Seven Fields of Aphelion
Periphery
Graveface Records CD
Periphery
It may not be the most economical stage name to adopt, but keyboardist Seven Fields of Aphelion certainly makes up for it with graceful compositions. Her debut CD is a departure of sorts from the type of music she plays with the group Black Moth Super Rainbow. Rather than trippy/glitchy electronica, Periphery adopts a more ambient demeanor. Vintage synthesizers and piano blend together in a number of lush, slowly unfolding instrumentals.
Elsewhere, as on “Mountain Mary,” she adopts a spacy minimalism, crafting triadic oscillations into a busily supple, sci-fi tinged canvas.
All too often, side projects can be seen as one-dimensional affairs. Happily, Periphery gives listeners a sense of SFoA as a compelling solo artist in her own right, while occasionally allowing us glimpses into the extent of her contributions to Black Moth Super Rainbow.
Sometimes one picks music that imitates the landscape outside. If I was going that route during yesterday’s blizzard, John Luther Adams might have been just the ticket. But instead, I found myself yearning for other seasons; other temperatures.
MV & EE, being Vermont natives, probably know all about wishing to banish away wintry cold with dreams of summer’s charms. Perhaps that’s why one of the most evocative songs on their latest CD, Barn Nova, is entitled “Summer Magic.” It winds a circuitous pathway between hazy psych folk and solo-laden indie rock, including deliberately blurred atmospherics, amiably underscored singing, and numerous guitar jams. “Get Right Church” employs extended swamp rock grooving and psych blues soloing in an extended outing with considerable swing.
Barn Nova features several extended cuts like these, but MV & EE are also capable of pithy conciseness where necessary. I particularly like the taut and twangy “Feelin’ Fire,” a mid tempo ballad with rusticated edges and a loping groove that unfold a considerably charming musical landscape in a scant two minutes. Â The album’s closer, “You Feel,” is similarly compact, but contains a plethora of soulful guitar riffs in counterpoint with keenly melodic bass guitar: a wealth of information in a piece that’s over almost as soon as its begun. Whether tackling larger musical structures or crafting adroit miniatures, MV & EE continue a winning streak as collaborators on Barn Nova.
I was fortunate to have flutist John McMurtery and pianist Ashlee Mack perform on my recital this past Sunday. New music specialists, members of the Society of Chromatic Art and Luna Nova, they are dedicated advocates who excel in the modernist end of contemporary classical: Babbitt, Carter, Ferneyhough, etc.  They have also commissioned works from several American composers.
Both are also active as educators and performers of more mainstream repertoire. John plays in the New York City Opera Orchestra, while Ashlee teaches at Knox College in Illinois.
Tomorrow, they’re making a return trip to Westminster Choir College, giving a talk at 7 PM in RC 1. They’ll discuss commissioning and working with composers, performing new music, and extended techniques on their respective instruments. If you’re in the area, please consider joining us! (Need directions? Send me a message via the comments section below)
Balmorhea’s latest LP, Constellations, is out this February on Western Vinyl. It’s one of the best slowcore releases I’ve heard in quite a while. The trick, as I hear it, in slowcore, is to supply primarily lush soundscapes, but with a palpable pulse that is SLOW – slower than a resting heartbeat, slower than can be comfortably conducted. Against that pulse and amidst the sonic sheen reside motivic and harmonic progressions – just like any other good pop song. The tempo forces the listener to really pay attention, to wait for the material to unfold. At its best, in the music of Low, Labradford, and, yes, Balmorhea, the results are well worth the wait and the effort.
Stay tuned for an excerpt of Constellations closer to the release date.
A number of  Sequenza 21 contributors and readers also populate the site ImprovFriday. It’s a web community that encourages sharing of improvisations, compositions with an element of improv, and recent compositional sketches at a series of web events run on … you guessed it, Fridays.
While this all sounds very free form, the group has specific guidelines for participation, found here. Employing these operating principles are a wide ranging group of spontaneous creators: diverse in style, outspoken yet constructive in critiquing each others’ work, but unified in ambitious music-making.
