CD Reviews

Vivian Houle, vocalist

Treize

Drip Audio

---

1. Mandrake (with Peggy Lee, cello)
2. Molehills mumps (with Lisa miller, piano)
3. Paperthin (with Coat Cooke, saxophone)
4. Gratte-moi le dos (with Kenton Loewen, drums)
5. Quiet eyes (with Ron Samworth, guitar)
6. It’s not the moon (with Chris Gestrin, analog keyboards and live sampling)
7. Betters and bads (with Jesse Zubot, violin)
8. Finely tuned is my heart (with Jeremy Berkman, trombone)
9. Au revas (with Paul Plimley, piano)
10. A little storm (with Jeff Younger, guitar)
11. Bells hung in a tree (with Clyde Reed, bass)
12. Song not for you (with Brent Belke, guitar)
13. Curve (with Stefan Smulovitz, kenaxis)

---

The very essence of chamber music is perfectly captured in these thirteen tracks. Viviane Houle’s duets with each of these artists is raw music making – free improvisations that transcend the ordinary and provide sonic experiences unlike anything else.  Houle’s sonic repertoire is no short of astonishing.  Half of the time I can’t tell which sounds she is making and which are being made by her instrumental counterpart.  On the same token, both performers on each track are so adept at listening to each other that the flow of events sounds totally organic and alive.  While the bulk of the tracks are showcases for Houle’s vocal fireworks she is always blending with the ensemble and creating a sonic “hyperinstrument” that is neither one nor the other.

A few of the tracks feature a more traditional melodic and sung role for the voice.  Houle, who also wrote all the texts, trends towards the smokey and hazy sounds of somber jazz or beat poetry.  Her rich sound and warm emotional expressions are further featured on one of my favorite tracks, It’s not the moon. Houle’s voice is the DNA of Chris Gestrin’s synth work creating a haunting, graceful, and eternal sounding track.

The last three tracks on the disc transition smoothly from one to the next, making an excellent journey.  Bells hung in a tree has a subdued ending that sounds like it continues as the next track fades in. Song not for you hits me right in my Heavy Metal spot.  Houle and Belke sound like a great thrashing metal duo from somewhere in the Oort Cloud who have recently learned to sing using random Japanese phonemes (and I mean that in the best possible way).  The thrash continues while the ambient sizzle of Curve takes over.  Like It’s not the moon, Curve puts Houle’s voice in the background and she inexorably emerges from the synthetic world into an oozing and pulsating mass of delicious aural goo.

Tom Johnson

Rational Melodies

New World CD 80705-2

When he was a critic at the Village Voice in the 1970s, Tom Johnson (b. 1939) was one of the first writers to apply the term ‘minimalism’ to music. As time has moved on, many composers originally associated with minimalism have branched out stylistically; while certain gestural signatures may remain, the processes by which they created their earliest works seem to have loosened up considerably.

Johnson has moved on too. After leaving the Voice, he relocated to Paris. While active as a composer throughout his tenure as a journalist, since the 1980s he’s focused on music instead of words as his primary means of expression. Johnson has continued to write pieces in the minimalist tradition, retaining the genre’s early reliance on generative processes. One of his best known works, Rational Melodies, is a case in point. Composed in 1982, the melodies are single line compositions that have been constructed with painstaking care using various patterning models. Contour, rhythmic shape, meter, proportion, intervallic profile, and tessitura are all parameters variously mapped in these 21 pieces — hence the ‘rational’ portion of their title.

There have been two previous recordings of Rational Melodies, both for solo instruments. But the French Ensemble Dedalus has rehearsed them as ensemble pieces for an extended period of time. It’s interesting that, despite the attention paid to details of compositional design, Johnson has been willing to allow Dedalus to revise these works extensively. Some involve matters of a heterophonic sort of orchestration — deciding which instruments will play each given note was apparently an intrinsic part of the rehearsal process — while others actually create significant changes of register. There are even instances when an organum-like planing is added to the proceedings, creating momentary ‘music in fifths.’

