Month: February 2022

CD Review, Contemporary Classical

Tasha Smith Godinez – Metamorphoses

Centaur Records has recently released Metamorphoses, a new CD of harp music by Tasha Smith Godinez. The album features six new works by five different contemporary composers who are friends and colleagues of Ms. Godinez. The result is an engaging variety of new music carefully crafted and brilliantly performed.

The opening piece on the album is Hidden, by Sidney Marquez Boquiren. This is intended as a social commentary on the current US immigration situation and was also inspired musically by another work for harp, Pièce Symphonique, by Henriette Reniè. Hidden opens with a strong chord by the harp rising from the lower registers marked by an unsettling, scrambled rhythm. There is a strong sense of the unseen and the mysterious. Clear notes and elegant arpeggios are heard that offer a vision of purity and order, but the rougher sounds invariably follow. At times the harp is strummed in the manner of a guitar, evoking the music of distant Mexico.

The variety of of sounds in this piece are impressive, with plucked harp notes heard as clearly as from a piano keyboard. The arpeggios are smooth and nicely shaped and the playing artfully sustains a sense of hidden uncertainty over long passages. The mix of standard intonation and extended techniques is masterfully applied throughout. Towards finish the tempo and dynamics build, increasing the tension between the clean notes and scratchy sounds. As the music softly fades away, the listener is left reflecting on the absence of justice and compassion. Hidden powerfully articulates the emotional conflict between the unseen world of the undocumented immigrant and the promise of a brighter future that is kept just out of reach.

Obsessive Imagery, by Michael Vincent Waller is next and the liner notes explain that his “…music can be described as lyrical and introspective, drawing inspiration from impressionism, post-minimalism and world music.“ All of these elements are present, beginning with a quiet opening arpeggio that is soon accompanied by an expressive counterpoint in the higher registers. As the piece proceeds the notes become ever more active, like the patter of a gentle summer rain. A simple piece that is gracefully beautiful and elegantly played, Obsessive Imagery manages to be both lyrical and introspective simultaneously in a way that adds to its appeal.

Track 3 is Born on a Wednesday by José Gurría-Cárdenas. Although this track is less than four minutes in length it features a strong pulse and a wide variety of playing styles. The piece works as a metaphor of the emotional oscillations of teen age youth, as based on memories by the composer of his son. The strumming here resembles a guitar as much as a harp and the piece swings between a heady optimism and brooding concern, never sure where it wants to land. There are lovely lyrical stretches and these are balanced by somewhat darker sections heard in the lower registers. About halfway through, the tempo slows to a more languid and gentle feel, brightening in the higher registers and returning to the strong beat of the opening just before it concludes. Born on a Wednesday is a nostalgic reminiscence of sunny youth, artfully performed.

Diomedea, for Harp and Khaen, by Christopher Adler follows, inspired by the great albatross sea bird species of that name. The khaen is a bamboo reed mouth organ associated with Southeast Asia that somehow sounds like a subdued brass section in the soft chords of the opening. The harp melody rides atop this accompaniment, much like a wandering albatross might glide along on the winds above the ocean waves. There is a wide and somewhat lonely feeling in this piece that evokes the long migratory flights of the diomedea across the vast and empty Pacific. The reedy sounds of the khaen nicely compliment the often dazzling notes coming from the harp. There are occasional syncopated lines from both instruments playing against each other, and this produces some interesting textures. A slower tempo towards the finish is heard with spare, melancholy notes in the harp – a bluesy feel that completes the piece. Diomedea is a fine tribute to a little known but impressive sea bird and its peripatetic seagoing lifestyle.

Track 5 is Mobile Active Simulated Humanoids, by José Gurría-Cárdenas, who “…takes into consideration how we as a society become disenfranchised, isolated and hopeless.” Soft plinking in the upper register of the harp opens this piece, accompanied by a stream of ominous underlying eighth notes below. A modest groove develops from this that soon morphs into a series of fragmented passages freighted with a feeling of alienation. The tension is sustained by the precise technical playing and contrasting emotions. The intonation is always clean and the notes crisply heard.

