This Was Written by Hand (CD Review)

This Was Written by Hand

Piano Music by David Lang

Andrew Zolinsky, piano

Cantaloupe Music CD

Wed, the audition piece for the David Lang 2011 Competition, is featured on This Was Written By Hand, David Lang's latest CD, a recital disc recorded for Cantaloupe by pianist Andrew Zolinksy. It is one of eight "Memory Pieces" included on the disc. This group serves as postminimal "Characterstucke," an attractive and mercurial group of contrasting miniatures.

Then there is the touching title work. One of Lang's most organically constructed pieces, it was, indeed, written by hand and intuitively constructed. A meditation on the ephemeral nature of life, it captures a similar poignancy to Lang's recent vocal work "Little Matchgirl Passion," but writ smaller, more intimately. To both this and the Memory Pieces, Zolinsky brings a fluid grace and subtlety that abets the spontaneous, almost improvisatory, character of the material.

Hosokawa's Landscapes on ECM

Toshio Hosokawa
Landscapes
Mayumi Miyata, shô;
Munich Chamber Orchestra; Alexander Liebreich, conductor

Composer Toshio Hosokawa (b. 1955) has been featured once before on an ECM recording, as one of three composers programmed on a recital disc by Thomas Demenga. Landscapes is his first portrait disc for the imprint. It features a number of fine performers who are ideal advocates for Hosokawa's fluid and multifaceted musical language. The Munich Chamber Orchestra, led by Alexander Liebreich, has become a featured ensemble on ECM's New Series. The quality of their interpretations here readily support the notion of them remaining a 'house band' for the Manfred Eicher curated imprint.

Hosokawa's work combines the influences of Darmstadt school second modernity with elements from traditional Japanese (and Chinese) culture, ranging from gagaku (courtly ceremonial music) and the employment of traditional instruments to examples from fine art: calligraphy and landscape paintings. In works like Ceremonial Dance and Cloud and Light, one is impressed with how seamlessly these various, at times disparate, elements are synthesized. This is particularly evident on Ceremonial Dance, where acerbic harmonies combine with sliding tones to fashion a hybrid of East/West techniques that sounds truly organic and self-contained. Cloud and Light works from a similar palette. But here there is also an interesting juxtaposition of delicate sustained shô and string chords and thunderous low register outbursts.

In addition to participating in Cloud and Light, shô (mouth organ) player Mayumi Miyata is also featured on two other pieces on the disc. Back in 1993, Landscape V was originally scored for shô and string quartet. This updated version for larger ensemble works equally well; both renditions are hauntingly eloquent tone poems. Miyata takes a solo turn on Sakura für Otto Tomek, a work filled with slowly evolving complex clusters of harmony. Sakura's meditative ambience is shadowed with portentous overtones, creating a rich showcase for the singular and fetching timbres of the shô.

Hosokawa has long been respected in both Japan and Europe. Of late, given the strong reception given Matsukaze, his second opera, in Berlin, his stock has risen considerably in the Euro Zone. One hopes that more American conductors and ensembles will take notice of Hosokawa, a composer with a compelling individual voice developing an impressive body of work.

Undersound review

Jason Eckardt

Undersong

Fred Sherry, cello; International Contemporary Ensemble; Steven Schick, conductor

Mode Records CD 234

Composer Jason Eckardt is one of a small but growing number of composers adopting the aesthetic viewpoint of "Second Modernity." Briefly described, this approach involves a renewed embrace of abundant virtuosity, compositional and conceptual rigor, and dedicated exploration of new playing techniques and interdisciplinary applications in contemporary music. All of this may sound like a very intellectual approach to an artistic discipline. But Eckardt's music is anything but sterile. Instead, it is kinetic and vigorous, as inspired by the enthusiasm for heavy metal with which he began his musical journey as it is by the top notch players who now champion his work.

Indeed, one couldn't ask for better advocates in this repertory than the ones appearing on Undersound, Eckardt's latest release Mode release. This group of pieces, based on Laura Mullen's text of the same name, is thematically unified by the concepts of decrying oppression, corruption, and dispossession. Its cornerstone work The Distance features Mullen's words sung by soprano Tony Arnold, who negotiates its high tessitura, extensive chromaticism, and angular melismas with a graceful fluidity that few other vocalists can muster in such challenging fare. Simply put, she's a rock star in this genre. Her accompanists - stars in their own right - are members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, conducted by Steven Schick. Their performance exudes a confidence that belies the myriad challenges that they face when realizing Eckardt's score.

ICE flutist Claire Chase is also featured in two other works on the disc. "16" references the sixteen regrettable words in G.W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address (those about WMD in Iraq): words that helped to later cause so many recriminations and, worse yet, casualties. Parlando techniques, breathy attacks, and stuttered mouth sounds turn the flute into a metaphorical mouthpiece for troubled communication. It is accompanied by percussive attacks and furtive gestures from a string trio. Chase' playing bridges the gap between these deliberately halting sounding effects and fetching, albeit fleeting, snatches of melody, as if yearning for an eloquence that, in this score, is deliberately avoided.