Dedalus seems to know this music backwards and forwards. One can well understand why they’ve chosen to make Rational Melodies their debut recording. That said, it still seems a courageous decision on Johnson’s part to abnegate enough control to allow his music to change, grow, and in this case, prosper.

Steve Horowitz  

Stations of the Breath

music for Disklavier and others

The Code International

---

• Connecticut Nocturne, Moon over Mudge Pond
• Like Powder to the Light
• The Ceremony of Souls (with Dave Eggar, cello)
• Stations of the Breath
• The Ghost of Juniper Ledge (Ned McGowan, contrabass flute)

When I first received this disc of Steve Horowitz’s music for Disklavier, my initial assumption was that the music would be thick and heavy, taking advantage of the complexity that human performers cannot readily achieve but a Disklavier can manage quite easily.  The titles of the tracks, though, seemed in direct conflict with Nancarrow/Gann-style rhythmic shenanigans.  Much to my surprise, the music on the disc is much more meditative, expansive, and considerably less dense than I assumed.  The end result is music that defies its mechanical creation.  The moods, shapes, and gestures sound as if a human being is performing.  The only giveaway, to my ears, is the thinner and slightly tinny quality of the Disklavier’s timbre.

So what, you might ask, is the point?  Why use technology when you don’t have to?  It is a question that I’m sure will keep coming up.  The bottom line, though is that my ears don’t want to hear technology.  They want to hear music.  This disc is certainly far more concerned with making music than flexing any technological muscles.  Unplayable passages may be few and far between but effective and enjoyable music abounds.

The opening track is a glimmering nocturne that evokes its mood in gentle swaths of harmonies and gestures.  The music is filled with tonal inflections which are far from derivative harmonies but still coherent and leading.  Like Powder to the Light is a jagged and playful toccata reminiscent at times to Bartok rhythms with hints of Nancarrow’s boogie-woogie or Crawford-Seeger’s mixed accents.

The Ceremony of Souls, cowritten by cellist Dave Eggar, again draws on gestures and colors rather than straight ahead motives or melodies.  A long, solemn cello line exists in spite of the spastic and punchy piano chords.  As the piece unfolds, a relationship between the two instruments emerges.  The piano punches start to lock in with the cellist’s line and gradually the two morph into one with the cello ending up in the piano’s original hectic and wild realm.

Stations of Breath is a slow, expansive work that seems as if it could go on forever.  The harmonies and timing sound natural and fluid, as if the work was always playing somewhere and this CD represents a mere slice of the eternal.  The Ghost of Juniper Ledge is similar to Stations of Breath in many ways.  The timeless quality is shared but the harmonic language is thinner and events are much more sparse.  The contrabass flute is not competing with or working at cross purposes with the piano, the two instruments are one.  The music simply hangs in the air.  I find these last two tracks the most compelling on the disc.  They are the least technological but musically the most affective.  The moods are straightforward, the ideas are right on the surface, and the execution is well worth experiencing.

Florent Ghys

Baroque Tardif: Soli

Cantaloupe Music EP

A couple of weeks ago, we highlighted Florent Ghys’ multimedia capabilities on the homepage. But the first of a projected three EPs for Cantaloupe, Baroque Tardif: Soli, is an altogether more inward and intimate venture. It involves French composer/bassist Ghys in a project for a virtual ensemble: built out of recorded overdubs of himself performing. While the resulting music is designed for the medium of recording – it would have to be refashioned for an actual ensemble to be replicated live – one never gets the sense of sterility that often inhabits such multi-tracked endeavors.

Instead, Ghys uses his experience collaborating with the Bang on a Can All Stars during their summer workshops in 2006 as a jumping off point for some Downtown music-making, Bordeaux style. On “Soli,” Ghys focuses on basses in an organic, acoustic fashion. But “Simplement” brings a multi-instrument approach that includes vocals as well, with much of the melodic material snazzy in its syncopation and doubled in octaves.

