Winterreise is the third recording of Schubert’s cycles/song sets (Schwanengesang isn’t a cycle – it has multiple poets) by baritone André Schuen and pianist Daniel Heide. These were some of the last pieces written by Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828), and he sang them at the piano to console himself about worsening health (syphilis likely contributed to his early demise). Of the three, Winterreise is the best suited to Schuen’s voice, a full lyric baritone. The recordings of Die Schöne Müllerin and Schwanengesang are excellent,but his mature sound and the dramatic interpretations Schuen adopts are ideal for the pathos of Winterreise. He captures the narrator’s vacillating inner monologue with declamation ranging from delicate pianissimo singing to roaring rage. Heide has collaborated with a number of singers and instrumentalists, but his work with Schuen is among his best partnerships. He plays with nuance and a fluid sense of the rhythmic component of the piece. The latter affords Schuen room for small fluctuations in tempo to emphasize particular words.
From the tramping outside his former girlfriend’s door in “Gute Nacht” onward, the tempos are well-considered, never languid even in the most tragic songs. Instead, the duo treats the winter’s journey taken by the narrator as inexorable, a quest without a prize. Along that line, the mystery of the cycle is how it ends, with the song Die Leiermann (the organ-grinder): Who is the organ-grinder? Is he real? A symbol of death? Or the final delusion of the protagonist as he succumbs to the elements? The duo perform the song understatedly, in such a way as to leave the enigma of these questions intact. Winterreise appears on a number of excellent recordings – here is one more.
The Danish String Quartet have explored music from many eras and styles. Keel Road (ECM, 2024), is the third recording in which they delve into Northern European folk music, ranging through Scandinavia, Britain, and Ireland; they call it “a musical journey through the North Sea.” The arrangements were made by the quartet, and in addition to playing strings, they also sing, whistle, and perform on a variety of traditional instruments.
Those used to the quartet’s Prism series for ECM, which featured Bach, Beethoven, and contemporary pieces, will likely be in for a pleasant surprise. Keel Road displays a correspondingly skillful approach to folk music, as well as a remarkable affinity for the music they have chosen for the album. This is evident from the recording’s opening track, Turlough O’Carolan’s “Mable Kelly,” where the musicians play a winsome tune with ornaments from Celtic fiddling, accompanied by lyrical harmonies. “Pericondine/Fair Isle Jig” begins in a similarly adorned fashion in a jaunty dance. Ale Carr’s “Stompolskan” gradually builds in intensity, developing two-note repetitions alongside another quick dance. “Carolan’s Quarrel With the Landlady” has more of a playful than adversarial demeanor, and its refrain focuses on open strings. O’Carolan likes to focus on character sketches, and the third piece played by the quartet is his “Captain O’Kane,” a study in contrast with a soaring reprise.
“En Skomager Har Jeg Været” is a brief field recording of a solo singer, a nod to the curators of this genre.The traditional song “As I Walked Out” may be familiar to listeners in its Vaughan Williams arrangement, but this brisk version with pizzicato strumming and whistling is enjoyable. Partway through, the whistling subsides and loud downward attacks accompany the tune, eventually subsiding in favor of an undulating accompaniment with the melody moving among the players. The downward attacks return softly, and there is a long fade with the whistling and pizzicatos of earlier. “Marie/The Chat/Gale Warning” is a vibrant medley in which the melody of each section is buoyed by different rhythmic patterns, tempo, and countermelodies. Glissandos, tremolandos, pizzicatos, and harmonics demonstrate a variety of techniques borrowed from the quartet’s contemporary classical repertoire. The harmony employs stacked quartal chords, including the last vertical in the piece, which is another twentieth century calling card reminiscent of Bartôk and Stravinsky (both arrangers of folk music).
The last track is particularly evocative. “Når Mitt Øye, Trett Av Møje,” is a traditional Norwegian tune, in a resolute arrangement that the quartet plays with sumptuous tone. Once again, the Danish String Quartet has shared the songs of multiple cultures in compelling renditions. Keel Road is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.
