Piano

CD Review, CDs, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Percussion, Piano

Album Review – Nightflower

Elliot Cole – Nightflower

On January 25, 2019, Long Echo Records released composer Elliot Cole’s debut solo album, Nightflower. This album occupies the vague space between the generated and constructed, and lives up to its own claim in “defying the notion of computer music as inherently sterile or mechanical.” At the root of all these works, written entirely for human performers, are materials that were generated by a computer program of Cole’s design. The album opens with the kinetic, lyric, and mesmerizing Bloom, a trio for guitar, cello, and clarinet. Performances by Cabezas, Chernyshev, and Dodson are at times aggressive and urgent, tender and longing, and still when need buoyant and playful. These compositions are certainly not inherently sterile or mechanical, but the performers contribution to the human element in the music throughout this album is undeniable. After such a powerful opening to the album, Night (Corners) and Night (Flowers) disappoint in comparison. Billed as surreal, sprawling, and evoking Romantic piano nocturnes, the work instead scans as plodding despite Andrea Lodge’s carefully considered, introspective performance.

 

Flowerpot Music won me back over almost immediately, and is what I would consider to be the heart of this album. Cole is known for his percussion music, and the uninitiated will understand why after this five minute piece. The unique timbres of the flowerpots and the cathedral-like reverberation provide an immediate intrigue that gives space for Cole to play with pitch, duration, pulse, and repetition to great effect. The album closes with Facets, for solo piano. Like the “Night” pieces, Facets is also meditative and introspective, but a broader range of textures, dynamics, and tempi work to make a more engaging piece by comparison. Hanick’s performance expertly contextualizes these elements into a singular, cohesive arc, and is a fitting conclusion to this album.

 

Bloom

Gabriel Cabezas, cello

Stanislav Chernyshev, clarinet

Jordan Dodson, guitar

 

Night (Corners) & Night (Flowers)

Andrea Violet Lodge, piano

 

Flowerpot Music

Jacob Harpster, percussion

Matt Penland, percussion

 

Facets

Conor Hanick, piano

by Cortlandt Matthews
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Piano, Seattle

Piano Drop at Seattle’s Jack Straw

Destruction and reclamation, gimmick and avant-garde

One of the odder fads bequeathed to us by the 1960s is the ritual destruction of musical instruments. It’s a custom most famously associated with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend. But what bursts out in popular culture often has precedents in the avant-garde, and the origins of this particular brand of onstage iconoclasm can be traced to the Fluxus movement, specifically its founder George Maciunas. In a nod to classical tradition Maciunas chose the piano, rather than the upstart electric guitar, as the foil for his aggression, directing performers of his 1962 Piano Piece #13 to nail down the keys of the chosen target (Sonic Youth famously performed the piece in 1999). Maciunas’s legacy was continued by fellow haute culture exponents Raphael Montañez Ortiz and Annea Lockwood, the former using an ax, the latter using an array of execution methods that included burning, burying and drowning.

The instrument (photo: Jack Straw)

It was Ortiz that provided the inspiration for the Pacific Northwest’s most famous entry in the klavierzerstörungen tradition. To help gin up publicity for a 1968 outdoor concert benefitting two local arts organizations (including the now defunct KRAB-FM radio), promoters arranged for a secondhand upright piano (purchased for $25) to be dropped from a helicopter. The stunt succeeded in its goal, with a few thousand young attendees journeying to a rural farm in Duvall (25 miles outside Seattle) for a day of folk, rock and choreographed demolition. In the event, safety concerns limited the plummet to a modest 50 feet, producing more of a dull thud than a thunderous clang. But it was still enough to obliterate the case, keyboard, hammers and dampers, leaving only the frame, soundboard and the top five octaves of strings.

The addled contraption lay half-buried in its grade-level tomb for 50 years before being exhumed by Jack Straw Cultural Center, the successor organization to KRAB-FM and a Northwest counterpart to New York’s Harvestworks and Roulette. The carcass was deposited on an exhibition table in Jack Straw’s New Media Gallery, where it was made available for the explorations of several West Coast musicians. The missing bass strings precluded performances of “under the lid” standards by such early masters as Cowell and Crumb, and the missing keyboard ruled out what could have been an intriguing variation on Lachenmann’s Guero. So the invited artists set out to create new works for this unique instrument, working under few restrictions other than an appeal to accept its deformed intonation and to limit the duration to a Cagean 4’33”.