For Sequenza 21 readers, the list of participants contains several of our ‘usual suspects:’ Steve Layton, David Toub, J.C. Combs, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, and Bruce Hamilton. Included below are a few sound snippets for your preview.
It’s hard to believe, but the summer course descriptions are already due. I don’t yet know whether I’ll be back at Westminster next year – my three-year visiting stint ends at the close of this academic year and there’s been no word on what’s yet in store. But I’m glad to get to do some work for them in the summer.
I’ve enjoyed the groups of students who’ve taken my courses in summers past. Usually the class discussions are lively, focused, and engaging. I spent much of today planning my summer schedule, outlining the two courses I hope to get to teach:
Course Descriptions
Undergraduate Music History Elective: The American Composer as Innovator
From the beginning of America’s history, its composers have displayed a remarkable capacity for experimentation, invention, and innovation. Early efforts by part-time composer Benjamin Franklin and Yankee tunesmith William Billings displayed ingenuity and a willingness to explore and expand the boundaries of received musical conventions.
This trend has continued to the present day, with notable practitioners continuing a path-finding tradition of innovative music-making. This course will discuss the contributions of a number of American innovators, including Gottschalk, Ives, Cowell, Crawford Seeger, Cage, Harrison, Nancarrow, Carter, Partch, Riley, Reich, and others. It will also evaluate reasons for America’s inventive spirit in the musical domain, including societal, cultural, political, and educational factors that have served to support or conversely to provoke and challenge composers in America.
Graduate Music History Elective: Minimal material – Maximal impact: Minimalism in Music
Initially a reaction to the complexity of much Postwar music, minimalism has remained a vital and durable compositional style. This course will trace the roots of minimalism, evaluating predecessors such as Virgil Thomson and Morton Feldman as well as early practitioners such as LaMonte  Young and Terry Riley. The phase pieces and later process music of Steve Reich and stage works by Philip Glass and John Adams, all watershed examples of the genre, will be studied, as will later examples of post-minimalism by Louis Andriessen, Charlemagne Palestine, Kyle Gann, David Lang, and Nico Muhly. Connections will be evaluated between minimalism in concert music and analogous trends in visual art and theater. The influence on minimalism of the musical grammars of Asian and African folk music, as well as American popular music and jazz, will be explored in detail.
Formerly from Melbourne, Australia, composer Ben Frost now makes his home in Reykjavik, Iceland. Just shy of thirty, Frost has already had a wide ranging career. He’s played in Glenn Branca-inspired guitar ensembles, collaborated with the likes of Nico Muhly and Jeremy Gara (of Arcade Fire), and remixed Björk.
His latest recording, By the Throat, combines confrontational avant sonics with the patient sculpting of more ambient artists. Frost enlists a number of artists in the cause: Gara, Muhly, Icelandic string quartet Amiina, and Swedish metal band Crowpath all make appearances on recording. As one can imagine, the surface changes widely, sometimes violently. Hushed, breathy vocals are juxtaposed with screams. Animal sounds – lions’ roars and the multifaceted language of killer whales – are pitted against electronic percussion and synthesizer-laden ostinati. Supple strings give way to sepulchral bass sonorities – worthy to test many a subwoofer. The resultant music is fractured, disquieting, and often quite powerful.
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At our house, By the Throat proved to be the perfect soundtrack to chill the bones and over-stimulate the imagination on Halloween.
New Yorkers who’d like to experience the intensity of Frost’s vision live can attend performances of his work Mortal Engine at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this December.
The last time we covered Lokai in these pages, it was to discuss their own dalliance with film scoring. But it’s worth returning to the Austrian duo to spotlight Transition, their sophomore LP and debut on the Thrill Jockey imprint.
Though both started out primarily as guitarists, Transition has a far more expansive timbral palette. The music is rife with chiming sustained intervals and brittle, percussive rustlings. Basic ideas start with primarily organic building blocks, including found objects such as duct work. Conversely, guitars coexist with synthesizers in a land of looping, effects pedals, and deliberate blurring of instrumental roles.