There is movement and direction in this music but it is also full of quiet desperation, with patterns that recur without any sense of resolution. Mobile Active Simulated Humanoids embodies the futility of an act of repetition that never improves its outcome and makes a gentle, yet powerful commentary on how we are continuously conditioned by society for conformity.

The final track of the album is Transfigured Verse, for Harp with Computer-generated Sound, by Jon Forshee, a piece inspired by an Old Testament story of David and a verse from Psalm 57. 1 Samuel 16 relates the story of how God, having rejected Saul as King of Israel, sends Samuel as his prophet to anoint the young David as the new King. An evil spirit sent by the Lord torments Saul, whose councilors observe: “See now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Command the servants who attend you to look for someone who is skillful in playing the lyre; and when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will feel better.” After some searching, David arrives with a lyre and his playing pleases Saul who takes him into royal service. Psalm 57:8, attributed to David, rejoices in the musical power of the lyre.

Awake, my soul!
Awake, O harp and lyre!
I will awake the dawn

The opening of Transfigured Verse is mysterious, quiet and introspective with a slight tension that builds from a high electronic sound. The playing starts out slow but the tension gradually increases as the harp and electronics contrast, perhaps recreating the mental distress that Saul may have felt. The electronics drone along in the background, never dominating, but delivering a relentless sense of oppression. The harp notes and chords gradually become more active, generating a restorative vigor that infuses the overall sound. Towards the finish the tempo slows and the harp notes are spaced out between silences and scattered electronic blips. The final feeling is one of relief so that Transfigured Verse softly and artfully brings out the healing powers of the harp.

The harp is known to most listeners from a few predictable solos in an orchestral context. In Metamorphoses, Tasha Smith Godinez continues to expand the vocabulary of the harp by exploring new horizons in contemporary music.

Metamorphoses is available from Amazon Music.

by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

A Pandemic Recording from Sasha Cooke (CD Review)

how do I find you?

Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano, Kirill Kuzmin, piano

Pentatone CD

 

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and collaborative pianist Kirill Kuzmin supply an entry in the “pandemic recording” subgenre, how do I find you?, named after the title piece by Caroline Shaw. Cooke performs a great deal of contemporary repertoire, creating roles in operas and premiering art songs by composers including William Bolcom, Nico Muhly (Marnie at the English National Opera), and Joby Talbot. Apart from a selection by Muhly, all of the songs on the release are with new collaborators, composers in the under-fifty age bracket. Written in 2020, the songs are inspired by topics from that fraught year of pestilence, protests, and political rancor. 

 

The first two songs on the album, Shaw’s and Kamala Sankaram’s,  are particularly well written and moving. Here, as elsewhere, Cooke sings with great beauty, deploying a richly hued voice with impressive diction and expressivity. Shaw focuses on the ability of natural beauty to provide succor, those distanced walks so many treasured as a respite from lockdown. Sandaram’s “Listen” is a moving and harmonically rich musical tribute to George Floyd, with an eloquent poem written by Mark Campbell, one that could be classical music’s equivalent of “Strange Fruit.” Elsewhere, Missy Mazzoli’s “Self-Portrait with Disheveled Hair,” with words by opera librettist Royce Vavrek, is an aria in its own right, inspired by Rembrandt’s painting and bifurcated into a soaring recitative and post-minimal main section. One could easily imagine her writing a role for Cooke; has Mazzoli’s Met debut been cast yet?

 

Nico Muhly knows Cooke’s voice well, and deploys it in the touching and delicate “Intimate Things.” Hilary Purrington counts on Cooke’s legato control and brings a mix of added note chords and chiming interjections to “That Night’s” fetching accompaniment, creating a piece that resembles a musical theater scene, albeit with no belting required. Gabriel Kahane writes both music and lyrics for “The Hazelnut Tree,” a touching song about fear of global warming and the gloom of the daily news being soothed by a beautiful scene in the backyard. Timo Andres provides some of the highest notes on the recording for Cooke to sing to a jaunty accompaniment. Her control and Kuzmin’s incisive playing are both impressive.