Amy Denio (L) and friends (photo: Levi Fuller, Jack Straw)

Thus it happened that on February 23, 2019 a standing audience assembled around the beleaguered corpse to watch 16 composers and ensembles strike, stroke and probe its innards. The acts included a folk band and an oral history reminiscence (both evoking the hippie spirit of the 1968 event), but most of the new works were composed miniatures in the American experimental tradition. Many of them emphasized standard Cowell/Crumb on-string playing techniques, occasionally aided by digital effects or EBows. But Music for a Dropped Piano by Seattle’s ubiquitous multi-instrumentalist Amy Denio stood out in its use of bowed piano technique. And Aaron Keyt’s Piano Gusting saw four performers directing their breath through straws at clip-on contact microphones attached to the strings, the signal thence fed into small handheld loudspeakers, creating a chorus of metallic piano-like tones modulated by breath rhythms—one of the evening’s most remarkable sound experiences.

Two other composers found unexpected points of reference. Luke Fitzpatrick, a violinist by trade who recently resuscitated Partch’s Adapted Viola from decades of case-bound oblivion, levered his experience salvaging moribund instruments with his piece 3144. Attacking the Duvall piano with finger taps on the soundboard and plucks and strums on the strings, Fitzpatrick directly evoked the sound world of Partch’s plectrum instruments. Simultaneously he intoned the piano manufacturer’s stamp and serial number (“Ivers and Pond Piano Company No. 5, 3144”) using the same delivery he has developed for his performances of Partch’s Li Po Songs.

Hendrix immolating his guitar (photo: Ed Caraeff 1967)

Dave Knott also found an external reference, gently laying a small guitar (that had itself been dropped and detuned) on top of the piano’s remains like a vicarious empath, conjuring up images of saplings rising from the decaying nurse logs common in the nearby forests. While Knott strummed the baby guitar, his fellow Eye Music members David Stanford and Susie Kozawa played the doomed piano like a huge prepared autoharp.

The vaunted instrument destroyers of the 1960s tended to enlist their actions as anti-war agitations, or as demonstrations of the fragility of life and culture. But the performers showcased at Jack Straw embraced a different, more redemptive tradition, one closely associated with the Pacific Coast: that of reclamation. Whether it’s Cage, Harrison and Partch making percussion instruments from junk, or Edward and Nancy Kienholz building sculptures and installations from society’s discards, the tradition is one that regards art as a regenerative act that reminds us of the essential musicality and expressiveness in the tiredest and poorest things around us.

Piano Drop featured works by Jeffrey Bowen, James Borchers, Bradley Hawkins, Ski, Gust Burns, Austin Larkin, Brandon Lincoln Snyder, Bruce Greeley, Home Before Dark, Jay Hamilton, Count Constantin and Stanley Shikuma in addition to those mentioned in the review.

by Michael Schell
Concert review, File Under?, jazz, Piano

Fred Hersch Trio Live at the Village Vanguard (concert review)

Fred Hersch Trio.
Photo: John Rogers.

Fred Hersch Trio

Village Vanguard

January 5, 2019

Sequenza 21

By Christian Carey

 

NEW YORK – Beginning the new year with a six-night long residency at the Village Vanguard, pianist Fred Hersch had a lot to celebrate. His current trio, in which he is joined by bassist John Hebert and drummer Kevin McPherson, has been together for a decade. They have received a Grammy nomination for their 2018 Palmetto Records CD Live in Europe. In December, Palmetto released another recording of Hersch in a trio setting, this one from 1997 with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Tom Rainey. 97 @ The Village Vanguard is the only live recording of this acclaimed ensemble. The CD also documents Hersch’s debut as a leader at the Village Vanguard.

 

Many celebrations include guests and Hersch’s residency was no exception. For the last three nights of shows, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, a Grammy nominee himself and a Guggenheim Fellow and MacArthur Award winner to boot, joined the trio. It proved to be a felicitous pairing. After the trio opened the set with Hersch’s meditative “Plainsong,” Zenón joined them on the pianist’s salsa original “Havana,” sending its sinuous melody soaring and building an exquisitely paced solo. Hebert and McPherson created a fulsome groove. McPherson’s ability to move from the pianissimo textural playing of “Plainsong” to the driving polyrhythms of “Havana” demonstrated versatility that turns on a dime. Hebert keenly targeted his playing too, moving between registers, engaging in melodic colloquy with Hersch, supporting the changes, and acting in concert with McPherson. All of this is even more noteworthy when one considers his uncanny ability to know exactly when and where to provide Hersch’s playing registral space.

 

Hersch’s music is often rhythmically intricate. In addition to the facility of the rhythm section, Zenón proved his mettle in the abstract phrasing and polyrhythmic environments of Hersch tunes “Snape Maltings” and “Skipping.” The latter tune elicited a verve-filled solo from Hersch. The pianist and saxophonist also made great foils for each other, one developing melodic breadcrumbs that the other had strewn in a previous solo. Zenón’s playing had a bite in the post-bop material, but was smooth and suave in the Lerner and Loewe’s “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Zenón’s composition “Temes” was an engaging part of the set, and it was fascinating to hear Hersch go to town on material new to him, displaying  a vivid imagination.

Hersch frequently writes compositions in homage to other jazz artists. “Lee’s Dream” is a contrafact tune, using the changes of Nacio Herb Brown’s “You Stepped Out of a Dream” with a new melody. It is dedicated to Lee Konitz. “Monk’s Dream” is dedicated to Thelonious Monk. During his set at the Vanguard, Hersch had Monk in mind. The closer was a one-two punch of the pianist’s harmonically inventive version of “Round Midnight,” followed by the group playing a rousing rendition of “Let’s Cool One.” Obliged by applause to share an encore, Hersch chose Billy Joel’s “And So it Goes,” starting in eloquent simplicity and then transforming the tune with intriguing modulations into a Chopin-esque reverie. The sold-out crowd seemed delighted to share in the celebrations.

 

by Christian Carey
Composers, Concert review, File Under?, Minimalism, New York, Piano

Simone Dinnerstein in Recital at Miller Theatre

Photo: Lisa Marie Mazzucco.

 

Simone Dinnerstein in Recital

Miller Theatre – Columbia University

December 8, 2018

Published on Sequenza21.com

By Christian Carey

 

NEW YORK – On Saturday, December 8th, pianist Simone Dinnerstein made a return appearance to Miller Theatre to perform an intriguing and eclectic solo recital. The stage was set with subdued lighting, with electric “candles” placed throughout and, over the course of the evening, small shifts of color. Ms. Dinnerstein, dressed in elegant, flowing attire, created an atmosphere through her performance demeanor as well. The recital was announced with no intermission and the pianist paused from playing only once, midway through, to acknowledge applause and take a brief break. However, by otherwise starting each piece immediately after the final notes of the one it preceded, she communicated clearly that this was not to be an event in which musical continuity would be broken by applause between numbers. Thankfully the audience complied, mutually agreeing to allow the atmosphere to envelop them too.

 

Dinnerstein played two pieces by the Eighteenth century harpsichord composer Francois Couperin, one at the beginning and another right before the break. This is the first time she has programmed the composer. Her approach to Les Barriades mystérieueses was sonorous, eschewing ornamentation in favor of unadorned, shapely melodies. Like the Goldberg Variations, the second piece required interlacing the hands to play everything on the piano keyboard that would have required two manuals on the harpsichord. Le Tic-Toc-Choc, ou Les Mallotins featured motoric clockwork and brisk filigrees that were an excellent foil for the Philip Glass work that immediately preceded it.

 

Mad Rush (1979), one of Glass’s best known piano pieces, was first composed for the organ at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where the composer performed it for an appearance by the Dalai Lama. Arranged for piano, the piece is forceful and filled with contrasts. Its delicate passages were played with a spacious sense of breath by Dinnerstein, while the more emphatic central section in piece’s the repeating loop was performed powerfully with fleet-fingered accuracy. Last year, Dinnerstein’s account of Glass’s Third Piano Concerto was impressive; here, she made a further case for a place in the pantheon of Glass pianists. Contrast played a large role in Dinnerstein’s rendition of Robert Schumann’s Arabesque. Once again, she emphasized the breath between phrases, allowing the audience a sense of deft transition between the various emotive sections as they unspun.

 

Erik Satie’s Gnossiene No. 3 received the mysterious performance its ambiguous markings and lack of bar-lines evokes. One part cafe music and another modal Impressionist excursion, the piece was rendered with an evasive, lilting quality.