Transylvanian Dance is the second recording on ECM by pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri; the first was Transylvanian Concert (2013). As the album title suggests, the duo explores Eastern European material, specifically that collected by Béla Bartók. Ban was born in Romania and delights in the fascinating polyrhythms of this region. Maneri is well versed in the microtonal and multi-scalar aspects of folk song. These are not mere transcriptions. Maneri has described them in interviews as, “a springboard,” a reservoir of melodic and rhythmic ideas that the duo use for improvisation. Recorded live in the Romanian city Timișoara în 2022 as part of ECM’s Retracing Bartók project, Transylvanian Dance demonstrates varied and versatile reinventions of its source material.
Bartók collected folk songs in Transylvania from 1909-1917. He made a number of trips to Eastern European countries, sometimes with his friend and fellow folk song collector the composer and pedagogue Zoltán Kodály. With cumbersome recording gear and staff paper at the ready, they sought out amateur singers, particularly those of previous generations. As older people in these regions died off, so too would generations of music-making. Before it would be too late, Bartók was eager to capture and transcribe their knowledge.
Ban and Maneri revel in the music Bartók found in his trips to Transylvania. The title track is a case in point, where Ban explores a mixed meter groove while Maneri plays modal scales with glissandos and bent notes that recall the gestural vocabulary one might hear from a traditional fiddler. As the piece progresses, Maneri plays long lines that blur the polymeter, inviting Ban to add splashes of cluster harmonies and a thrumming bass countermelody. Gradually, there is a coming apart and then rejoining by the duo, a recapitulation of the opening material, and then a sideways swerve with new harmonies, inside the piano work, and a rousing viola cadenza. “The Enchanted Stag” has a very different demeanor, slow and mysterious, almost pointillist in conception.
Ban and Maneri don’t neglect the jazz tradition in which they have been steeped. “Harvest Moon” is filled with scales from folk music, but is played like a blues ballad. “Romanian Dance” is an extended workout where Ban builds upon an asymmetrical beat pattern until it becomes a rich ground from which the duo’s forceful soloing emanates. “Boyar’s Dance” uses a soft, undulating piano passage as a refrain, between which is some of the most free improvisation on the recording, building to incendiary climaxes before lapsing into softly repeated dance steps.
The recording concludes with “Make Me, Lord, Slim and Tall,” in which both players explore a sumptuous melody over a mixed meter ostinato. The piece morphs between dovetailing melodies, post-bop, and extended harmonies featuring Maneri’s microtones and elaborate changes by Ban. It ends in a denouement, angular viola riffs and dance rhythms in the piano fading away.
Fluent in folk sources and imaginative in improvising upon them, Ban and Maneri have created a compelling document. I think Bartók would be proud of them. Transylvanian Dance is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.
The career trajectory of Elena Dubinets continues to soar upwards. The current Artistic Director of London Philharmonic Orchestra is now headed to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra next season to assume its Artistic Directorship. She will help to steady the tiller of one of the world’s most storied orchestras that has nevertheless seen some recent upheaval, lacking an Artistic Director since Ulrike Niehoff’s sudden departure last year, and a Chief Conductor since the sacking of the scandal-ridden Daniele Gatti in 2018. Her term will presumably overlap with the formal start of Klaus Mäkalä’s Chief Conductorship in 2027 (at a mere 28 years old, Mäkalä is the Concertgebouw’s chief conductor designate, and in a particularly eyebrow-raising move he recently announced that he would also assume the Music Directorship of Chicago Symphony Orchestra starting that same year).
Elena Dubinets by Sorina Reiber
Born in Moscow in 1969, Dubinets (pronounced “doo-bin-YETS”), grew up in the Soviet Union, earned her PhD from Moscow Conservatory, then emigrated to the US in 1996 when her husband accepted a software engineering position at Microsoft. She quickly rose in the Northwest music community, joining Seattle Chamber Players as a programmer in 2001, then joining Seattle Symphony in 2003 where she became Vice President for Artistic Planning during the final years of Gerard Schwarz’s long tenure as Music Director. She retained the position through the legendary Ludovic Morlot/Simon Woods era from 2011 to 2018 during which the Symphony reached a zenith in its international standing, driven largely by its new music initiatives, including the [untitled] series of concerts in the Grand Lobby of Benaroya Hall that often featured Symphony musicians performing contemporary chamber and electroacoustic works, plus numerous high-profile commissions and premieres of full orchestra works by Elliott Carter, Valentin Silvestrov and John Luther Adams among others.