 

“After the Fires,” referencing the California wildfires, by Lembit Beecher, uses expressive vocal devices, such as melisma, to create a keening and harrowing ode to senseless destruction. The plight of immigrant detainees is encountered in Huang Ruo’s “The Work of Angels,” a setting of a 1978 poem about the imprisonment of Chinese emigres under the 1882 Exclusion Act. At nearly eight minutes, it is a powerful depiction of squalid conditions and suicide, decrying past and present US immigration policies. 

 

Andrew Marshall acknowledges the challenges of remote learning with a charming cabaret song, “(A Bad Case of) Kids.” Rene Orth’s “Dear Colleagues” also affords Cooke the opportunity to tear into an angst-filled scene. Chris Cerrone’s “Everything will Be Okay” is an understated setting depicting anxiety, in this case lost then found cash in a hotel. 

 

It is hard to know how long audiences will want to hear pandemic year music. Perhaps, rather sooner than one expects, it will become something left behind, as are (in some cases regrettably) many of the pieces dedicated to 9/11. Cooke and Kuzmin are to be commended for presenting every song in a strong performance with equally fervent commitment, creating a musical time capsule that is an evocative summary of the challenges facing many during painful pandemic days. If there is an album depicting 2020 to which I wish to return, this is it. 

 

-Christian Carey 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Experimental Music, File Under?

“Wind Bells Falls,” Robbie Lee and Lea Bertucci (CD Review)

Wind Bells Falls

Robbie Lee and Lea Bertucci

Telegraph Harp

 

“Glitter and Gleam,” the leadoff single for Robbie Lee and Lea Bertucci’s collaboration Wind Bells Falls immediately brings you into the altered domain of their engaging approach to sound art. An essay for warped celeste, it provides a sense of musique concrète while also exploring a playful sensibility. Bell-like timbres ricochet throughout the soundfield, supplying exactly what the title suggests. 

 

Throughout the nine pieces on the recording, the duo deploys winds, keyboards, and tape machines. Their specialties include using acoustic instruments in unconventional ways and distressing tape to make it sound synthetic. “Image Mirror” features wild flute overdubs, once again kaleidoscopically transformed. They sound like the wailing riff from an Arkestra member’s free jazz solo chasing itself around the room. 

 

It is striking how willing the artists are to restrict their palette to a limited and distinctive set of sounds for each track. On “Bags, Boxes, and Bubbles,” chiming chords are set against glissandos in a reiterative dialogue. Via an excellent segue, this morphs into duets of slides and trills on “Division Music.”

 

The duo stretch out on “Azimuth,” retaining small collections of sounds for discrete sections but gradually morphing between them through a process of addition and subtraction of new timbres and motifs. Baying shards gradually build into a registrally delineated rhythmic canon, a venerable composition device redeployed in this experimental context. The album closes with a delicate miniature, “Somebody Dream,” in which chimes and delicate cooing afford a lullaby sendoff to this unusual and diverting recording. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Birthdays, CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Ethan Iverson’s Blue Note Debut (CD Review)

Ethan Iverson

Every Note is True

Ethan Iverson, piano; Larry Grenadier, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums

Blue Note

 

Pianist Ethan Iverson received an excellent birthday present today: the release of Every Note is True, his debut recording on Blue Note Records. Since departing the Bad Plus, Iverson has worked on a number of projects as a composer, taught at New England Conservatory, written insightful criticism and pedagogical articles on his blog Do the Math and for other publications, and collaborated with musicians such as saxophonist Mark Turner, drummer Bill Hart, and trumpeter Tom Harrell. Followers of these activities will note that the pianist’s encyclopedic explication of the jazz tradition in his writings has mirrored trends in his recent playing. 

 

Iverson, ever unpredictable, takes a different approach on Every Note is True. Apart from a single tune, “Blue,” by drummer Jack DeJohnette, all of the compositions on the recording are originals by Iverson. Many resume a connection to the rock-inflected jazz he made earlier in his career. Not one to attempt to remake the past, Iverson has selected collaborators who are two of the best known players in jazz, DeJohnette and bassist Larry Grenadier. The absence of covers – a Bad Plus staple – and presence of fulsome swing from his current collaborators allows Iverson the opportunity to blend multiple approaches into a compelling amalgam distinct from his previous work. 

