both are designed to take advantage of the resonant spaces of the cathedrals in which they were performed. This work relies more on the randomized chords in which Moran utilizes aleatoric structures in a way that are uniquely his. He did something similar in one of the pieces on another album reviewed here, “Points of Departure“.
This Dada-like dramatic work is but one side of Moran’s stylistic output. His sonic toolbox ranges from aleatoric and graphic scores to unabashed romanticism, from Cagean chance operations to scary minimalism (as in the yet unreleased “Spin Again” from 1982) and post-romantic singable melodies as in “Towers of the Moon” and his collaboration with Philip Glass in “The Juniper Tree”. In the end he is one of America’s finest composers whose music deserves more hearings and rewards listeners for the effort.
Producer Philip Blackburn clearly has an affinity for Moran’s work and he deserves thanks for making much of the composer’s work available in fine recordings. The entire spectrum as described above is available on recordings right now on both the Innova and Neuma labels. Get them while you can.
One of the undeniable positive effects of the Black Lives Matter movement is exemplified in this amazing release. The Harlem Arts Festival, which ran from June 29 to August 24, 1969 (on Sundays at 3 PM) featured some profoundly important musicians (only one of whom went on to play at the fabled “Woodstock Festival” which ran from August 15-18, 1969 in Bethel, New York). This festival which was held on six Sundays in the summer of 1969 was documented in about 40 hours of footage which then languished in a basement for some 50 years.
Questlove
Along comes Ahmir Khalib Thompson, known professionally as Questlove, an American musician, songwriter, disc jockey, author, music journalist, and film director. Along with restoring the original footage, Questlove, as director of this auspicious release intercuts contemporary interviews (mostly with people who attended the festival) with carefully chosen performance footage which contextualizes the concert series effectively making this release into a sociological as well as historical document which emphasizes the significance of the festival leaving the viewing audience to contemplate why such important footage had been left to languish in a basement for 50 years.
In fact there had been efforts to capitalize on the popularity of pop concert footage evidenced by Michael Wadleigh’s well documented Woodstock Festival which quickly became a defining document of the era. The fact that production funding was easily obtained for that film (for which the young Martin Scorsese and his frequent collaborator, Thelma Schoonmaker contributed their editing skills)is a matter of record. But the efforts failed and the concert footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival would not be seen until 2021.
A quick look at the lineup for the Harlem Festival (original poster on right) demonstrates the obvious blackness of the performers in direct counterpoint to the equally obvious whiteness of the Woodstock Festival (Quill, Country Joe McDonald, Santana, John Sebastian, Keef Hartley Band, The Incredible String Band, Ravi Shankar, Canned Heat, Mountain, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin with The Kozmic Blues Band, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Nicky Hopkins, Joe Cocker and The Grease Band, Country Joe and the Fish, Ten Years After, The Band, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Sha Na Na, Jimi Hendrix / Gypsy Sun & Rainbows). The only black musicians (ironically in a concert of predominantly blues based rock) at Woodstock were Sly and the Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix. And the audience at each of these festivals pretty much reflected the racial demographic onstage.
Questlove’s effort won “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” both the Grand Jury Prize and an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021. It was released January 28, 2021 (Sundance) and June 25, 2021 (United States) and is currently streaming on Hulu.
Why am I featuring this pop music documentary on this modern classical blog? Well it is a contemporary release of music which has been and continues to be influential in our modern culture. A quick look at some of my previous blogs will reveal reviews of concerts and CDs featuring electric guitars, Hammond Organs, etc. And the repetitive figures and simpler harmonic structures endemic to “rock” have infiltrated the classical realm via minimalism.
Mavis Staples (l) with Mahalia Jackson
We live in an age where the last two Pulitzer Prizes in music went to (very deserving) black composers, Anthony Davis (2020) and Tania Léon (2021). Maestro Davis once shared with me that he seeks inspiration studying the music of James Brown and doubtless there are many more such instances of “pop music” influencing “classical music” which I shall leave for musicologists to explore. But the bottom line is that this film brings to light the fact that there are some 40 hours of amazing concert footage that remains largely unseen and which contains marvelous and significant historical events (the final cut of the film reportedly only uses about 35% of the original film). The moment in which Mahalia Jackson hands the microphone back to Mavis Staples alone is a metaphorical “passing of the torch” from one generation to the next, a truly beautiful moment regardless of one’s race.