The pianist, in general, avoids overt and flashy displays of hyper-virtuosity, preferring instead to pick distinct places in which she allows her playing to be unrestrained. Dinnerstein’s performance of Schumann’s Kreisleriana provided several excellent opportunities for effusive virtuosity, and they seemed all the more special for the way that the pianist set them in relief against the more contemplative portions of the work. Fleet arpeggiations flew and the fugal passage in the final movement was a brisk cannonade.

 

Dinnerstein’s aforementioned penchant for allowing the music to breathe, as well as the atmosphere she created for her performance, encouraged a normally bustling New York audience to truly slow down and breathe themselves: a welcome respite during the busy holiday season. When the encore she favored them with was not some barnstormer but instead a reprise of Les Barriades, allowing the program to come full circle, it seemed entirely appropriate.

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Piano

James Romig – Still (CD Review)

James Romig

Still

Ashlee Mack, piano

New World Records 80802

Composer James Romig has spent the past twenty years cultivating a body of work that embodies both rigorous structuring and a wide-ranging gestural palette. As is explained in Bruce Quaglia’s excellent liner notes for Romig’s first New World CD, Still, there is good reason for these two aspects to be so important to Romig. His training as a composer was with American modernists Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt, while his background as a performer – a percussionist – included a number of works by minimalists such as Steve Reich.

Extra-musical touchstones also play a significant role as inspirations for the composer. A series of National Park residencies has provided him with natural beauty to contemplate while composing. Abstract Expressionist painters such as Clyfford Still, who is the titular reference point for Romig’s piece on this CD, also enliven his imagination.

Nowhere in Romig’s output to date is this confluence of influences more apparent than in Still, a nearly hour-long piece for solo piano. One can see the pitch material’s progression in a chart in the liner notes and note the comprehensiveness of its organization. Unlike Romig’s portrait disc Leaves from Modern Trees, where the pieces tend towards tautly incisive utterance, here the progression of pitch material evolves slowly in a prevailingly soft dynamic spectrum. Ashlee Mack, a frequent performer of Romig’s music, provides a sterling interpretation. Slow tempi are maintained no matter what local rhythms (some complex) ripple the surface texture. In addition, Mack voices the harmony skilfully, allowing the piece-long progression to be presented with abundant clarity.

One more composerly ghost lurks in the room: that of Morton Feldman. Also an appreciator of Abstract Expressionism, who created long single movement pieces that transformed slowly and remained primarily soft, Feldman could seem to be Still’s natural progenitor. While surface details and scale of composition are similar, there is a significant musical difference between Feldman’s paean to a painter like Philip Guston and Romig’s reference to Clyfford Still. As pointed out by theorists such as Thomas DeLio, the undergirding of a Feldman piece is indeed subject to an organizational structure. That said, his work seems more intuitive than Romig’s, which is methodical in the unfurling of its linear components and their constituent harmonies. Whether Feldman’s surface in any way inspires the depths of Still, I am not sure; it would be an interesting question to pose to Romig. Either way, Still is his most engaging and beguiling piece to date. One looks forward to hearing more works that accumulate Romig’s proclivity for parks, painters, maximalists, and minimalists; these many ingredients make for intriguing results.

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Piano

Reinier van Houdt at Dog Star 14

The 14th annual Dog Star concert series rolled into The Wild Beast at CalArts on June 9, 2018 and featured the Los Angeles appearance of the noted Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt. A fine crowd assembled in The Beast despite a brush fire that shut down two lanes of the local freeway. Four contemporary solo piano pieces were on the program as well as Concert for Piano and Orchestra, by John Cage.

Layers for Piano, by Nomi Epstein, opened the program and began with a series of soft, single notes followed by brief chords. A deep rumble was occasionally heard in the lower registers, but the opening pattern of a few notes plus a simple chord persisted as the piece proceeded. The phrasing was consistently spare but engaging, with a quietly mysterious feel. The emotional delivery was impressive given the economical use of sound and masterfully restrained touch by van Houdt. The soft nebulous edges of Layers for Piano artfully evoked a comfortable float on a feathery cloud.