Meanwhile, on Aperture, Chase is part of a Pierrot ensemble in a work that indulges both the noise and effects end of the sound spectrum as well as more pitch focused passages. Sustained single lines are pitted against pointillist excursions and busily angular sections. The whole creates a diverse, labyrinthine compositional architecture, full of twists and turns and engaging surprises.

Cellist Fred Sherry performs the glissando-filled and devilishly tricky solo  A Way (Tracing) with characteristic flair, attacking its quickly evolving formal terrain with mercurial suavity.

Undersong is a mind-blowing and aesthetics-expanding journey. Recommended.

Michael Gordon's Timber

Michael Gordon
Timber
Slagwerk Den Haag
Cantaloupe Music

For his latest recording for the Cantaloupe imprint, Michael Gordon chose an unusual and cohesively elemental instrumental palette. The percussionists of Slagwerk Den Haag use only one kind of instrument: simantras - 2"X4"s - carved to different sizes to correspondingly vary the indefinite pitch and timbre. Given this winnowed orchestration, one might imagine that the results are monochromatic. Timber is anything but.

Instead, listeners are treated to an astonishing array of playing techniques, from a pitter patter of ricocheting attacks resembling rain fall to passages that accelerate and slow down to thunderous unison thwacks. Gordon's penchant for polyrhythms and rhythmic canons keeps the musical textures varied and buoys a fascinating narrative that remains instense throughout the piece's fifty-five minute long duration.

Not only is this release musically pleasing, it's easily one of the coolest packaging designs for a CD we've seen in a while. Instead of a jewel case, the CD and liner notes are packed in a wooden box -that weighs about a pound! Seeing performance details carved into the side of a wooden box is much for aesthetically pleasing and, I'd imagine, environmentally friendly, than plastic tray inserts.

CD Review: Aidan Baker, "Still Life"

Aidan Baker

Still Life

Prima CD 002

Aidan Baker is probably best known for his soundscapes that involve droning guitars and ample distortion. But this time out, on his Prima full length Still Life, the Toronto native left the guitars at home altogether. Instead, he performs all of the instruments himself, focusing on piano, electronic manipulations, upright bass, and drums.

Still Life contains four compositions, each exceeding ten minutes in duration, that combine the gradual, inexorable drive of slowcore with inflections of a modern jazz rhythm section and flourishes of avant-classical. Baker doesn't shy away from crunching dissonance where required. A signature example is the opening of "Refuge from Oblivion," where cascades of punctilious piano disrupt the calm surface that pervaded the previous track.

Often, multiple layers of rhythm compete for supremacy, creating a multifaceted, but never cluttered, interplay. All the while, there is a slow-brewing underlying pulse that undergirds the whole with a supply architectural sensibility.

Artists seeking to combine experimental music and jazz should take note of Aidan's fluent amalgamations.

Amy X Neuburg’s latest: Singer + Three Cellists

Amy X Neuburg & the Cello Chixtet

The Secret Language of Subways

MinMax Music

As I mentioned last week in File Under?, WNYC’s Spinning on Air recently devoted an episode to singers accompanied by cello. In addition to a set by Jody Redhage’s new group Fire in July, the episode also devoted coverage to Amy X. Neuburg, a composer/singer/percussionist who’s partnered with three cellists on her latest recording The Secret Language of Subways.

Neuburg and the Cello Chixtet are a compelling ensemble. The arrangements make use of the full range of the cello, never feeling bottom heavy. Neuburg’s voice is a true crossover instrument, encompassing musical theater belting and soaring operatic high notes. The material is correspondingly diverse. “Closing Doors” recalls Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, with a layered vocal coda that recalls Freddie Mercury! “Someone Else’s Sleep” is a lovely alt-pop number, with dovetailing cellos and sumptuous support vocals. “Difficult” brings things closer to experimental terrain, mixing slashing cellos with patter song and drumstick percussion.

More “legit” sounding is “This Loud,” which makes use of both cello and vocal layering, set over jittery, propulsive rhythms. Primarily originals, the CD includes one memorable cover, “Back in NYC” from Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Here, both the Neuburg and the Chixtet are in fine fettle, mixing neoprog and classical signatures to create an effective and thematically unifying closer.

Planning a recital

Faculty Recital in February

I managed to get a faculty recital slot for next February 10 at 3 PM. I'll be presenting my own music and other recent music by composers whom I admire. The program and participants, a work in progress, is below.

21^st Century Music with Christian Carey

Christian Carey, composer and tenor

Jody Redhage, singing cellist

Joseph Arndt, organ

John McMurtery, flute

Ashlee Mack, piano

Works by Christian Carey, Jody Redhage, and James Romig

February 10 at 3 PM

Bristol Chapel

Westminster Choir College of Rider University

101 Walnut Lane

Princeton, NJ 08540