It is probably worth noting that the attempt to recreate the success of Woodstock with the December 6, 1969 “Altamont Speedway Free Festival” which was sullied by the tragic death of a concertgoer at the hands of the Hell’s Angels who had been hired to provide security for the event. By contrast, when the New York City Police Department refused to provide security for the Sly and the Family Stone segment of the Harlem Cultural Festival, the Black Panthers were engaged (rather more successfully) to provide security for that event. Read what you will into those facts.
One hopes that the release of Summer of Soul will result in the subsequent release of more of that concert footage from a more innocent (or naive?) time so we may see these fine young musicians near the beginnings of their wonderful careers (well, one could argue that Stevie Wonder was more mid-career at this point). Questlove’s directorial efforts backed by producers David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolen, and Joseph Patel have brought to light this important cultural event placing it in its proper historical perspective in the development and performance of new music. Festival producer and filmmaker Hal Tulchin documented the six-week festival in 1969 and called the project “Black Woodstock” in hopes of helping the film sell to studios. After everyone turned him down, 40 hours of unseen footage sat in his basement for half a century. Sadly, Tulchin died in 2017.
I haven’t looked to see how many different cuts exist of the Woodstock Film but the 1994 director’s cut clocks in at 224 minutes and the latest CD release contains no fewer than 4 discs. Would that something similar will happen with the yet unseen film of these fine performers. The sort of “cancel culture” that helped keep this film in a basement for 50 years may be seeing its influence wane. Meanwhile there remains joy in both this film and in the anticipation of seeing more of this historic event, a vital part of music history and American history. Bravo Questlove!
This welcome recording presents music by five contemporary Armenian composers: Artur Avanesov (1980- ), Ashot Zohrabyan (1945- ), Michel Petrossian (1973- ), Artashes Kartalyan (1961- ), and Ashot Kartalyan (1985- ). All of these are new names to this writer and, most likely, to the majority of listeners. That is what makes this disc such an exciting prospect. This post WW2 generation of composers are writing music from the perspective of their generations, one which is qualitatively different than that of previous generations but all owe a debt to the man who is arguably Armenia’s first truly modern composer, Tigran Mansurian (1939- ) whose brave integration of modern trends in western music distinguish him from previous generations of classical composers whose focus was either nationalistic (as Copland was to American music) or traditional religious music for the Armenian Orthodox Christian rites. Mansurian, in addition to embracing European modernism also returned to embrace the traditional religious compositions of Komitas. Spirituality is a frequent and revered aspect of Armenian classical music.
Tigran Mansurian in San Francisco at the Other Minds 20 concert in 2015
One must, of course, acknowledge the “elephant in the room” issue of the Armenian genocide of 1915 (only now in 2021 finally acknowledged by the United States) as a factor in some degree in the artistic output of this small nation. There are no obvious references as such in the compositions recorded here but the selection of texts which either inspire or are literally set to be sung are notably somber whether hat be the Latin title of the first work on the disc, Artur Avanesov’s “Quasi Harema Maris” taken from the Book of Job or the beautiful but lonely poetry of Vahan Tekayan set in Artashes Katalyan’s “Tekayan Triptych”. Horrors such as this affect generations after all.
Movses Pogossian performing the US premiere of Tigran Mansurian’s “Romance for Violin and Strings (2011) at the Other Minds Festival in 2015. The concert was in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
It was Maestro Movses Pogossian who kindly sent me a review copy of this album. He played a large role in the conceptualization and production of this album. He also plays violin on the first track. The Armenian born Pogossian, a world renowned violinist, is also the head of the Armenian Music Program at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. He is also the artistic director of the Dilijan Chamber Music Series and artistic director of the VEM Ensemble, a group of graduate musicians in residence at UCLA. His involvement is yet another reason to get this disc. It is clearly a project close to his heart and one upon which he has invested a great deal of artistic energy.
This album was recorded in May, 2019 and released in 2020 where it ran up against the pandemic shutdowns which affected performing musicians and temporarily stifled this reviewer as well. So here is my very appreciative review perhaps a year later than intended.
There are 18 tracks containing pieces by five Armenian composers, all of whom took part in this production.