“Coma Carus” takes on a more blurry, ambient cast with washes of dreamily treated sonics juxtaposed against backgrounded bass ostinati.  Chorused vocals take center stage on “Clignotants,” creating a fetching interwoven pattern of repetitions then taken up by instruments. The EP closes in a more lyrical vein with “Béchamel,” a gentle and lyrical piece consisting of supple arco lines in counterpoint over a slow-moving pizzicato walking bass.

So much variety and material in five short pieces. One is eager to hear the rest of this EP series.

HERSCH: Sonatas for Unaccompanied Cello 1 & 2. Daniel Gaisford, vcl. Vanguard Classics MCS-CD-104. 69 minutes.

I first became acquainted with Michael Hersch’s music through his monumental solo piano work The Vanishing Pavilions. The pieces recorded here adjust Hersch’s large and large-hearted soundworld to the somewhat more intimate and introverted genre of the unaccompanied sonata for cello.

The genre has a long and distinguished history, characterized by big works that show off the expressive range of the instrument (an the player) as well as the virtuosic possibilities almost inherent in solo string playing. Hersch is solidly in that tradition here, with pieces that probe the nature of cello playing in the context of the composer’s very personal post 20^th-century neo-modernism. The music is characterized by meditative lyricism or mysticism, punctuated by aggressively angular and rhythmically biting phrases.

Daniel Gaisford plays these difficult (in every sense of the word) and supremely rewarding pieces with seemingly limitless technique and a musical personality as strong as Hersch’s. Their collaboration makes for an exciting and provocative musical experience.

Hovhaness: solos, duos, and trios

music of Alan Hovhaness

OgreOgress

Paul Hersey, piano; Christina Fong, violin|viola; Libor Soukal, bassoon; Jirí Šesták, oboe; Karen Krummel, cello; Michael Kornacki & John Varineau, clarinets; Christopher Martin, viola

Trio I for piano, violin & cello Op. 3 (1935)

Sonata Ricercare for piano Op. 12 (1935)

Artinis ‘Urardüan Sun God’ for piano Op. 39 (1945)

Suite for oboe & bassoon Op. 23 (1949)

Poseidon Sonata for piano Op. 191 (1957)

Bardo Sonata for piano Op. 192 (1959)

Sonatina for piano Op. 120 (1962)

Trio for strings Op. 201 (1962)

Three Haikus for piano Op. 113 (1965)

Night of a White Cat for clarinet & piano Op. 263 (1973)

Sonata for 2 bassoons Op. 266 (1973)

Sonata for 2 clarinets Op. 297 (1977)

Sonata for oboe & bassoon Op. 302 (1977)

Sonata for viola Op. 423 (1992)

The vastly prolific composer Alan Hovhaness gets captured in a time capsule of chamber music in this OgreOgress release.  This 126 minute DVD-A disc (96kHz|24bit for you audiophiles out there) contains a full fourteen chamber pieces, thirteen of which are getting premiere recordings.  The chronological ordering of works provides a journey from Hovhaness’ early populist tonal/modal style through his initial experiments with his better known Eastern influenced mystical language.  There are pieces from each decade of Hovhaness’ productivity so if you are wanting a sampler of Hovhaness’ chamber output, there really isn’t a better place to start than this recording.

While probably better known for his symphonies, Hovhannes is equally skilled at writing his musical ideas in chamber form.  The disc is crammed full of top notch performances and the audio quality of the disc is stunning.  The solo piano works are rich with harmonics.  The string trio sounds as if they are right in front of you.  I was especially struck by the overtones in Libor Soukal’s bassoon sound in the Op. 23 Suite for oboe and bassoon.

There is no one large, dominating work on this disc which again makes it enjoyable for hearing the evolution of Hovhannes’ style and also encouraging performers to take up more of his chamber music.  As I first listened to the disc, I was surprised at the style of the earlier pieces but the through line of Hovhaness’ development seemed as natural as breathing air.  Then, when I started over with the early piano trio, I was amazed at how much of the later music is hidden in the earlier.  Flirtations with modality in the early pieces evolve into raga-esque melodies a few decades down the road.