More quiet music followed with Pythagorean Study for piano and electronics, by Andrew Young. Short two-note chords separated by silence were repeated, as if some signal were being transmitted. As the piece proceeded this muted pattern repeated, with the notes changing pitch or played in a different register. The overall effect was to create a wistfully nostalgic sensibility from just this simple construct. The soft keyboard playing by van Houdt was the critical element here, and the listening was like basking in a collection of warm memories. Also, by Jennie Gottschalk followed and this displayed a similarity to the Young piece in that it consisted of quietly simple chords. These included dissonance as well as a somewhat darker tone in the lower registers. Although carefully subdued, Also contained a slightly sinister feel that was enhanced by the accelerando towards the finish. Rapid high and low notes completed the drama at the ending.

Trapani, by Jerry Hunt followed, and this 1989 solo piano piece provided a lively contrast to the more reserved music heard in the program to this point. Strong tremolos rippled through the highest and lowest registers of the keyboard producing an agitated feel full of anxiety and tension. A great wash of notes continued with a distinctly fluid feel, like some darkly churning waterway in full flood. The dynamics rose and fell like a surging tide, cresting to an impressive level, only to pull back again. The texture was a mass of continuous motion, as if driven by waves on a stormy sea. The extended tremolos, the variations in volume and intensity were all skillfully executed by van Houdt, whose precise control over the keyboard never wavered. Trapani is an expressive and animated conjuring of the powerful natural forces at work all around us.

(more…)

by Paul Muller
CD Review, Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York, Piano

Quattro Mani at Weill Hall and on CD

quattromaniresctructurescdcover

Quattro Mani

November 15, 2017

Weill Recital Hall

Works by Gosfield, Moravec, Machover, Lansky, and Ben-Amots

NEW YORK – Since 2013, pianists Susan Grace and Steven Beck have been performing together as the duo Quattro Mani. Their recent recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall presented several New York premieres, including pieces by Annie Gosfield, Paul Moravec, Tod Machover, and Paul Lansky. Gosfield’s mix of dissonance with rollicking rhythms was winning in “Refracted Rhythms and Telepathic Static.” Lansky’s three Color Codas – “In the Red,” Purple Passion,” and “Out of the Blue” – indeed embodied multihued harmonies and sparking ostinatos. Moravec writes in an elegant, idiomatic style for the piano. His Quattro Mani contains a substantial amount of memorable material — dare one hope it is a sketch for a double concerto? The evening culminated in a scintillating performance of John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction, which was both fiery and superbly coordinated.

Quattro Mani’s latest CD recording for Bridge Records, Re-Structures, is an engaging outing. The title work, also heard at Weill Hall, is by Machover. Scored for piano and electronics, it juxtaposes frenetic acoustic virtuosity with correspondingly penetrating digital commentary. Lansky’s Out of the Blue, one of the Color Codas also on the New York program, is an attractive post-minimal exploration of small cells of material that gradually expand into boisterous passages in octaves and quick scalar runs.

The multi-movement work Cembal d’Amore, Book Two by Poul Ruders changes up the duo’s instrumentation: Beck plays harpsichord while Grace remains at the piano. Its corruscating textures, varying duplications and canons in a sequence of movements based in part on Baroque dance suites, revels in chromaticism and wry wit in equal measure. Yet another shift in approach is found in Életút Lebenslauf by György Kurtág. Basset horns, played by Andy Stevens and Sergei Vassiliev, accompany the pianists playing instruments tuned in microtones. Mysterious timbres bump elbows with thornily dissonant angularity in a piquant, unforgettable piece.

The CD’s closer is a bit more straightforward, but no less captivating. Tango for the Road by Ofer Ben-Amots is an eight-minute long exploration of traditional tango rhythms and gestures, with a few surprises and a left turn or two along the way. The piece gives Grace and Beck an ideal vehicle to showcase the supple phrasing and suavity they bring to bear whenever given a chance to swing.

Re-Structures is an adventurous exploration of many facets of 21st century piano music: highly recommended.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Best of, CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Drone, Experimental Music, File Under?, Piano

Best Drone Recording 2017: Lee Plays Gibson

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Randy Gibson

The Four Pillars Appearing from The Equal D under Resonating Apparitions of The Eternal Process in The Midwinter Starfield 16 VIII 10 (Kansas City)

Andrew Lee, amplified piano

Irritable Hedgehog

Composer Randy Gibson is best known for his compelling experiments with intonation. R. Andrew Lee is the go-to pianist for Wandelweiser and minimalist-oriented music. On Gibson’s The Four Pillars Appearing from The Equal D under Resonating Apparitions of The Eternal Process in The Midwinter Starfield 16 VIII 10 (Kansas City), he meets Lee in the middle, creating a mammoth work out of very restricted means. The pitch material of the piece consists of just seven notes: D in all the octaves on a concert grand piano in equal temperament. Added to this are amplification and a small amount of electronic manipulation, designed to add resonance to the overtone vibrations taking place.

Irritable Hedgehog’s recording is a single unedited live performance from 2016 at University of Kansas City Missouri, with electronics realized alongside the piano part. Clocking in at some three-and-a-half hours, Lee deserves credit for a tour de force of stamina, focus and, perhaps above all, musicality in shaping the repeating pitches into countless varied phrases. Gibson is a master of deploying overtones. He has figured out how to exploit the various spaces between D’s to gradate the appearances of the harmonic series’ upper notes, or partials, and to maximize their potential. Shimmering conglomerations of overtones abound in The Four Pillars … it is certainly not a piece just about D! And while pitch serves as a focal point, it is worth mentioning that the piece’s overall shape, labyrinthine in scope, and its localized rhythmic gestures are equally well conceived. Four Pillars is one of the most compelling pieces yet from Gibson, and is Sequenza 21’s Best Drone Recording of 2017.

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Piano

Michael Vincent Waller -Trajectories in Santa Monica

On Thursday, September 7, 2017 the Soundwave Concert Series in Santa Monica presented music from Trajectories, the new CD from Michael Vincent Waller released this month on the Recital label. Pianist R. Andrew Lee, in town from Denver, and cellist Seth Parker Woods from Chicago were on hand to perform, having recorded the album in Kansas City last year. A good-sized crowd assembled in the Martin Luther King Auditorium to hear this latest release from the New York-based Waller.

by itself (2016), for solo piano, was first up on the program and the album notes by “Blue” Gene Tyranny  state that this piece “…describes a quiescent state of solitude but leaves the specific image to the mind of the listener.” The opening notes fall quietly from a simple chord and have that gentle, inward-looking feel so characteristic of Waller’s music. No heavy-handed chords or bold declarative statements disturbed the smoothly tranquil texture. Subtle and almost nostalgic in prospect, the economy of musical materials and the Lydian mode scale combined to agreeably invoke a state of quiet contemplation. The acoustics in the hall complimented the playing by R. Andrew Lee, who perfectly realized the understated essence of the score. Not quite six minutes long, by itself carries the listener on an inward journey so intriguing that time seems to be in suspension.

Visages (2015) followed, a piano solo in eight short sections and on this occasion five were selected for performance. Each of the sections offered a different musical visage and these were variously flowing, animated and purposeful, dance-like, questioning or quietly introspective. As with by itself, Visages is typically quiet and reserved, but there are the familiar elements of strong melody, repeating chords and counterpoint that serve to set the tone and color of each of the sections. The sections are typically brief – just a few minutes in length – but always long enough to establish a particular point of view about the subject. The sensitive playing of R. Andrew Lee was always in complete control of the delicate contours and balance of each section.

Cellist Seth Parker Woods joined R. Andrew Lee for Lines (2016), a duo that also included a video by Richard Garet projected on the screen at the rear of the stage. This opens with a rich cello line and simple piano accompaniment; the video was filled with scenes of various East Coast watery places. The music is restful and nostalgic – like pleasant memories floating by – and perfectly complimented the images on the screen. The cello line dominated for most of the piece and this was confidently played, yet sensitive and expressive. A short pizzicato section changed the mood slightly, but the return to arco phrasing served only to increase the sense of underlying longing. In the final minutes the mood turned remorseful, enhanced by some lovely playing by Woods in the lower registers of the cello.  The piece finished on a beautifully shaped low cello note followed by a softly echoing piano arpeggio. Lines is wonderfully interior music, made from thoughts and memories as much as by notes and sound.

Breathing Trajectories (2016) followed, a piece in three parts for solo piano. Part I begins with a series of simple phrases consisting of single notes – typically starting with an open fifth or octave – and completed with a dissonant tone. All of this is softly subdued, focusing the listener’s attention on the interaction of the sounds in each phrase. The effect of the third tone on the sustained ringing sound of the first two adds an element of uncertainty and as this pattern is repeated, a kind of question and answer conversation ensues. There is no other form or structure, yet these sequences of solitary notes are quietly thought provoking.

Part II extends this concept, this time with chord arpeggios that are allowed to ring out so that their component colors refract into the listener’s imagination. The interactions of the tones again drive the perceived feelings, and these are generally warm and reassuring, but also distant or uncertain. A series of slow trills and rapid melodic lines brighten the mood before slowing again to a peaceful finish. Part III opens with stronger and more substantial chords, firmly grounded in the lower registers. Rapid arpeggios follow and this adds a bit of dynamism and grandeur. The texture is not as spare here, flowing more easily, with the melody and harmony interweaving into familiar patterns that feel like the logical outcome of the preceding parts.

The final piece on the program was Laziness (2015), a cello and piano duo in three parts. According to the CD liner notes the ‘laziness’ refers to “…the dispirited state of confusion brought on by mixed emotions..” This is manifested in Part I by a series of quiet chords in the opening that sometimes vary from major to minor modes within a given phrase. Combined with the expansive cello line, a sense of disquiet is established. Part I ends with three ominous notes in the deep piano register – not unlike a knock of fate. Part II begins with a much more optimistic feeling, a moving piano line filled with bright sunshine and a warm cello accompaniment that carries a sense of renewed purpose. However this soon turns gloomy and a bit portentous as the tempo slows and the cello line descends downward. Minor key phrases appear at times and a feeling of uncertainty and agitation persist to the end.

Part III begins with repeating piano phrases, uptempo and full of movement and determination. The sustained cello line floats below, content to let the piano dominate. About midway through, the piano and cello engage in a kind of conversation that is full of briskly intertwining notes and repeating figures. Slower phrases enter and exit, adding a certain ambiguity to the initial sense of ambition and heightening the sense of mixed emotions. Laziness pivots nicely back and forth between confidence and doubt, leaving the listener to decide which path to take.

Overall, Trajectories is music for the interior imagination. Sometimes, music comes to us in a great symphonic fury, sometimes in bold declarative statements or in bright, vivid colors. The music of Trajectories comes to us quietly—almost as if we are hearing our private thoughts—and is all the more engaging as a result. While listening, I came across an article analyzing the mejores casas de apuestas en Chile, discussing how digital platforms are shaping the future of entertainment. It was an interesting parallel—how both music and gaming have evolved to offer deeply personal and immersive experiences, whether through soundscapes that transport the listener or technology that enhances user engagement.

The CD has been carefully mastered and edited so that all the nuance and detail of the music has been precisely preserved. Credit for this is due to Sean McCann of Recital, Denis Blackham of Skye Mastering and Ryan Streber of Oktaven Studios. The CD cover booklet features photography by Phill Niblock.

Trajectories is available directly from Recital and also at Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and other digital outlets.

by Paul Muller
CDs, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Piano, Recordings

Andrew Lee plays Ryan Oldham (CD Review)

Pianist R. Andrew Lee has released a new EP on Irritable Hedgehog. It is a recording of composer/improviser Ryan Oldham’s Inner Monologues (Venn Diagram of Six Pitches). The hexachord in question is presented in slow-paced fashion, appearing throughout the keyboard in configurations of varying densities. There certainly are links between Oldham and the Wandelweiser Collective and Morton Feldman in terms of the slow unfolding and deft touch with which material is deployed. One also might infer nods to both Linda Catlin Smith and Tom Johnson, the first in terms of a willingness to allow the proceedings simultaneously to drift and grid to an underlying pulse; the second via the process-based treatment of pitch and spacing. Inner Monologues is both an impressive and beguiling work.

As is so often the case, Lee is a dedicated advocate and compelling performer, cannily exploiting the resonance of the instrument, never pushing the proceedings but instead trusting the piano’s decay to be a guidepost, and exhorting the listener to live in the space of that decay far longer than is customary. When I recently heard Lee’s performance of a piece by Jürg Frey at New Music Gathering 2017 in Bowling Green, Ohio, he demonstrated a similar patient intensity that is perfectly suited to experimental and post-minimal repertoire. See and hear him in person when you can. But in the meantime, let his Irritable Hedgehog releases be a valuable stand-in for the live experience.

by Christian Carey