The first track contains a piece for piano quintet in one movement (Movses Pogossian and Ji Eun Hwang, violins; Morgan O’Shaughnessey, viola; Niall Ferguson, cello; and the composer Artur Avanesov at the piano). “Quasi Harena Maris” (2016) takes its Latin name from the Biblical Book of Job. The title in English reads, “Like the Sand of the Sea”. It is a metaphor spoken by Job as he compares his grief to the sand of the sea sinking in its heaviness. The piece is described by the composer as a set of variations. Microtonal gestures evoke a choir interacting in a sort of call and response strategy with the piano. This is a powerful piece sometimes meditative, sometimes declamatory, but always evoking pain and sadness such as that described by the Biblical Job. While embracing modernism in his compositional methods Avanesov embraces spirituality as well.
The second track contains another single movement work, Novelette (2010) by Ashot Zohrabyan. It is scored for piano quartet (Varty Manouelian, violin; Scott St. John, viola; Antonio Lysy, cello; and Artur Avanesov once again at the piano. This work seems to have much in common with the first in that it embraces modernist techniques with spiritual references to suggest longing and separation. It is another powerful expression which engages the listener with clever invention while evoking a post apocalyptic sadness.
Now we move from quintet through quartet and on to, of course, trio. This work, also in a single movement, is scored for piano trio (Varty Manouelian, violin; Charles Tyler, cello; and Artur Avanesov on piano. Michel Petrossian’s, “A Fiery Flame, a Flaming Fire” (2017), the title a contrasting of two different translations of the biblical event in which the Angel of God appears to Moses in a burning bush. The composer describes this piece as an investigation of identity (his own being variously of “Armenian by birth, Russian by education, and French by culture”). It is also an homage to Mr. Pogossian. More kinetic and varied than the previous two pieces, this tour de force nonetheless also knows pain.
Tracks 4-6 contain the “Tekeyan Triptych” by Artashes Kartalyan showcases the poetry of Vahan Tekeyan in an English translation by Vatsche Barsoumian. The UCLA VEM Ensemble (Danielle Segen, mezzo-soprano; Ji Eun Hwang and Aiko Richter, violins; Morgan O’Shaughnessey, viola; and Jason Pegis, cello). This is a beautifully lyric setting of some mighty somber poetry which is very much in keeping with the tone of this recording. The VEM Ensemble handles this lyricism with ease and professionalism.
We now move on to music for something other than strings and piano, namely the “Suite for Saxophone and Percussion” (2015) by Ashot Kartalyan. This five movement suite puts this writer in the mind of similar works by American composer Alan Hovhaness, the composer whose immersion in Armenian culture introduced many (this writer included) to the splendors of Armenian art music. This piece uses instrumental choices similar to Hovhaness and utilizes contrapuntal writing as well. but one cannot miss the jazz inflections doubtless gleaned from Kartalyan’s exposure to the work of his jazz musician father. This suite is also a more animated piece providing relief from the intense and somber music on the first half of the disc.
The final seven tracks are given to a selection from a series of works by the hard working pianist/composer who performed in the first three works on the disc. And it is here that we can solve the mystery of the title of the album as well. These brief works seem to be etudes, experimental compositional efforts which doubtless become material in some way for later works. The third piece presented here is titled “Modulation Necklace”. This selection comes from what the composers says are some seventy similar works under the title “Feux Follets” (frenzied flames in English). They are said to have no singe unifying aspect but it appears that these are an insight to some of the composer’s compositional methods. They provide a calm and curiously speculative little journey which leaves the listener wanting more.
This is a delightful disc made with serious scholarship and dedication which introduces audiences to the splendors of contemporary Armenian art music. One hopes that this well lead to more and larger works being recorded.
Like many innovative young artists in New York City in the early 60s Meredith Monk had to train musicians to work with her unusual vocal methods. Her first album, Key (1971), was the first time her vocal art began to be dispersed outside the intimate, neo-bohemian loft space where the album was recorded. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1964 Monk moved to Manhattan where she and many other young, creative experimental musicians populated what became known as the “downtown scene” or SOHO. Many musicians worked with her over the years including composer/cellist Robert Een, Pianist Anthony De Mare both of whom incorporated their extended vocal techniques learned in the loft of the master herself.