Each performance on this disc is well crafted from the performer to the ensemble through to the recording.  The musical language overall is accessible and just plain pretty.  I was especially fond of the piano trio, the piano sonatina, the string trio, Night of a White Cat, and the solo viola sonata.  That is quite possibly more music than I would get on a standard CD.  The fact that I get all the other works, which I also enjoyed, is a major bonus.  OgreOgress is doing it right with good music, great performers and performances, and excellent recordings.

Interview

Amy Horvey, trumpet

Music by Scelsi, Arditto, Höstman, Purchase, and Horvey/Morton

Malasartes Musique

• Quattro pezzi per tromba sola – Giancinto Scelsi
• Música Invisible – Cecilia Arditto
• Interview – Anna Höstman
• Apparatus Inconcinnus – Ryan Purchase
• Overture to “The Queen of the Music Boxes” featuring Jeff Morton

This is not your typical solo trumpet disc.  Some folks might dismiss a CD made up almost entirely of solo trumpet music, but when the most straightforward thing on a disc was written by Scelsi, I get kind of excited.  Amy Horvey tackles exciting and provocative repertoire on this offering and nails all of it.

The Quattro pezzi by Scelsi kick off the disc and highlight Ms. Horvey’s chops and musicality.  Her tone is dark and somber, her ability to connect the lengthy lyrical lines in each piece is uncanny, and the only thing that would make the performance better would be hearing her live.  These are demanding pieces and she squeezes every nuance of music from them.

Cecilia Arditto’s Música Invisible is in three movements (Sfumato, Chiaroscuro, and Anamorphosis) and uses both flugelhorn and trumpet.  Each work involves the use of extended techniques such as singing while playing, extreme pedal tone melodies, and putting the bell of the trumpet into a bowl of water.  Regardless of the techniques, which are intrinsic to the sound worlds of the pieces and not mere gimmicks, the music is haunting and meaningful.  Each gesture is given time and space to develop and mature and, at about 12 minutes, I could stand to listen to a whole lot more.

The next two works both feature spoken passages as well as played passages.  Anna Höstman’s Interview relates to a larger work about trumpet soloist Edna White called “Queen of the Music Boxes.” The fragments of text coax listeners into an emotional world with very little said.  The music that follows is sometimes playful, sometimes sorrowful, and Ms. Horvey communicates the text well without being too hammy or too stoic in affect.  In contrast to the fragmentary Interview, Apparatus Inconcinnus by Ryan Purchase contains more of a linear narrative about remembering how to count by Russian author Daniil Charms.  This humorous anecdote takes some serious musical terms and would be, of course, most effective in a live performance.  The story holds the music together very well.  My only quibble of this disc, if I have to have one, is that these two very similar works were programmed back to back.

The final work, Overture to “The Queen of the Music Boxes”, includes the electro-acoustic/circuit-bending/composer Jeff Morton working with prepared music boxes, toy instruments, and electronics.  The composition is largely about Morton’s sound world of dreamy, lo-fi mechanical music making than it is Amy Horvey’s trumpet playing.  When the trumpet melody does emerge, the dreaminess of Morton’s contraptions becomes more accompaniment  than ambient.  The whole piece projects an introspective mood and is the perfect sound world to close off the CD.

Thelema Trio

Ward De Vleeschhower, piano; Peter Verdonck, saxophones, and Marco Antonio Mazzini, clarinets

Music by Junchaya, Lee, Carpenter, Honor, Mazzini, Walczyk, and Benadon

innova records

• Rafael Leonardo Junchaya – Tres Danzas Episkénicas
• HyeKyung Lee – Shadowing
• Keith Carpenter – The Devil His Due
• Eric Honour – neither from nor towards
• Marco Antonio Mazzini – Imprevisto
• Kevin Walczyk – Refractions
• Fernando Benadon – Five Miniatures

The Thelema Trio’s modular nature, even within the context of being a trio, is one of its primary strengths and they strut their stylistic, coloristic, versatile stuff with this collection of pieces.  No two works share the same instrumentation nor do any of the compositions share the same sound world.  The only performer not showcased with a solo feature of some sort is the pianist but Ward De Vleeschhouwer is a superb collaborative artist who can highlight his abilities within a chamber music setting.  Peter Verdonck has excellent tone and energy on alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones and Marc Antonio Mazzini has a lithe and supple sound on standard or bass clarinet.  Together, the two reed players have a perfectly communal sound quality.

Each piece on the disc showcases the Thelema Trio’s mercuriality.  Rafael Leonardo Junchaya’s Tres Danzas Episkénicas is equal parts sultry, ethereal and playful.  This work uses the most instruments overall with the reeds changing from bass clarinet to clarinet and use of baritone and tenor saxophones.  Overall, these dances are attractive, slightly thorny pitch language and extremely well orchestrated.

HyeKyung Lee’s Shadowing is a canonic/imitative work for clarinet and alto saxophone.  Long melodic lines weave in and out with sinewy and twisty motions.  The blend between the performers is spot on and the whole piece has great long-term trajectory.  The high climax reached early on in the work is the exact right music at the exact right time.  Keith Carpenter’s raucous The Devil His Due for baritone sax and piano is a punchy, aggressive, and energetic toccata for the two instruments.  Instead of the baritone sax being the “front man” of the piece, both instruments engage in funky rhythmic interplay.

The title track on the CD, neither from nor towards, is an extended rhapsody for baritone sax, clarinet, and piano written by Eric Honour.  This obsessive piece spends a lot of time spinning its wheels (in a good way) where the music is, indeed, neither from anywhere nor moving towards anywhere.  Long overlapping tones in the reeds and mid-range piano are broken by the occasional spiky piano accents in extreme registers.  Gradually a melody emerges and by the halfway point we are in a soaring, melodic section.  The soaring becomes frenetic, dies down, but then trashes around with one last outburst.  If you were to drop in on any single section of the piece, you might wonder how it all fits together.  But listening to the complete work, Eric Honour draws an excellent through-line.  The programming for this piece is perfect since it showcases not only the coloristic blend between the reeds but also the rhythmic punctuation possibilities found in earlier works.

The only solo composition on the disc, Marco Antonio Mazzini’s Imprevisto sounds like music we aren’t really supposed to be hearing.  The slow unfolding work for clarinet gives the impression that we are eavesdropping on the performer while they worked out musical/emotional stuff.  This piece is haunting and captivating.  Refractions, by Kevin Walczyk, brings back some playful and bouncy music back to the disc.  The motoric repeated notes in the piano provide a platform for melodies and shapes in the alto sax and clarinet.  The energy is constantly pushing forward, even when the music slows and becomes more tender.  The light and springy material returns to close out the composition.

Finally, the Five Miniatures for baritone sax, bass clarinet, and piano by Fernando Benadon are delightfully quirky pieces that present a focal idea, perseverate upon said idea, and then vanish.  Niether of the five movements feels underwritten and, while one might hear how each idea could become longer, I think it would destroy the chiseled nature of these pieces.  There is a lot of fun and whimsy in their brevity, making this piece the perfect waft of light flavor after a satisfying meal.

RAKOWSKI: Études. Amy Briggs, piano. Bridge 9310. 78 minutes.

This is the third volume in Bridge’s set of David Rakowski’s Études for piano. The present disc, brilliantly performed by Amy Briggs, includes selections from Book V as well as Books VI and VII in their entirety.

 An étude (study) can explore many different subjects at once. It can be a technical exercise for the pianist, such as a fingering study, or an exercise for repeating notes, for example. For the composer these studies provide him or her with the challenge of making expressive musical sense out of the technical challenges the pieces present to the performer.

 Rakowski, in his Études, has added stylistic exercise to this mix. Theses pieces are written in a dazzling array of compositional and performance styles. The titles (“Stutter Stab”, “Cell Division”, and “Killer B’s”, for example) give a hint of both the technical and stylistic/expressive problems addressed in each piece. The pop-sounding titles indirectly describe the sound of the music, which is “tonal” in the broadest sense of the word, with fugitive key centers banging up against each other.

 Amy Briggs plays this difficult music with precision and style. She makes it sound easy, and it certainly isn’t. Her playing is expressive and colorful. I look forward to going back to the earlier discs in the series.

Fire and Blood, MotorCity Triptych, Raise the Roof

Ida Kavafian, violin

Detroit Symphony Orchestra; Neeme Järvi, conductor

Naxos Records

The Detroit Symphony released three excellent performances (live recordings, to boot) of orchestral music by Michigan-based composer Michael Daugherty.  Fire and Blood for violin and orchestra was inspired by Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals and throughout the composition Daugherty adeptly integrates Latin-inspired touches into his regular boisterous musical language without sounding cliche or silly.  Ida Kavafian draws every ounce of passion and fire (and blood) out of the music and brings it into the sonic world.  Daugherty’s musical language is, on one hand, very traditional and comfortable but also includes touches and flares of more expressionistic passages that lend much to the drama and tension of his music.  Given the picturesque subject matter I hear a lot of musical connections to, of all pieces, Scheherazade.  Yes, Daugherty’s work is a full-blown violin concerto but the story lines of each movement propel the drama forward in a similar manner as in the Rimsky-Korsakov.  Maybe it is just me.

MotorCity Tryptich is a lighter exploration of Detroit-inspired sources.  In “Motown Mondays,” Daugherty again takes a foreign (to orchestras, anyway) musical language and sets it within the orchestra with flair and panache that goes above and beyond cheesy “pops concert” fodder.  ”Pedal-to-the-Metal” takes some obvious Copland references and runs wild and free with them.  ”Rosa Parks Boulevard” starts with some dramatic harmonies and morphs into and out of various scenes and landscapes.  The trombone section is heavily featured in this movement and play with a rich, soulful sound.

The timpani concerto/showpiece Raise the Roof is a perfect closer for the disc.  Brian Jones, timpani soloist, is a great force in front of the orchestra but also brings subtlety and nuance to the quieter passages.  The rapid pitch changes of the midpoint cadenza are clean, crisp, and musically done.  The roof gets sufficiently raised, in case you were worried.

Metropolis Symphony, Deus ex Machina

Terrence Wilson, piano

Nashville Symphony; Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor

Naxos Records

Now it is Nashville’s turn.  Metropolis Symphony was the first piece by Michael Daugherty that I ever heard.  Drawing from Superman mythos, Daugherty creates vibrant and energetic aural pictures of people, places, and events that are vital to the Man of Steel.  Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, and Mxyzptlk all show up in almost perfect musical form.  Completed around the time of Superman’s highly publicized death in the early 90s (as opposed to the other deaths of Superman’s, but that is a different story), the piece culminates in the “Red Cape Tango” which mixes tango rhythms with the Dies irae chant.  Each movement is well crafted, expressively performed, and just fun to listen to.  The five movements function as a concerto for orchestra, with each section getting time to shine.  Nashville breathes wonderful life into this character music and is able to give the piece everything it needs to be successful.

Deus ex Machina, for piano and orchestra, takes its inspiration from trains.  ”Fast Forward” spins and whirls around with the kind of focused energy you’d expect from a train motif.  The middle movement, “Train of Tears,” is a heartful and sad exploration full of expressive and colorful piano gestures and haunting orchestral solos.  The final movement, as you might expect, is a barn burner that rides along a boogie-woogie style bass line in the piano.  This recording is another instance of a great orchestra playing well, recording it in concert, and getting it out for others to enjoy.

I know some who poo-poo Michael Daugherty’s music as being “gimmicky.”  I disagree completely.  While Daugherty is quite a ways away from “high modernism,” he is extremely capable of writing good tunes with vivid imagery and satisfying dramatic arcs.  I get the sense that his music is a fluid extension of his creative desires.  Nothing sounds forced or strained, instead the music just goes where it needs to go.  If you think that “accessible” is a four-letter word, you probably won’t enjoy these discs.  If you want to hear traditional tone poems written for a modern audience, I can’t think of a better place to start.