 

A couple of imaginary theme songs populate the recording. “She Won’t Forget Me” is likened by Iverson to a rom-com theme, although I have never heard a rom-com theme with as zesty a solo. The album itself starts with a quirky vocal number, “The More it Changes,” a commercial sounding song featuring overdubs of a number of Iverson’s friends, Sarah Deming (who wrote the lyrics), Alex Ross, and Mark Padmore among them, who sang their parts remotely. Brief enough to leave a listener just enough time to scramble to their playlist and settle back in their seat, it is followed by the avowedly not soundtrack-related “The Eternal Verities,” a sequential tune with a little chromatic twist as it turns around. Grenadier’s playing embellishes the changes and adds countermelodies that interlock well with the spacious solo that Iverson provides. A coda brings the progression to a sideways yet satisfying conclusion. 

 

“For Ellen Raskin” is dedicated to one of Iverson’s favorite children’s authors. It is a gentle jazz waltz with bluesy inflections and deft use of hemiola – moving from 3/4  to 6/8 – to give a little Brahmsian nod to the proceedings. “Had I but Known” is an uptempo tune with sequences of dissonant intervals and polychords in the bridge that allow for a suave extrapolation of Fats Waller’s language and voicings. Particularly persuasive is “Had I but Known,” which is through-composed rather than primarily improvised. It combines a balladic cast with tart melodic punctuations and Ivesian verticals. 

 

Iverson admired DeJohnette’s “Blue” when he heard it on John Abercrombie’s 1978 ECM recording Gateway 2. With powerful fills from the drummer, Iverson’s interpretation revels in the tune’s unadorned triads, particularly the one at the close that receives an expansive arpeggiation. Whereas jazz chords usually contain more than just the triad, with 6th, 7ths, 9ths and more added to harmonies, using a bare triad in the right context buoys the connection that Iverson is making throughout Every Note is True between commercial pop, rock, and jazz.

 

“Merely Improbable” presents a more traditional structure, providing a chance for Iverson and company to play rhythm changes, variants on the chord structure of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” that populate countless standards. As with the other compositions here, at three and a half minutes the run-time is relatively lean; I would have been happy to hear the trio stretch it out. “Praise Will Travel” is an ebullient piece performed with a tight groove offsetting florid soloing. Titled after an Agatha Christie story, the album closer “At the Bells and Motley” is a jaunty blues that demonstrates the trio’s simpatico interaction. Here we get the longed-for jam, with nine minutes of subtle shifts of emphasis and piano solos that build from restraint to sly quotation to gestures writ large and back again. Excellent solos from Grenadier and DeJohnette as well.

 

Every Note is True is an auspicious label debut that demonstrates the imagination, breadth, and wit of Iverson’s playing while maintaining a spirit of enthusiastic collaboration. Highly recommended. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Birthdays, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Moog Celebrates Herb Deutsch with First Episode of GIANTS Series

On Wednesday, February 9th, Herb Deutsch turned ninety years old. Deutsch has been an icon of sound synthesis both as a composer and hardware designer. One of the inventors of the first Moog synthesizers, he designed the keyboard interface that served as the basis for countless synths that followed. Moog Music is using this auspicious occasion to kick off GIANTS, a series of films about synth pioneers. In the video below, Deutsch describes his life, musical inspirations, and the early days of creating versatile hardware to perform and record electronic sound. 

 

After the film about Deutsch, you will soon be able to view a number of films that celebrate pivotal figures in electronic music on Moog’s YouTube channel. Future episodes will feature Suzanne Ciani, Bernie Krause, and Daniel Miller. Alongside the recent Sisters with Transistors documentary, the documentation of electronic music’s early luminaries is a welcome opportunity to reassess its legacy. 

On a personal note, as a fellow Long Islander, Deutsch’s long tenure at Hofstra University and co-founding of the Long Island Composer Alliance helped to provide many events that opened my ears to the possibilities of sound, and for that I remain ever grateful.

 

by Christian Carey
CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, Experimental Music, File Under?