Bang on a Can was formed from a very similar aesthetic (that of providing an alternative to the “uptown scene” which generally refers to the “establishment” or “mainstream” of classical music epitomized by Julliard and Lincoln Center. Founded in 1987, Bang on a Can and their subsequent touring group, Bang on a Can All Stars (begun in 1992) can be said to be another generation’s effort to achieve what Monk and the many musicians who followed such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, LaMonte Young, among many others whose musical vision stood in contrast to the established uptown, more academic leanings.
It was Bang on a Can’s transcription of Brian Eno’s famous studio produced album (no live musicians), “Music for Airports” that demonstrated their ability to revision some of the work of their forebears and bring it into the concert hall. This is pretty much what we see here in this loving collaboration/tribute to one of New York’s finest composer/performers from the early downtown/SOHO era.
Monk began her artistic life as a dancer and dance/choreography remains an essential part of her artistic vision. 2014-2015 marks the 50th anniversary of Meredith Monk as a performer. “–M—EM–O-R—Y —-G-A—-ME—” (2020) is a wonderful production which sits somewhere between a “greatest hits” record and that of another generation’s reverent celebration of a unique artist. Bang on a Can shares the duties of transcription and performing with Monk and her ensemble. Most of Monk’s work involves (generally) one to five musicians (playing minimalist style music) onstage but here we see an expansion into a larger ensemble not unlike her collaborations which resulted in one of her largest works, the masterful “Atlas” (1993) produced by the Houston Opera. (Would that a new recording of Atlas may eventually come from such a collaboration).
back cover
So what we have here is a combination of transcription, performance, but most importantly a respectful sharing out of a mutual educational experience between Monk’s ensemble and that of BOC. There are nine tracks comprising nine distinct compositions from Monk’s oeuvre. BOC composers provided transcriptions of “Spaceship” (Michael Gordon), “Memory Song” (Julia Wolfe), “Downfall” (Ken Thomson), “Totentanz” and “Double Fiesta” (David Lang). The other tracks appear in transcriptions by members of Monk’s ensemble: “Gamemaster’s Song” and “Migration” (Monk), “Waltz in 5s” (Monk and Sniffin), and “Tokyo Cha Cha” (Sniffin).
Monk’s ensemble in this recording consists of Meredith Monk, Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger, Allison Sniffin, and guest artist Michael Cerveris. The Bang on a Can All Stars include Ashley Bathgate, cello and voice; Robert Black, electric and acoustic bass; Vicky Chow, piano, keyboard, and melodica; David Cossin, percussion; Mark Stewart, electric guitar, banjo, and voice; and Ken Thomson, clarinets and saxophones. The expansion of the ensemble adds favorably to the sound (as it did in Atlas) and the transcriptions enhance the music (as was the case in “Music for Airports”).
The 2012 collaboration produced by Monk’s House Foundation deserves mention here because it is a crowd sourced two CD production of covers by a variety of artists paying homage to Monk’s work. It is not clear if this release had any influence over the Memory Game album but it does speak to the influence of the artist.
The House Foundation for the Arts ASIN : B00A1JCY1I
Fans of Meredith Monk and her various music/dance/theater works will find a comforting familiarity in these performances of music which, at one time were the leading edge of the new and experimental, now become familiar and, more importantly, embraced by another generation who clearly took the time to look, listen, and understand the work of this now acknowledged American Master. Those unfamiliar will find this a great introduction to Monk’s legacy.
Though chosen from a variety of compositions which date from 1983 to 2006, this selection comes together in a satisfying unity. The very tasteful album design is itself an homage to the look of Monk’s ECM recordings (under Manfred Eicher’s direction) who released the majority of her work. Kudos to the production team of David Cossin and Rob Friedman whose work here is among the finest of Bang on a Can Allstars’ recordings and a very satisfying addition to Monk’s discography. The little liner notes booklet includes an essay by the composer as well as a copy of the lyrics to “Migration” and “Memory Song”, just enough to inform and not overwhelm the casual listener. This is one fantastic release.
Meredith Monk performing her signature Gotham Lullaby in San Francisco, 2016 Other Minds
Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) is among the most prolific of American composers. He has written so much music that even now, over twenty years since he exited the earthly plane, there remains much music that has not been recorded and manuscripts that await editing and publication. This beautiful recording fills some of those gaps.
First I must say that Hovhaness holds a special place for me personally as his music has always felt like a personal discovery. In my early teens I was immediately hooked when I first heard a recording of his second symphony, better known as “Mysterious Mountain” (in the Chicago Symphony/Reiner recording). It would be years before I attempted to grapple with the structure of his music but I knew it spoke to me.. Another piece which caught my still forming musical ear was his Allegro on a Pakistan Lute Tune from pianist Robert Helps’ classic survey of American piano music on CRI recordings from 1966. And in 1976 Hovhaness’ “Achtamar” was included in radio station WFMT’s bicentennial survey of American Music curated by composer/educator Raymond Wilding-White.
I later heard a broadcast performance from Oberlin of his Visionary Landscapes for piano which also grabbed my attention. I would later hear this in the recording and at a live recital in 2011 performed by Sahan Arzruni in Berkeley, California in celebration of the composer’s centennial (curated by legendary Bay Area Armenian-American composer/producer/educator/broadcaster Charles Amirkhanian). I later purchased the two wonderful discs of piano music by equally legendary pianist/broadcaster/educator/new music advocate Marvin Rosen as well as a disc or two with the composer himself at the keyboard.
That brief personal history serves to illustrate some of why this disc is so exciting to me. This new recording is a sumptuous production that came in a little cardboard CD box with a distinctive design and gold stamped lettering. Inside is a CD in a matching cardboard slipcase and a high gloss paper booklet in three languages (Turkish, Armenian, and English). These useful notes describe the nature and sources of these compositions which are recorded for the first time, some from manuscripts which remain unpublished.
Arzruni is himself of Armenian extraction (born in Istanbul in 1943) and has been active as a pianist for many years as soloist and as a chamber music partner in a wide range of music. Some will recall him as the straight man playing in some of Victor Borge’s humorous recitals. Arzruni is a multifaceted artist whose knowledge and affinity for Turkish and Armenian music along with his firm grounding in the traditional western classical repertoire make him one of the finest interpreters of Hovhaness’ music. The pianists discography is diverse and interesting encompassing classical repertoire as well as fascinating niches of contemporary music from Turkey, Armenia, and their diaspora.
Sahan Arzruni with composer Alan Hovhaness
There are 34 tracks which contain 10 compositions. Some of the tracks require a percussionist (Adam Rosenblatt). All tracks are vintage Hovhaness. Though he is an American composer, born in Massachusetts, Hovhaness, in the tradition of learning non-western musics that traces to composers like Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, McPhee, Georges Enescu, and other proto-world music scholars who incorporated non-western scales, tunings, and compositional methods in their work. Hovhaness studied variously Armenian traditional music as well as Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Javanese, and Balinese musics.
The first piece on this disc is the five movement “Invocations to Vahakn” (1945-6). Vahakn is, in Armenian mythology, a god who symbolizes martial victory. According to legend he saved the earth by slaying savage black dragons in pre-Christian Armenia. The first movement is for solo piano. The remaining four augment the piano with various percussion instruments including a thunder sheet, Chinese drums, a conch shell, Burmese gongs, and cymbals. This piece appears to have been recorded only once before in an excellent performance by the Abel/Steinberg/Winant Trio on New Albion records.
Next up is another five (originally seven) movement suite for piano (this time without percussion), “Yenovk” (1951). This work went through several revisions ultimately culminating in it being renamed, “Madras Sonata” (1960). These five movements reveal various aspects of his compositional style including his imitation of non-western instruments and the use of various western and non-western forms. The five movements in the world premiere of this version of the work are: Fantasy, Canzona, Jhala, Canzona, Ballata, and Fugue. Hovhaness was a master of counterpoint and fugue as can be heard here. This was dedicated to Yenovk Der Hagopian, a singer and friend of the composer who introduced him to Armenian traditional folk music.
Lalezar (1947) is for solo piano. The title is a Farsi word for “field of tulips” and, like many of Hovhaness’ works, it went through later transformations culminating in it becoming a song in the 1971 song cycle (The flute Player of the Armenian Mountains) written for the great Armenian bass singer, Ara Berberian.
The next three tracks contain the “Suite on Greek Tunes” (1949). It is dedicated to the Greek-American pianist William Masselos (1920-1992) whose performing repertoire included a great deal of American music. This appears to tbe the first recording of it. The three movements, wedding song, grapeyard song, and dance in seven tala. The last movement reflects Hovhaness’ interest in Hindustani music. Tala is a rhythmic form in that musical system.
Mystic Flute (1937) is a brief piece which is also based on tala. It was a frequent encore played by none other than Sergei Rachmaninoff. The 1962 revision, given the Opus number 22 has been recorded but this is the premiere recording of the 1937 version originally published in 1942.
Journey into Dawn (1954) was originally titled, “Piano Suite No. 2”. This second of four piano suites composed in 1954 is cast in five movements: Hymn, Fugue, Jhala, Aria, Alleluia. Again we hear the eclectic nature of the composer’s interests with elements here of sacred music, western art music, and Hindustani forms.
Laona (1956) was originally titled, “Genesee River” after the river which runs through Rochester, New York. Hovhaness was fond of the views of the river. He later changed the name of the piece in reference to the city in New York state where the Spiritualist Movement established a center in the mid-19th century. This is an impressionistic piece rather unlike Hovhaness’ other works in style but certainly of the same quality. This is its recording premiere.
The three movement “Lake of Van Sonata” (1946, rev 1959). The title refers to Lake Van, the largest body of water in Anatolia and was the center of the Armenian kingdom or Ararat. It was populated predominantly by Armenians from about 1000 B.C. until the Armenian genocide of 1915. In his liner notes Arzruni reports that he has abridged the first movement in collaboration with the composer. This sonata has been recorded at least twice before this release.
Vijag (1946) is a composition for two pianos. The title refers to the traditional Armenian fortune telling festival. Though the notes do not specify, it appears that Arzruni plays both parts. It is a world premiere recording.
The disc ends with a fairly large work, the eight movement “Hakhpat Sonata” (1948-51). It is scored for piano and percussion (apparently the only Hovhaness piano sonata that uses percussion). The percussion consists of a large Tam Tam and a kettle drum tuned to the note “G”.
This is the first recording of this piece whose title refers to a large monastic complex built in 976 CE. The monastery has been placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List as of 1996.
This is a major release, a gorgeously recorded and produced CD album which fills essential gaps in Alan Hovhaness’ recorded legacy. The liner notes by Mr. Arzruni reflect his depth of knowledge of the music and his thorough research. All collectors of American Music, Armenian Music and lovers of piano music in general will want to have this disc. It is a gem.
As far as I can tell this is only the second recording of Harry Partch’s 1958 dance theater masterpiece. The recording that most folks know is likely the CRI release which used that awful simulated stereo (which is rather unpleasant heard on headphones). That recording (thankfully remastered in the original mono for New World Records) is of the 1958 premiere of this inventive and groundbreaking work originally released on the composer’s Gate 5 label.
Neumann KU100 microphone used to record binaural sound (Photo from Wikipedia)
This release of the 1980 (six years after the composer’s death) Berlin performance is here released for the first time on Neuma records under Philip Blackburn’s new tenure. Neuma’s tagline, “Food for the Mind’s Ear” is curiously reflected in the recording method used here. Binaural recording was pioneered in the late 1960s using two microphones facing away from each other inside a dummy head with anatomically accurate human inner and outer ears. The idea was to produce recordings which, when heard on headphones, simulated the experience of being present in the audience. Of course one can listen on conventional speakers but it is truly worth one’s time and money to get a good set of headphones to appreciate this amazing performance.
This is the second Neuma release which embraces Kenneth Gaburo’s legacy. The above recording (reviewed in an earlier blog post) is of a 1967 choral concert curated and conducted by Kenneth Gaburo at the University of Illinois at Champaign where, nearly ten years before that event, the premiere of Partch’s Bewitched was first imposed on a audience. It is Gaburo’s skills as a musical theater director that come into play in the 1980 Berlin production which features the Harry Partch Ensemble conducted by Danlee Mitchell, a long time Partch collaborator and performer.
The recording has a refreshingly superior sound to the 1958 mono premiere but the crucial significance of this release is of Kenneth Gaburo’s holistic theatrical vision which draws upon world music theater conventions such as Japanese Noh, Hindu Mahabharata performances, Gamelan accompanied Balinese Shadow Puppet theater, and the “happenings” of Allan Kaprow as well as ancient Greek theater. Gaburo rehearsed the musicians and dancers to channel Partch’s grand vision in this, the first of his three major dance/theater works (the others being Revelations in the Courthouse Park, 1960; and Delusion of the Fury, 1965-66). It is a masterpiece of American music.
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The Harry Partch Ensemble in this recording consisted of Isabella Tercero (The Witch), Peter Hamlin (Adapted Koto), Phil Keeney (Spoils of War), Cris Forster (Marimba Eroica), Randy Hoffman (Cloud Chamber Bowls), Francis Thumm (Chromelodeon I), John Szanto (New Boo I), Dan Maureen (Bass Clarinet), Donna Caruso (Piccolo and Flute), Robert Paredes (Clarinet), David Dunn (Adapted Viola), Robin Gillette and Anna Mitchell (Kithara II), Ron Caruso (Diamond Marimba), Gary Irvine (Bass Marimba), David Savage and Paul William Simons (Harmonic Canon II), Ron Engel (Surrogate Kithara). Lou Blankenburg (choreographer/associate director) and Kenneth Gaburo (director). The Partch instruments are as much characters in this piece as the musicians and dancers.
The original recording done by RIAS (Radio In the American Sector) was restored and mastered by David Dunn. The booklet includes commentary from clarinetist Bob Paredes as well as Partch’s original scenario taken from the published score.
The Bewitched is a visionary politically progressive music/dance theatrical satire that parallels the work of Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater and presages theatrical and musical trends that would later characterize the 1960s and beyond. This recording is a very significant historical document and a great sounding CD, an essential recording for fanciers of Partch’s work, and a performance that sets a standard for the future.
If you don’t already have a good pair of headphones get one and buy this CD. You won’t regret it.
I think this is the fourth disc of the music of William Susman which has come across my desk. Let me say it is a delight to hear this man’s music and experience the range of his artistry. All releases of his music thus far have been on belarca records, a label founded by Susman to promote The Octet Ensemble and other artists who share an interest in the work of Susman and many of his contemporaries.
The disc which is the subject of this review contains selections from soundtracks to three films: When Medicine Got it Wrong (2008), a film by Katie Cadigan and Laura Murray; Balancing Acts: A Jewish Theater in the Soviet Union (2008), a film by Sam Bell, Kate Stilley, and William Susman; Native New Yorker (2005), a film by Steve Bilich. But this is just one of three discs of film music thus far by Mr. Susman.
Soundtrack to the 2007 film
Soundtrack to the 2004 film
I mention these not just to create a list of Susman’s film music but also to point out that all of these scores have engaged the amazing talents of the longtime cellist of the Kronos Quartet, Joan Jeanrenaud, herself a composer and producer. Susman appears to be fond of collaborations with other artists.
The 2004 “Oil on Ice” won the 2004 Pare Lorentz award from the International Documentary Association. It was Pare Lorentz’s collaboration with American composer Virgil Thomson that produced two of his finest film scores, The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938). Thomson’s subsequent music for Robert J. Flaherty’s feature length drama, Louisiana Story (1948) earned him the only Pulitzer Prize ever awarded for a film score. Suffice it to say that film scores are a rather neglected genre, at least among non-pop composers. That is another reason to pay attention to these releases, as in “get these before they disappear”. But also because film music by concert hall composers shows a side of their work that may not be evident in concert works. It is a marriage of sound and image, a collaborative effort. Thomson’s film music was written entirely for socially conscious films of the WPA era. Susman’s work seems to be following a similar trajectory some generations later.
Now back to the disc under consideration.
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Joan Jeanrenaud provides her multitracked performances on two of the three films. As always, her artistry is welcome. Her work is evident in the first two film soundtracks. Mr. Susman, an accomplished pianist, plays piano and other keyboards on all three films. Note must also be made of another collaborator, accordion player and vocalist, Mira Stroika (a former student of Susman’s) who plays and sings on the 2008 Balancing Acts film. Among the three this appears to be the one closest to the composer’s heart, he is also one of the film’s producers. Susman plays piano and other keyboards in the final track, an uninterrupted soundtrack (some 13 minutes) to 2005’s Native New Yorker.
Susman manages to create a nuanced variety of music within his predominantly post-minimalist, sometimes neo-romantic style. It exists as subtext in the film context but stands on its own as a purely sonic experience. Fans of film music, and certainly of Susman’s oeuvre, will want to explore all of these.
New Music Buff 