After the departure of Morlot and Woods, Dubinets found herself unwanted by the Symphony’s new and more parsimonious leadership team, whereupon she decamped to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, thence to the London Philharmonic Orchestra, where she serves as the co-equal of the orchestra’s Chief Executive David Burke. Since the LPO retains a Principal Conductor (currently Edward Gardner) instead of a Music Director, Dubinets enjoys complete autonomy over the orchestra’s programming, a role that she has clearly relished after many years spent managing the intricate politics of US orchestras. Her projects in London have included a much-acclaimed production of Heiner Goebbels’ A House of Call and a high-profile US tour with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja.
Dubinets is also the author of Russian Composers Abroad: How they left, stayed, returned, published by Indiana University Press in 2021. Those of us with fond memories of her time in the Pacific Northwest wish her well with this exciting appointment.
Composer and synthesizer performer Leo Chadburn uses very little in the way of material, but it is employed to craft expansive compositions. On “Reflecting Pool,” pianist Ben Smith plays repeated arpeggios with a sustained low note, shadowed by Chadburn’s bass synth. The unpredictable change of harmonies against the constant bottom note brings together a compositional conceit important to Chadburn, movement concurrent with stasis. Gradually, the synth bends the low note down, creating new chordal implications. A brief fade ends the work.
“Map of the World” is a piece for violin ensemble, played here by Angharad Davies, Mira Benjamin, Chihiro Ono, and Amalia Young. A shimmering sustained vertical is offset by tremolando entrances at several different pitch levels and off-kilter metric accents. The combination of stasis and movement affords the ten minutes of music a continued sense of vibrancy and surprise. “De La Salle (Violins)” builds verticals out of tremolando passages, and Chadburn uses a breathy synth to support the top line, followed by a bell-like angular melody. Even though they only go down to G3 (the G below middle C), Violins have an impressively wide range, which allows Chadburn to create wide spacings and successive blocks of harmony. Even a small pitch change seems consequential, the move from a third to a fourth in the top voice announces a new section where things go sideways and the bell synth once again tolls. Near the very end, a bell line and single pizzicato line close the door on all the preceding music.
Smith returns for “Camouflage,” where the left hand breaks up chords and the right hand plays a syncopated melodic line. The left hand adds syncopations on different beat divisions than the right, creating a fascinating whorl of counterpoint. This process is continued, sounding like a fast-paced phase. The constant flow of variation eventually grows into a fortissimo climax, only to recede gradually, slowing, then suddenly silent. The final piece on the recording, “A Secret,” also for piano, begins with whole-tone scalar ascents followed by mixed interval scales that run all the way to the top of the keyboard. The piece has a bit of a “Hanon in Hell” vibe at first, but as the scales complicate, one realizes that again a procedure is afoot. Chadburn once again uses synthesizers to create a pedal, but this one is in the middle high register, filled with overtones, and moves gradually through a sequence of pitches. Unlike Feldman, who would draw one of these processes out over long stretches of time, Chadburn limits “A Secret’ to nine minutes. Plenty of ground is covered during this time, yet the synths provide the concomitant sense of stasis that Chadburn prefers in his work. Primordial Pieces is compelling throughout, and one of my favorite releases of 2024.
Prismatic/Plasmonic EP Music for flute and electronics Laura Lentz, flutes; Sean William Calhoun, electronics Blue on Blue Records
Laura Lentz’s Prismatic/Plasmonic EP consists of three works, each addressing contemporary approaches in a different fashion. Lentz plays beautifully, with enviable control and supple phrasing. Although the pieces include amplification and electronics, they do not dilute her sound in the slightest.
Prismatic Wind by Chloe Upshaw is a work meant to abet sound healing. Upshaw is a flutist who lives in Arizona and the idea of supporting the health of others, particularly other musicians, through a composed version of music therapy is an important part of her work. Prismatic Wind features gestures of rising tension and gentle release, affording an experience not dissimilar to meditative breathing. Electronics are used to add resonance to the flute and to underscore the aforementioned phrasing.
Plasmonic Mirror is written by Rochester-based composer/electronic musician William Calhoun. Cast in four short movements, the piecebegins with a lyrical flute passage, followed by beat heavy electronica, altissimo passages, a synth interlude, an IDM pattern with a new theme in the flute, altissimo flute lines, and dovetailing with a bass synth. It closes with the synths and beats moving double time with the flute playing trills and a triumphal ascent.
Lentz and Calhoun collaborate on what is effectively a remix of Claude Debussy’s 1913 solo flute piece Syrinx. Lentz plays alto flute and Calhoun incorporates a warm bed of synths and a high countermelody, all accentuating the modal and whole-tone writing in Syrinx. It is an intriguing experiment. One eagerly awaits Lentz’s next full length recording, but for now, there is plenty to savor in Primatic/Plasmonic.
Latvian Radio Choir, Sigvards Kļava, artistic director and conductor
Ondine
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (b. 1973) divides her time between her home country, Lithuania, and the United States. Her works have earned her accolades and laurels such as the Guggenheim Fellowship and a residency and commission from Aaron Copland House. She is well known for exquisitely constructed and powerfully scored orchestral music. On Aletheia, a different side of Martinaitytė’s music is shown; her music for a cappella mixed chorus. None of the pieces programmed on the recording use conventional texts, instead exploring a number of wordless approaches to singing.
Martinaitytė may not be using textual narrative, but the sounds she uses are equally communicative. The title work was written shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Built entirely out of vowels, its stacked harmonies and arcing glissandos suggest a mournful demeanor entirely in keeping with the subject matter. The composer’s harmonies move between cluster chords and deftly tuned overtones, with a gradual development of greater individuation of the parts and faster rhythmic cycling. The piece’s climax is an enormous yawp, followed by a precipitous descent in all of the voices.
Chant des Voyelles (2018) has an interesting genesis. Initially, Martinaitytė selected disparate texts to set, then decided to use just vowels from the text. At this point, she realized that she needn’t be so proscriptive, and decided to construct the piece based on vowels of her own choosing. An intricate web of harmonies and sustained lines, sung with pristine tuning by the Latvian Radio Choir, conducted by Sigvards Kļava, Chant des Voyelles is a luscious work that doesn’t require a program in order to make a strong emotional impression. Ululations (2023) uses the title technique to create a piece filled with varying speeds and types of keening. Rather than a specific topic, Ululations expresses grief for the violence, suffering, and separation occurring throughout the world in current times.
The recording concludes with The Blue of Distance (2010). The title is taken from a quote in Rebecca Solnit’s book A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Martinaitytė’s first textless piece, it is composed entirely of phonemes, whose variety engenders a number of vowel spaces that score the voices with a host of colors. So too the gestures found here, which range from held overtones to strongly punctuated utterances. Partway through, minor second oscillations in the soprano pile up into a blur, a reminiscence of Solnit’s “blue of distance,” but in the audible rather than visual domain.
Martinaitytė is moving into mid-career with a number of durable pieces in her oeuvre. Given the theatricality she can bring to textless vocal music, one wonders what she might do with a fresh libretto; her only stage work, to date, Steppenwolf,is over twenty years old. Regardless, her next compositions are eagerly awaited. Aletheia is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.
Miller Theatre Early Music Series at Church of St. Mary the Virgin
Saturday, October 26, 2024
NEW YORK – This past Saturday, renowned British vocal ensemble The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers, made their Miller Theatre Early Music Series debut. Presented at Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, the group performed music from their latest recording on Coro, The Deer’s Cry. Consisting of works by English Renaissance composer William Byrd (1540-1623) and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (1935-), this seemingly eclectic pairing worked well together. Christophers may often be economical in his gestures, but he elicits a beautiful sound and detailed approach from The Sixteen. St. Mary’s is a wonderfully resonant space in which to sing, allowing the ensemble to be shown to its best advantage.
Byrd was a recusant Catholic, refusing to join the Church of England at a time when his own faith was frequently persecuted. He was fortunate to have the most influential patron one could hope for: Queen Elizabeth. She gave Byrd and his older colleague Thomas Tallis exclusive rights to publish music in England, and for the most part was able to shield Byrd from the authorities. Some of the biblical texts he set, such as Ab Dominum cum tribular, heard on The Sixteen’s program, were repurposed to comment on the tenuous position of Catholicism in England.
The Sixteen presented a number of Byrd’s Latin motets. The composer delighted in learned devices such as canon. The evening’s opener, the eight-voice motet Diliges Dominum, features a “crab canon,” one in which the tune is designed to be performed forwards and backwards. This complex concoction likely delighted the composer, and was notated in customary fashion, with a poem indicating how to realize the canon; a code to crack for the performers. Miserere nostri is a collaboration between Tallis and Byrd, in which four lines were written by Byrd and another three by Tallis. Once again, canonic procedures are utilized, this time dealing with proportional lengths of melodic lines and intervallic inversion. Ab Dominum cum tribularer uses imitative motives that move throughout its eight parts to create a contrapuntal web. Christe qui lux es et dies takes a different approach, alternating chant and chordal passages, demonstrating Byrd’s capacity to create a simple, yet poignant, motet as well.
The program’s title work, by Pärt, is a setting of a modern English translation of the Irish prayer also known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate. There is a sustained soprano line with harmony in blocks in the men’s voices. Partway through, all the voices join in a rousing tutti, followed by a long decrescendo to conclude. The Sixteen sings with an extraordinary capacity for dynamic control and nuance, which was amply demonstrated here. Pärt’s Nunc Dimittis, the text a part of the evening prayer service, uses his signature tintinnabuli (bells) style, where some singers perform mostly linear chant-like melodies and others arpeggiate triads, creating both moments of consonance and dissonance in turn. Nunc Dimittis overlaps a number of parts, creating what feels like an entire set of cathedral bells pealing. The Woman With the Alabaster Box recounts the story from the Gospel of Luke, where a woman anoints Jesus’s head with expensive ointment. The disciples object to this opulent gesture, but Jesus tells them that it is appropriate.Here, the musical language is sparer, even severe in the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples. Perhaps Pärt agrees with the commentators who suggest that the anointing is, metaphorically, a preparation for Jesus’s death. The three selections by the Estonian composer showed the multiplicity of elements in his music, a vivid palette that too often has been mislabeled “holy minimalism.”
The concert program concluded with Byrd’s Tribue domine, an elaborate six-voice setting of a prayer of supplication, in which there is much alternation between different portions of the ensemble and tutti singing. The encore was Vigilate. which The Sixteen recorded for A Watchful Gaze (2023), another album focused on Byrd’s music. Taken at a brisk tempo with a thrilling conclusion, The Sixteen and Christopher’s rendition of Vigilate was the most dramatically intense performance of Byrd I have ever heard. An untoppable conclusion to their first visit to St. Mary’s under the auspices of Miller Theatre. One hopes they return regularly.
On Thursday evening in New York, Momenta Quartet’s October festival – now nine years running – closed with an assorted program, enthusiastically curated by violist/composer Stephanie Griffin. Griffin is the last founding member still actively performing with the group. Noting that this festival has ever featured the opportunity for each member to have curatorial carte blanche on one night only, Griffin nodded to the overall 2024 theme – Charles Ives at 150 – while admitting that “this is not a thematic program, but rather a joyous collection of pieces that I saw fit to celebrate the genius of Charles Ives and my own twenty years as the violist of Momenta.” As such, her own instalment was themed Momenta at 20. Griffin’s rather fine and comprehensive program notes are recommended ancillary reading, and can be found HERE.
The first musical offering was from Mexican composer Julián Carrillo: his String Quartet No. 3 “Dos Bosquejos.” Opening with muted strings and an effective microtonal chorale, this music veiled itself in mystery, dark and lush, a perfect selection with which to begin the evening. The piece continued to unfold like a set of exercises – or experiments – in string writing, with novel techniques (ca. 1927!) and textural effects. The first movement, “Meditación,” eventually burst a romantic vein, with solos and extended techniques eliciting vaguely integrated call-and-answers.
The second movement, “En Secreto,” felt eerily expressionist. (Griffin likens Carrillos’ music “to the work of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí and René Magritte.”) While related in mood and material to the first, the “secrets” revealed in this second and final movement were whispered between instruments in a matter-of-fact, straightforward mode, a little too efficiently.
Momenta seemed to relish these coloristic experiments in extended space. Carrillo’s numerous homophonic passages prove especially demanding in their intonation and yet most octave unisons were handled judiciously by this group. Suddenly, just as this essaying music began to fatigue under its own weight, it was over: a mere eleven minutes in duration.
After this, Stephanie Griffin spoke to the audience about the quartet’s close relationship with the music of Carrillo. They “fell in love” with the string writing of this composer and have established an important connection with his unduly neglected catalogue. Griffin has proclaimed* the forthcoming recording of Carrillo’s complete string quartets on the Naxos label to be Momenta’s “most significant legacy.”
The remainder of the first half highlighted early music from Charles Ives. Brief and inconsequential, The Innate (1908) for string quintet and piano, is based on hymnal material. It stood out as a somewhat unquantifiable preamble to the composer’s early quartet – the Quartet No. 1 (1896-1902) – which has been a favorite of Momenta’s, as Griffin explained in her spoken introduction. It was a part of their first season in 2004-2005, twenty years ago.
This first quartet from the turn of the century is a high-energy, Ivesian romp in three movements, containing a great deal of musical irony: an irony sometimes missed by Momenta on Thursday night. Striking the right side of Ives’ mercurial nature can challenging, particularly in his earlier works. There exists a quirky dimensionality here, even in seemingly upfront and “folksy” material. During Thursday’s performance, a command of tempi and rhythm in the first movement could have been better established.
The rhetorical components of the first and second movements urge a singular vision of interpretation. This brave new music, (as it was in its own time), remains theatrical today. For Momenta, the blending and balance amongst the four instruments went astray at times, requiring more central grounding in the hopes of evoking a sense of play. Where was the element of surprise?
Conversely, the third movement read as well integrated and convincing. The individualistic approach from each player here yielded dynamic displays of line and texture. One was reminded of Dvorak’s string quartets: folk-inspired and generous. Through contrapuntal awareness and a dash of extra courage, Momenta brought the recital’s first half to a delightful close, gleeful and quicksilver; Ives himself, not to mention Dvorak, would have approved.
After an intermission during which the audience was advised to stay in their seats, this lengthy program continued with a world premiere by Stephanie Griffin, herself in the solo role. The Overgrown Cathedral (2019-24) for viola and lower string ensemble was inspired by a disused, ruined cathedral in Brazil, the Igreja do Senhor da Vera Cruz.
Griffin’s idiomatic writing for solo viola flattered the piece’s narrative musical structure. Her new work unfolded as a dirge-like processional, improvisatory in its droning, rolling lyricism and unusually self-contained. The pulse altered little throughout the single-movement and skillful writing for all players alike brought to mind successful spectralist composers as well as the more contemporary Scotsman (and friend to string players), James MacMillan.
Solos in other instruments – especially the cello – peppered Griffin’s soundscape. About midway through the proceedings, “mosquito” effects emerged antiphonally, forming an integral role in the narrative and echoed by accompanying violas. As the scoring was devoid of violins (!) this resulted in an attractive sonority. The constant lulling never ceased and, relievedly, never got in the way of prominent soloistic activity. Dipping in and out of familiar string effects like sul ponticello and glissandi, The OvergrownCathedral meandered its way to a final utterance, at the brink of being circuitous.
Photo credit: Nana Shi
As finale, and in diptych with Griffin’s Cathedral, Claude Vivier’s Zipangu was an impressive stroke. Interspersed between these two larger works for string orchestra was another short, innocuous piece from Charlies Ives: his Hymn of 1904. One craved more context for this curatorial placement, especially for its juxtaposition with Zipangu.
But Vivier’s vivid, brazen work for strings from 1980 remained an apt and powerful choice. Brimming with a depth of sound we had not yet heard on the program, Zipangu boasted its novel textures as a means of expression, easily engrossing even the most casual listener. Vivier himself claimed, “within the frame of a single melody I explore in this work different aspects of color. I tried to ‘blur’ my harmonic structure through different bowing techniques.”
Glimmers of microtonal Ligeti shone through the spectral haze of this work (*think* 2001: A Space Odyssey). After Griffin’s favoring of low registers, the arrival of Vivier’s upper strings scoring proved a dramatic and welcomed shift.
This branch of string writing is not always easy to interpret nor to refine, especially for a quasi pick-up orchestra. Nevertheless, the sheer impact and boldness of the material seemed to inspire the string players on Thursday, many of whom Griffin described as “Momenta alumni,” having played with the group over the past 20 years.
Photo credit: Nana Sh
For some time, conductor and artistic director, Sebastian Zubieta, had urged Momenta to program this music by Vivier. On Thursday night, it seemed to augment the quartet’s profile and manifest a compelling wrap-up to the 2024 Festival.
What’s more, the works of Claude Vivier are worthy of wider recognition, 41 years on from his death. Thanks to Momenta and their colleagues this relevant, near-cosmic, Canadian voice reached our sympathetic ears on Thursday night, straight on through the hurly-burly “blur” of a 21st century that Charles Ives would have almost certainly recognized.
Guitarist Yasmin Williams displayed a number of unconventional methods for playing acoustic guitar during her first two recorded outings, Unwind (2019) and Urban Driftwood (2022). These were no mere tricks of the trade, instead serving as organic components in her creation of supple folk instrumentals. Acadia is her first recording released on Nonesuch, and features a number of collaborators. In another first, Williams also writes lyrics for her music.
Although it is her primary instrument, on Acadia Williams doesn’t confine herself to the acoustic guitar. She also plays tap shoes, harp guitar, banjo, bass guitar, calabash drum, electric guitar, and kora. On the track “Cliffwalk,” alongside her guitar and tap shoe percussion, folk musician Don Flemons plays rhythm bones. One of the best tracks is “Harvest,” on which Williams and Kaki King trade rhythm guitar patterns while violinist Darian Donovan Thomas outlines a melismatic tune. Abetted by banjo-player Allison de Groot and fiddle player Tatiana Hargreaves, “Hummingbird” starts with an effortless hoe-down and then has a slow interlude in the piece’s middle, the fast music returning in ebullient fashion to conclude it. On “Dawning,” Aoife O’Donovan sings multiple layers of vocalise while percussionists Kafar and Nick Gareiss accompany Williams’s folk style finger-picking. Darlingside and Rich Ruth join Williams, who plays harp guitar, on “Virga,” another nuanced vocal piece.
“Sisters” may have the most collaborators joining Willams, a string trio, marimba player Steph Davis, and another acoustic string-slinger, William Tyler. The arrangement is artfully made, suggesting that Williams could easily do a convincing album with larger groups of musicians. “Dream Lake” is the first track on the album on which Williams plays electric guitar and bass, accompanied by drummer Malick Koly in a piece that opens and closes with New Age music only to rock out in the middle. Multi-instrumentalist Magro contributes drums, synths, and bass guitar to “Nectar,” on which electric guitar is also featured in a fluid solo. On the last piece, “Malamu,” Williams plays both acoustic and electric guitars, with introductions and interludes featuring the former and the verse and chorus abetted by overlapping with the latter. Joined by drummer Marcus Gilmore and saxophonist Emmanual Wilkins, “Malamu” demonstrates a more jazz influenced side of Williams’ playing.
Acadia is one of my favorite albums of 2024, and it reveals exciting potential pathways for Williams to take. I am eager to hear what’s next.
