Bryn Harrison Three Descriptions of Place and Movement Quatuor Bozzini Huddersfield Contemporary Records, 2022 Composer Bryn Harrison writes about temporal organization and experience in music. Coauthored with Richard Glover and Jennie Gottschalk in a collaborative spirit, Being Time (Bloomsbury, 2018) examines the experiences of the three authors listening to music built in different time spans, from the longest works of Morton Feldman to micro music. Harrison explores these concerns in his own music, particularly subtle variations over significant durations. Three Descriptions of Place and Movement, his first string quartet, written for Quatuor Bozzini and recorded for Huddersfield, is both
Read moreChes Smith Interpret it Well Ches Smith, percussion and electronics; Bill Frisell, guitar; Mat Maneri, viola; Craig Taborn, piano Pyroclastic Records Percussionist Ches Smith was previously working in a trio with violist Mat Maneri and pianist Craig Taborn. In 2018, guitarist Bill Frisell heard them live and wanted in. The resulting quartet had to deal with the vicissitudes of the pandemic; their 2020 sessions weren’t released until 2022. Every eighth note is worth the wait. Smith plays drums and non-pitched percussion. He is also a talented vibraphonist. It makes a big difference that a bass player isn’t part of the
Read moreMỹ Lai Kronos Quartet Smithsonian Folkways In one of its most ambitious projects to date, Kronos Quartet has recorded Mỹ Lai, an opera by composer Jonathan Berger (Professor at Stanford University) and librettist Harriet Scott Chessman, who has also written a libretto for Georg Friedrich Haas’s next opera. Vocalist Rinde Eckerdt and multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Vo ̃ joined Kronos to create an East/West musical hybrid, with t’rưng, đàn bầu, and đàn tranh, traditional Vietnamese instruments, being added to the string quartet instrumentation. The story of Mỹ Lai is one of brutality against civilians, over 500 killed by the
Read moreWilliam Bolcom – The Complete Rags Marc-André Hamelin Hyperion Records William Bolcom has been an important exponent of the ragtime revival. He helped to mount Scott Joplin’s ragtime opera Treemonisha, has performed Joplin and much of the ragtime repertoire. Bolcom may have had a hand in Joshua Rifkin’s famed Joplin recordings, which were used in the movie The Sting. As Bolcom tells it, he played Rifkin rags by Joplin at a party before the recording was made. Bolcom also encouraged contemporary American composers to return to ragtime, trading many rags with composer William Albright (one of the pieces on
Read moreCold Blue Music has released Houses of the Wind, a new album of electro-acoustic music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams. This was inspired by a 1989 recording of Alaskan arctic winds blowing through an aeolian harp. In listening to that original recording again, John Luther Adams writes: “The voices of the wind singing through the strings of the harp brought back vividly the clarity of light, the sprawling space, and the sense of possibility I had felt.” The recent pandemic lock down presented Adams with the studio time to electronically reshape the recording and the result is a
Read moreJames Romig The Complexity of Distance Mike Scheidt, electric guitar New World Records James Romig is best known for his solo piano piece Still, an hour long meditation on the paintings of Clyfford Still. Trained at Iowa and obtaining the Ph.D. at Rutgers, where he worked with Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt, Romig has a number of serial works to his name. The structuring of Still displays this, but the surface has a limpid character and the gradual development of the material also demonstrates an affinity for Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. Pianist Ashlee Mack’s recording of Still was
Read moreTerry Riley Keyboard Studies John Tilbury, piano, harpsichord, celeste, and electric organ Another Timbre In addition to their impressive catalog of music of the moment, the past recordings that are uncovered and released by Another Timbre are frequently astonishing. This is certainly true of a recording of the great new music keyboardist John Tilbury playing three pieces by Terry Riley from 1965: Keyboard Study No. 1, Keyboard Study No. 2, and Dorian Reeds. Written just after In C, these pieces are foundational as well, presenting the methods with which Riley would assemble solo work from patternings. Like In C,
Read moreJohn Adams Collected Works Boxed Set 40XCDs Nonesuch What a seventy-fifth birthday present. Today, Nonesuch releases John Adams Collected Works, a 40-CD compendium of his recordings for the label and a few from other imprints. The curation of the set has thoughtful touches. It begins with Harmonielehre, the 1985 recording by Edo de Waart that began Adams’s association with Nonesuch and ends with a live recording of the same work by the Berlin Philharmonic, which released its own Adams boxed set a few years back (well worth seeking out). There are extensive liner notes, with essays by Timo
Read moreVadim Neselovskyi Odesa Sunnyside Records Jazz pianist Vadim Neselovskyi was born in Ukraine. He moved to the US to study at Berklee and has since joined its faculty, splitting his time between New York, Boston, and as a touring musician. His latest recording for Sunnyside, Odesa (the Ukrainian spelling of the city’s name) is a memory book of Neselovskyi’s childhood in Ukraine, with various places and experiences recounted as programmatic elements of the music. Another layer of the recording’s organization is the use of Pictures at an Exhibition, by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, its character as a suite of
Read moreŽibuoklê Martinaitytê Ex Tenebris Lux Pavel Gunter, percussion; Rokas Vaitkevičius, cello Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Karolis Variakojis, conductor Ondine Ex Tenebris Lux is the second portrait recording in as many years for composer Žibuoklê Martinaitytê. The works here are for string orchestra, two of them with soloists. They present a reduced language, often involving modal collections without any accidentals. Despite this, Martinaitytê draws forth a variety of compelling sonorities and textures. The Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra plays seamlessly, with rich tone and precise intonation. The title work, from 2021, is abetted by these qualities, its descending arpeggiations and vertical sonorities
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