This contradiction provides an adroit series of juxtapositions, all laid out in spacious, gradually evolving instrumentals that take their time but deliver potently. Thus, at least in terms of influence, Lokai’s music owes as much of a debt to expansive experimental electronica as it does to post-rock.
John Zorn’s The Stone is affording New York experimental and improvisation audiences an extraordinary opportunity this October. Saxophonist Evan Parker will play over twenty concerts in an extended residency at the new venue.
Parker is well known both for his solo concerts and for his work in a variety of group contexts. On June 30, he released Moment’s Energy, ECM’s fifth recording of the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, a group of more than a dozen improvisers from a number of disparate musical traditions.
Moment's Energy
Thus, if you’re not in the area, you still have a chance to hear some of his recent music-making. But if you’re in striking distance of NYC next month, one imagines there will seldom be so many opportunities to hear this vital and fascinating artist at work.
Evan Parker Residency at the Stone: Dates
10/1 Thursday 8 pm Evan Parker Solo(soprano and tenor saxophone) The legendary saxophonist begins his two week Stone Residency with his ear bending solo music. 10/1 Thursday 10 pm Evan Parker & Richard Teitelbaum Richard Teitelbaum (electronics) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones) 10/2 Friday 8 and 10 pm Evan Parker, Okkyung Lee and Peter Evans Okkyung Lee (cello) Peter Evans (trumpet) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/3 Saturday 8 pm Evan Parker & Milford Graves Milford Graves (drums) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/3 Saturday 10 pm Evan Parker & George Lewis George Lewis (trombone) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/4 Sunday 8 pm Evan Parker, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway Gerry Hemingway (drums) Mark Dresser (bass) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/4 Sunday 10 pm Gerry Hemingway, Mark Dresser, Evan Parker and Herb Robertson Herb Robertson (trumpet) Gerry Hemingway (drums) Mark Dresser (bass) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone)
10/6 Tuesday 8 pm Evan Parker & Sylvie Courvoisier Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/6 Tuesday 10 pm Evan Parker & Ikue Mori Ikue Mori (electronics) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/7 Wednesday 8 pm Evan Parker & Wu Fei Wu Fei (guzheng) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/7 Wednesday 10 pm Evan Parker & Henry Kaiser Henry Kaiser (guitar) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/8 Thursday 8 pm Evan Parker & John Zorn John Zorn (sax) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/8 Thursday 10 pm Evan Parker & Ned Rothenberg Ned Rothenberg (reeds) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/9 Friday 8 pm Evan Parker & Suzie Ibarra Suzie Ibarra (drums, percussion) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/9 Friday 10 pm Evan Parker & Cyro Baptista Cyro Baptista (percussion) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/10 Saturday 8 and 10 pm Evan Parker, Matt Shipp and William Parker Matt Shipp (piano) William Parker (bass) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone)
10/11 Sunday 8 and 10 pm IMPROV NIGHT—A STONE BENEFIT Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) John Zorn (sax) Ned Rothenberg (reeds) Okkyung Lee (cello) Ikue Mori (electronics) Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) Shanir Blumenkranz (bass) Eyal Maoz (guitar) and many special surprise guests. Come out for this extra special Improv Night and help the Stone survive through its monthly Musical Rent Party—an East Village tradition!
10/13 Tuesday 8 pm Evan Parker & Bill Laswell Bill Laswell (bass) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/13 Tuesday 10 pm Evan Parker & Chris Corsano (drums) Chris Corsano (drums) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone)
10/14 Wednesday 8 and 10 pm Evan Parker & Dave Holland Dave Holland (bass) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/15 Thursday 8 and 10 pm Evan Parker & Fred Frith Fred Frith (guitar) Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) 10/16 Friday 8 pm Evan Parker, Tim Berne and Earl Howard Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones) Tim Berne (alto sax) Earl Howard (alto sax) 10/16 Friday 10 pm Evan Parker Solo Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophone) The legendary saxophone innovator ends his two week Stone run with another virtuosic solo saxophone concert.
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.
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