George Crumb (1929-2022)

We are saddened to learn of the loss of George Crumb, who passed away on February 6, 2022 at the age of 92. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the composer was one of the most important musical figures of his generation, both as a creator and, for many years, as a professor at University of Pennsylvania. Considered by his students to be a supportive and gifted teacher, he mentored a number of composers who went on to major careers.

 

Crumb composed a large catalog of works, and many of them have become touchstones of the contemporary repertoire.  The bracing amplified string quartet Black Angels (1970) decried the atrocities of the Vietnam War; from that same year, the poignant and colorful Ancient Voices of Children is a standout among a host of eloquent settings of Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetry. He often wrote series of pieces; Madrigals from the 1960s for soprano and mixed ensemble, Makrokosmos from the 1970s for amplified piano, and American Songbooks from the 2000s for male and female voices and mixed ensemble are among them. Occasional pieces, including a few depicting his beloved mischievous dogs and a gloss on Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight,” were witty and equally memorable.

Photo: Rob Starobin

From the outset of his career, Crumb referenced a different set of influences than many of his relative peers, with Bartôk, Debussy, Cowell, Cage, and the burgeoning movement of postmodern Europeans informing him as he struck out on his own path. Crumb was a tremendously imaginative orchestrator, in particular expanding the role and number of percussion instruments in chamber music. The look of his scores, which were frequently graphic in design, was also distinctive. Crumb’s music provided chamber groups, especially new music ensembles, with repertoire that stretched them technically and encouraged them to listen carefully to find the character and balance of the distinctive sound combinations he supplied. His work gave generations of other emerging composers permission to use an expansive set of resources and think outside the box. 


In 2021, a recent piano cycle (2015-2020) in two books, Metamorphoses, in which each piece evoked a work of visual art from a disparate collection of painters, was released on CD by Bridge Records as the twentieth volume of their George Crumb Edition. The composer was involved in the recordings, active until near the end of his extraordinary life. 

by Christian Carey
Birthdays, CD Review, Chamber Music, Classical Music, File Under?, Piano

Celebrating Mendelssohn’s Birthday with Piano Works

Celebrating Mendelssohn’s Birthday with Piano Recordings

 

February 3rd is Felix Mendelssohn’s birthday. To celebrate, here are two reviews of recent recordings of piano music by the composer.

Felix Mendelssohn

Complete Music for Solo Piano, Vol. 6

Hyperion CD

Howard Shelley

 

Pianist Howard Shelley has been making his way through the compendious catalog of Felix Mendelssohn. The latest entry in his complete set, Volume Six, contains several well-known favorites as well as gems without opus numbers. If one has the impression of Mendelssohn as a neo-Mozartean composer of grace without the oomph of a creator like Schumann from the Romantic generation, the powerful Reiterlied presents a different side of the composer, as does his Sonata in B-flat Major, which should be programmed far more than it currently is. The Fugue in E minor reminds one of Mendelssohn’s affinity and advocacy for Bach’s music. Shelley makes the case for versatility in Mendelssohn but retains the quintessentially burnished and characterful nature of his “Songs Without Words” in recordings of two of the books of this collection. A lovingly crafted addition to what is becoming a benchmark complete works edition.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Complete Music for Piano Solo

Hänssler Classic 12 CD boxed set

Ana-Marija Markovina

 

Ana-Marija Markovina has released her Mendelssohn cycle all at once in a well-appointed 12 CD boxed set. Where Shelley brings out the luminous qualities of the piano works, Markovina is a classicist, creating interpretations that are lucidly detailed. I am particularly fond of Markovina’s playing in the sonatas and fugues, where she reveals the architecture of these pieces with abundant clarity.

The pieces without opus number, including fragments and juvenalia, are spread throughout the collection rather than put in an appendix. At first, this may seem surprising, however it is an excellent way to measure Mendelssohn’s prodigious development. The composition teacher in me immediately thought of using the fragments and short pieces with students, asking them for Mendelssohnian completions as assignments; they are ideal models. It is wonderful that both pianists have taken on this project, as there is ample room for their distinctive approaches.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey