Contemporary Classical

Seattle Symphony announces 2023–24 season

Assistant Principal Cello Nathan Chan (photo: Seattle Symphony)

Seattle Symphony has unveiled its 2023–24 season, replete with familiar repertory (including The Messiah, Bach’s St. John Passion and two Beethoven and Mahler symphonies), plus family concerts, holiday and community events, pop/Hollywood-style programs ranging from Disney and Harry Potter to Joe Hisaishi and David Bowie, and a bevy of blue-chip soloists and guest conductors (Lang Lang, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell and Marin Alsop among them). Thomas May has aptly summarized the season’s overall shape and scope, so I’ll focus on its contemporary music offerings, an area where the announced lineup is something of a disappointment.

With no Music Director to provide a coherent vision (the position has been vacant since Thomas Dausgaard’s abrupt resignation in January 2022), and with staff turmoil leading to the departure of Elena Dubinets (the executive behind most of its recent commissions and initiatives, now decamped to LPO) and the discontinuation of the acclaimed [untitled] series (which showcased genres other than conventional orchestral works), the Symphony’s new music programming has become unfocused, even lackluster, with no major commissions forthcoming in the 2023–24 season, nor any mainstage events comparable to 2022’s Buddha Passion, 2019’s Surrogate Cities or 2015’s unveiling (and premiere recording) of the critical edition of Ives’ Fourth Symphony. And although next season’s calendar boasts dozens of 21st century compositions, many of them are in the mold of the mandate-fulfilling, stylistically-inoffensive short works that have become commonplace on North American orchestra programs.

Dalia Stasevska and Lauri Porra (photo: Kari Pekonan)

Nevertheless, there are several highlights to look forward. And what follows is an opinionated listing of some of them:

  • Dalia Stasevska (a successor to Osmo Vänskä as chief conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra) returns to the mainstage to conduct her husband Lauri Porra’s Entropia Concerto for Electric Bass, with Sibelius and Anna Meredith also on the program. Porra is a crossover artist who could be regarded as a Finnish counterpart to someone like Edgar Meyer. He’ll also appear at the Symphony’s Octave 9 space in a chamber work called Cabins & Hideouts. All of these events will be in mid-November
  • Conductor David Robertson, who has an impressive new music pedigree (he was the first American to serve as Ensemble Intercontemporain’s music director), has written a new piano concerto for his other half Orli Shaham. They’ll perform it two weeks after the Porra events, along with Lydia Tár’s favorite Mahler symphony
  • Speaking of Vänskä, he’s slated to return in March—not, alas, to conduct Sibelius. But alongside the scheduled Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev warhorses, his program will include an interesting—and as-yet unrecorded—piece by the Korean-born, London-based Donghoon Shin. Despite its Steinbeck-alluding title, Of Rats and Men, its inspiration comes from Kafka and Bolanõ. In April, Vänskä will premiere another Shin composition (this one inspired by Yeats) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
  • Alisa Weilerstein arrives to perform Lutosławski‘s Cello Concerto, which might well be his most underrated work, and one in which he rather uncharacteristically establishes an oppositional, dialectic relationship between soloist and orchestra (personal note: many years ago as a student at USC, I played in the Concerto‘s West Coast premiere with Gabor Rejto as soloist)
  • Another April 2024 event features Ralph Vaughan Williams’ often-recorded but rarely-performed Sinfonia Antartica, which the composer adapted from his soundtrack to the 1948 feature film Scott of the Antarctic. This seventh of Vaughan Williams’ nine symphonies is perhaps the least admired of the lot (aside from the non-canonical A Sea Symphony, which is more of an oratorio), often inhabiting an uncomfortable no man’s land between program music and symphonic ambitions. But it’s also one of Vaughan Williams’s most colorful scores, featuring wind machine, organ, and a Sirènes-style women’s chorus. In the manner of last season’s presentation of Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles, the music will be accompanied by a multimedia presentation featuring journal entries and photographs from Scott’s doomed 1910–13 expedition
Steven Mackey (photo: Kah Poon)

The Symphony’s diminutive Octave 9 space will continue its newfound and successful scheme of double Friday night recitals (at 7 PM and 9 PM), which in addition to the aforementioned Cabins & Hideouts event, will include the following:

  • Hub New Music, the Boston-based quartet whose instrumentation duplicates that of the fondly-remembered Seattle Chamber Players (flute, clarinet, violin, cello), will perform on October 6, with a program featuring a world premiere by Nina C. Young, an experimentally-oriented composer who now teaches at USC, along with works by Daniel Thomas Davis and Angélica Negrón
  • February 2 will bring Steven Mackey’s Memoir, scored for string quartet, a pair of percussionists and a narrator. Premiered in May 2022, it’s a theatricalized setting of an unpublished memoir written by Mackey’s late mother (who was also the subject of his violin concerto Beautiful Passing, recently featured on Flotation Device via its premiere recording conducted by David Robertson—if only he would bring that to Seattle!). Mackey is a rock guitarist who got involved in instrumental composition through the influence of the Downtown New York improv scene and the broader international avant-garde—something of an American counterpart to Heiner Goebbels or Steve Martland. His music is often quite engaging in its unexpected juxtapositions of styles, but it can also drift into sentimentality, so I’ll be interested to see where in that spectrum this as-yet unrecorded work falls

Ludovic Morlot at [untitled] 2019 (photo: James Holt/Seattle Symphony)
2023–24 will mark the Symphony’s second full season without a Music Director, and its third full season (added to two COVID-shortened ones) under the leadership of its embattled President & CEO Krishna Thiagarajan. That the organization has returned to a full schedule—and that its musicians have maintained the orchestra’s impressive musical standards—is remarkable under such circumstances, especially given the compounding challenges of the pandemic and the effect of the city’s lingering social and economic ills on its civic and cultural life. Still, it’s hard to look back on the Ludovic Morlot/Simon Woods era (2011–19), with its succession of contemporary music triumphs, often presented through the innovative (and now abandoned) [untitled] series, without feeling a disconcerting sense of nostalgia—a gnawing fear that the glory years of the Northwest’s new music scene have ended, a perception reinforced by the fact that none of the composers, conductors and guest artists mentioned above currently reside in Washington state.

After Morlot’s final [untitled] concert in 2019, I noted how dramatic and reinvigorating his tenure had been for the Symphony, how this “exceptionally charismatic and personable conductor” had “succeeded beyond all expectations at winning the hearts and minds of the city”. Today, Seattle desperately needs another agent of musical rejuvenation. Something that’s not easy to find—but no other musical institution in the region can match the Symphony for prestige, reach and built-in resources. And so as its Board and administration continue their secretive search for the next Music Director, undoubtedly preparing to audition visiting conductors as candidates in the coming season, one can hope that enough hard lessons have been learned, and enough organizational agility regained, that dreams of Emerald-tinted musical splendors will include not just those in the past, but those yet to come as well.

by Michael Schell
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Marc Ducret Plays Time Berne (CD Review)

Palm Sweat: Marc Ducret Plays the Music of Tim Berne
Marc Ducret, guitar/arranger
Out of Your Head CD/DL

This is no ordinary jazz guitar album. Saxophonist/composer Tim Berne and guitarist Marc Ducret are longtime collaborators. After receiving a stack of compositions from Berne, Ducret set out to arrange them for overdubbed guitars, brass choir, voices, percussion, and cello (played by his son). Ducret knows Berne’s own style well, and while celebratingnd 2 it places his own stamp on this collection of work.

“Curls/Palm Sweat/Mirth of the Cool” begins the recording. An eleven-minute long suite, in it Ducret comes on heavy, with overdubbed, distorted guitars, panning between speakers. I didn’t previously associate Berne’s music with power chords, but Ducret rocking out is in some ways analogous to Berne’s Snake Oil band at full fury. “Stutter Step” begins with a long drone, over which an extended solo of angular lines, complete with whammy bar vibrato, create a fractious demeanor. There are then a series of harmonic arpeggiations alongside brass choir. The layering of instruments is adroit and the result, once again, faithful to Berne’s musical language. “Shiteless 1 and 2” are a study in contrasts, the first exploring noise and then adding horns to the mix, and the second overlapping harp-like arpeggios and a clean guitar sound.

Not all the compositions feature amplification. “Rolled Oats 1” and “Rolled Oats 2” feature a more traditional jazz sound, without effects or extreme amplitude. They are lithe standouts among the recording’s walls of sound, and a welcome respite that features Ducret’s playing in a gentler vein.

Palm Sweat is a fascinating translation by Ducret of Berne’s works. Recommended.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Dragonchild – “Above All” – (Single)

Today, dragonchild released “Above All,” a single from his forthcoming debut self-titled album, out April 21st, 2023 on FPE Records.

dragonchild is new project by Debo Band’s DA Mekonnen. Mekonnen’s background is fascinating. He is a composer, saxophonist, and ethnomusicologist who is applying the study of eighties Ethiopian cassette culture to create the music on the LP. His lithe saxophone solos celebrate this tradition of disseminating music, reviving its musical grammar and spirit. Recommended.

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer

Bernd Alois Zimmermann – Recomposed (CD Review)

Recomposed, Volumes 1-3

Bernd Alois Zimmermann

WDR Sinfonieorchester, Heinz Holliger: conductor

Sarah Wegener: soprano; Marcus Weiss: saxophone;  Ueli Wiget: piano

Wergo 3xCD boxed set

 

Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970) lived in Cologne and was an important member of the postwar avant-garde. However, he retained an independent voice, and did not operate in the circles of the Cologne School. His 1960 opera Soldaten, an ambitious work in terms of theatrical devices, vocal requirements, and musical demands, is both a zenith in terms of post-tonal writing and, with its use of collage, a precursor to postmodernism. 

 

Everyone needs to make a living. Zimmermann did so by crafting arrangements of preexisting pieces. His orchestrations did not strictly hew to the styles of the originals, instead creating vibrant translations that not only reconsidered them but proved influential on his own compositions. Many of the arrangements were composed for radio, a medium with which Zimmermann would retain a lifelong connection. He wrote about a hundred arrangements for radio and an additional hundred scores for radio plays. Heinz Holliger leads the WDR Sinfonieorchester in performances that emphasize Zimmermann’s penchant for rapid shifts of texture and dynamics – the aforementioned collage technique is built up in several of the pieces. The recording also features original compositions, some previously unrecorded.

 

Soprano Sarah Wegener admirably negotiates arrangements with their Zimmermann spin. Her performance of Franz Liszt’s “Oh! Quand je dors” is particularly lovely, the soprano spinning long lyrical lines and declaiming the text with detail and vivid dynamics. The orchestration is Mahlerian in cast, an interesting take on a Liszt lieder. The composer’s “Die Drei Zigeuner ” features nimble Magyar violin solos, with Wegerner’s voice blooming in arioso passages. Saxophonist Marcus Weiss provides a dynamic rendition of Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Romanze,” originally composed for solo piano. The orchestral interludes are thunderous, alternating with Weiss’s ardent phrasing. Uli Wiget is the nimble soloist in the aphoristic, blazing Concertino for Piano and Orchestra. 

 

Zimmermann was interested in Brazilian music, and the first volume of Recomposed includes several compositions and arrangements with South American influences. His own “Algoana. Caprichos Brasilieros” combines folk dances with stentorian percussion and, in places, more than a hint of Rite of Spring. ”A Lenda do Caboclo,” a piano piece by Villa-Lobos, is given a soaring rendition, with ebullient string passages and timpani supporting the clave rhythm. Darius Milhaud and Zimmermann were on amicable terms. Two arrangements  of movements from Milhaud’s “Saudades do Brasil. Suite de Danses” are included here, “Leme “ and”Sorocaba,” the former combining Ravelian impressionism and neo-classicism a lá middle period Stravinsky. “Sorocaba” has a lilting rhythm and overlapping winds. Equally fetching are two arrangements from Alfredo Casella’s “Undici pezzi infantili.”

 

Vernacular music comes from other sources as well, and Zimmermann demonstrates a keen ear for various styles. A polka by Bedrich Smetana is given a wry scoring. Antonin Dvořák’s “Causerie,” originally for solo piano, sounds as if the composer himself could have orchestrated it. A septet provides Cyril Scott’s “Lotus Land” with an exotic flavor. There’s even a “Blues,” composed by Edmund Nick. Zimmermann creates a rendition more akin to Hollywood than St. Louis, but it is attractive nevertheless.

 

A standout among the original pieces is Kontraste, a six-movement suite for “an imaginary ballet.” Composed in 1953, its waltzes and march must have thoroughly perplexed the composers at Darmstadt. Although the dance rhythms are faithful, much of the scoring is actually reminiscent of early Schoenberg. Also from 1953, “Symphonie in einem Satz” is at the other end of the  spectrum of Zimmermann’s work, a fiery serial piece that is most compelling. A valuable addition to the programmed works is “Konzert für Orchester,” a piece from 1949 set in a Bergian idiom.

 

WERGO Records knows how to do it right. The three-CD boxed set is accompanied by a 92-page booklet. Original compositions by Zimmermann are set alongside his orchestrations, providing interesting comparisons and contrasts. Holliger engages in a conversation with Michael Kunkel about the arrangements and original works. 

 

-Christian Carey



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

Laufey – A Night at the Symphony (CD Review)

Laufey

A Night at the Symphony

Laufey, vocals; Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hugh Brunt

AWAL

 

A Night at the Symphony sees release this week. Jazz artist Laufey performs a varied program in a concert performance with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hugh Brunt. It consists of previously released songs off her debut album Everything I Know About Love and 2021 EP Typical of Me, standards, and Icelandic jazz artist Elly Vilhjálms’ “Ég Veit Þú Kemur. Hearing a jazz ballad sung in Icelandic is a new experience for me. Vilhjálms’ style and the arrangement are indebted to Kurt Weill.

The hit tune, “Valentine,” displays the characteristics of Laufey’s voice, with suave phrasing and a warm tone. Laufey accompanies herself on the cello on “I Wish You Love,” using pizzicatos to create a bluesy progression. Her rendition of “The Nearness of You” demonstrates an awareness of swing that often places the vocal ahead and behind of the beat in a fluid rendition. “Every Time We Say Goodbye” is a valedictory staple. Here Laufey displays her awareness of expert predecessors who sang the American Songbook, Ella Fitgerald notable among them. A Night at the Symphony, a retro revival of swing and standards, is an excellent introduction to an artist coming into her own.

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Minimalism

Peter Garland – The Basketweave Elegies

Cold Blue Music has released The Basketweave Elegies, a new recording of music by Peter Garland. This is a CD of solo vibraphone music performed by renowned percussionist William Winant, a close friend and collaborator of the composer. The album consists of nine short movements in an alternating mixture of ‘declamatory core’ pieces and ‘lyric refrains’. Inspired by his admiration of basket making, Garland writes of the album: “The title was originally conceived as a homage to the late artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013), famous for, among other things, her woven wire sculptures.”

Peter Garland has a long and distinguished career in experimental music as a composer, writer and musicologist. He studied with Harold Budd and James Tenney and was influenced by Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Paul Bowles, among others. The press release notes that “Since the early 1970s, Garland’s music has been marked by a return to a ‘radical consonance’ and simplification of formal structure influenced by Cage, Harrison, early minimalism and a great variety of world musics.”

The very first thing you notice when listening to The Basketweave Elegies is the absolute radiance of the notes coming from William Winant’s vibraphone. Very quiet, still, the opening track, immediately establishes this purity of tone. The phrasing is simple – a series of singular notes followed by an arpeggio with very few chords heard at first. One of the ‘lyric refrains’, this piece is short at just 3:25, yet it casts a magical spell. Bright, clear follows, and this consists of high, brightly active tones in running phrases that evoke a sense of movement. Counterpoint appears in the lower registers adding some warmth as the tones combine in beautiful harmonies with lightly syncopated rhythms. One of the ‘core’ movements, the radiant notes of Bright, clear are memorable for their intensity.

The third movement, Very quiet still, has the same title as track 1 but begins with lower register notes that are softer and slightly slower. Middle register notes enter and some nice harmonies develop from this. This movement is similar to track 1 in construction as it continues with the mystical feel. Similarly, movement 4 shares the same title as the second movement, Bright, clear. Luminous tones are heard in a fluid series of independent melody lines. The pitches climb ever higher as if ascending skyward, adding a sunny, optimistic feel. The tempo is moderate, allowing the lovely tones ring out.

The remaining five tracks do not have duplicate titles but continue with the contrasting ‘core’ and ‘lyric’ pattern as before. Lyric, expressive , track 5, is heard with two melodic lines in contrasting registers. Understated and introspective, this movement has the lilt and rhythm reminiscent of a nursery rhyme. Vigorous, declamatory follows, and this features strong phrasing and higher pitches that invoke a sense of urgency. This movement has a purposeful sensibility that is propelled by short, punchy notes heard in the lower register. Peaceful, radiant, another lyric movement, is true to its title with simple chime-like chords and a lovely buoyancy. The declamatory Bold, emphatic opens with a series of ascending scales in brilliant tones followed by a soft trill in the middle registers. As the piece proceeds, the scales vary slightly and this introduces some interesting variation. Two-tone chords are heard as the sequences change in both quantity and pitch, giving a sense of movement and evolution to the phrases.

The final movement, Lyrical, tranquil, concludes the album with a slow series of notes in two independent lines that turn and work off each other . Descending scales in the higher line contain the more active rhythms, but the overall feeling is one of quiet serenity. The simplicity of form and the brilliant tonal colors of the vibraphone are lovingly maintained in this movement, as throughout the entire album. The sparkling clarity of Garland’s writing and the sure-handed touch of Wiliam Winant’s playing make The Basketweave Elegies a masterful summation of the elemental and the pure.

The Basketweave Elegies is available directly from Cold Blue Music and other music retailers.

by Paul Muller
Contemporary Classical

Julia Holter and Spektral Quartet record Alex Temple (CD Review)

Behind the Wallpaper

Alex Temple

Spektral Quartet: Clara Lyon (violin), Theo Espy (violin), Doyle Armbrust (viola), Russell Rolen (cello); Julia Holter: voice

New Amsterdam Records

Out this Friday, March 3rd, via New Amsterdam Records  is composer Alex Temple’s cycle Behind the Wallpaper. Vocalist Julia Holter joins the Spektral Quartet in this song cycle inspired by Temple’s gender transition. 

Holter, as always, is a marvel, with expressive, liquescent singing throughout her soprano voice’s range. The Spektral Quartet is given a variety of styles to play, from doleful lyricism reminiscent of Shostakovich’s string quartets to post-minimalism. The musical smorgasbord reminds me in places of Elvis Costello’s collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet, The Juliet Letters. Temple is fluent in marshaling these materials. Behind the Wallpaper deals with a significant event in Temple’s life, yet her touch is light and lyrics affirming. Recommended.

 

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Oracle – Joanna Mattrey and Gabby Fluke-Mogul (CD Review)

Oracle

Joanna Mattrey, Gabby Fluke-Mogul

Relative Pitch Records RPR1143

 

In their first collaboration, improvisers violist Joanna Mattrey and violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul create music that combines drones, microtones, and extended techniques. Mattrey also plays stroh violin, which includes an attached horn that serves as a resonating chamber. Performing the aforementioned sounds on the stroh creates far out results.

 

Each piece on the album is titled, “The,” followed by a single evocative word. Wayward lines and multi-stop pizzicatos begin “The Vision,” which are then followed by pizzicato glissandos accompanying a bluesy riff. Improvisations vacillate between these two demeanors, with greater sustain accumulating. The piece settles, only to be followed by the eruptive “The Trinity,’ with a howl of over-bowing and various methods to elicit scratching and non-pitched noise. “The Potion” returns to pitched sounds, with a duet between repeating patterns and glissandos. 

 

“The Switch” explores the lower register and quasi chitara strumming. As an antidote to all the upper register violin prior, Mattrey explores scordatura low tuning on her viola and supplies cello-like sounds. The texture gradually thins out, with glissandos and pizzicati dueling for primacy. “The Switch” ends on a sustained, bass register note. “The Child” begins most quietly, with upper register over-bowing, harmonics, then continues with pizzicato multi-stops versus a delicate altissimo melody. The delicate contrast with previous selections is welcome. While there is no steady pitch center, the duo play thirds and sixths and a modal melody. This isn’t to last, as hails of pizzicatos supplement it. Things remain soft, but string noise, circular glissandos,  and wood thwacks, with the occasional harmonic, create an entirely new atmosphere. This crescendos, and the noise quotient is upped, only to suddenly shift to quiet harmonics. Like so many of the pieces on Oracle, the music may be improvised, but the players are experienced enough to shape the musical narrative seamlessly.

 

“The Womb” is Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul at their most scary. The use of glissandos, sotto voce noise, and a  voice-like, panting line that predominates its opener could be licensed for a horror movie: why shouldn’t free improvers get some of the dough? Parlando whimpering is accompanied by an upper register fiddle followed by squealing string noise. This moves into a drone section of repeated plucked notes and microtonal sustained double stops. The monster’s voice returns, slighter higher, making it even more frightening. Just when you think the piece has hit its zenith, Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul quickly pull back to soft harmonics, only to build to a conclusion that howls with fury.

Oracle closes with “The Blade,” in which clock-like wood blows and a viola drone that gradually moves between three pitches and then is replaced with a high register squall. A number of ostinatos are juxtaposed, some pitched, some extended techniques, with the one constant being the rapping on wood. Like a broken clock coming apart, the material dissolves, with a pizzicato heartbeat ticking and altissimo harmonics and scratches gathering toward the close, an acerbic descending flourish. 

 

Mattrey and Fluke-Mogul have hit things off from the beginning. One hopes their musical association will continue.

 

-Christian Carey

 

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

Tony Oliver plays James Romig’s Spaces (CD Review)

Spaces

James Romig

Tony Oliver, vibraphone

Sawyer Editions

 

James Romig’s music has become more expansive. Spaces (2021) is his third recent piece to run over an hour in duration. Still (2016), a piece for pianist Ashlee Mack, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Last year brought The Complexity of Distance, a piece for metal guitarist Mike Scheidt that was both rigorously constructed and ripped uproariously. 

 

Like all of Romig’s music, Spaces has a highly detailed plan. Each of the four sections of the piece has an “a” and a “b” subgroup. They begin with a collection of three pitch classes that works its way up to six by the end of “a,” while “b” unspools this in reverse, ending with only three pitches. Three strands are put in a structural polyrhythm of 9:10:11, providing the work with an asymmetrical rhythmic scheme.

Vibraphonist Tony Oliver has worked with Romig for over thirty years, and Spaces was composed to celebrate that collaboration. One can readily hear why the two have enjoyed this association. Oliver performs every nuance of the score, embodying Romig’s music like few others do. Romig is a percussionist himself, and knows the in and outs of the vibraphone, the resonance of each key and the best way to balance a passage. This affords the music, despite its limited palette, to retain interest throughout.

James Romig

One continues to be fascinated by the surface of Romig’s music. After all the preplanning, the result sounds intuitive. Romig studied with the most prominent of American serial composers, Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt, and yet there is a palpable influence of the music of Morton Feldman on these recent extended pieces. And like Feldman’s own long works, Spaces has a meditative quality that draws one in and makes them forget the time that’s passing. As Feldman said about one of his pieces at its premiere, “It’s a short eighty minutes.” 

 

-Christian Carey



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

Anthony Cheung on Kairos (CD Review)

Anthony Cheung

Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions

Ueli Wiget, piano, Ensemble Modern, Franck Ollu, conductor;

Ensemble dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor;

Ensemble Musikfabrik, Elena Schwarz, conductor

Kairos Music

 

Anthony Cheung is a prolific composer whose music is situated astride spectralism and second modernity. This is his fifth portrait CD, his first for Kairos, and first of music that accompanies extra musical media. While these sources of inspiration are pivotal components for the music’s genesis, it stands on its own as an audio recording. The works are performed by three top flight groups, Ensemble Modern, conducted by Franck Ollu with piano soloist Ueli Wiget, Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Michael Lewanski, and Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by Elena Schwarz. 

 

Visual artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) made sculptures out of wire mesh. A line can go anywhere (2019) is a three-movement piano concerto inspired by Asawa’s work. The first movement’s title, “Wound Wire,” points out the connection between piano strings and Asaway’s wires. Harp-like piano arpeggiations and descending color chords are met by tumult, often riding just below the surface, that periodically erupts into repeated brass verticals. The piano enters a swirl of percussion and brass glissandos and shakes. Wind solos imitate the piano’s gestures with a dovetailing effect, and the movement ends with softer, angular attacks from soloist and ensemble. Wiget does a stalwart job matching the dynamic of the ensemble without ever overplaying. His imitation of the attacks of other instruments is noteworthy. 

 

The second movement, “Weightless/Sustained,” begins with the soft dynamic that ended the first movement. A second keyboard, tuned down a quarter tone, as well as microtones from the ensemble, serve to blur the piano’s music, creating a haze of overtones. Not to be outdone, the piano thrums low bass notes followed by birdsong-like flurries. Gongs and chimes further complicate the atmosphere, and descending wind lines are juxtaposed with the piano’s now ubiquitous birdsong and taut, quickly, repeated verticals. Once again, a denouement closes the movement.

 

The piece’s finale, “Woven Wire – Homage to Ruth Asawa” is a clever rendering in sound of the sculptor’s working method. The piano contorts a single line solo, let’s call it wiry, while metallophones also provide a taste of Asawa’s metallic medium. A plethora of glissandos in the various sections of the ensemble, as well as periodic stabs from winds, enhance this impression. A final section finds the piano playing repeated notes while boisterous brass and punctilious percussion attacks create a vibrant accompaniment. The piece closes with string glissandos surrounding final punctuations from, successively, piano and percussion. 

 

The Natural Word (2019) is based on the work of author Sean Zdenek, who has researched the use of closed captions in television and film. Zdemek observes that sound captions are selective. Since not every sound can be included, the editor must decide what to foreground and what background noises to select. The Natural Word doesn’t include captions spoken aloud, but rather uses a collection of them, taken from Zdenek and expanded by Cheung. The composer then found analogous film clips to score. The result is a series of short contrasting sections, many of which use coloristic orchestration: seagulls are depicted via altissimo glissandos, pattering rain by percussion, upper register plucked piano, and harp, and so on. Cheung does not just seek to imitate sounds, but in juxtaposing them, mine their cultural reference points. Thus, he shuttles between disparate scorings like jump cuts, but the piece is a cohesive whole.

 

Null and void (2021) was composed for the soundtrack of a short silent film Stump the Guesser, created by the Canadian filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galin Johnson. In his liner notes, Tim Rutherford-Johnson describes the film as having a “surrealistic, absurdist tone,” and being inspired by the Russian poet and dramatist Daniil Karms (1905-1942). Cheung responds to the material, and to Karms’ aesthetic, with nearly everything but the kitchen sink: Harry Partch’s instruments, thunderous, motoric percussion that references Russian futurism, swing-era jazz brass, with wah-wah mutes, glissandos, and altissimo stabs, and a pistol firing (there is a game of Russian roulette on screen). I would greatly like to see how it syncs up with the film, but null and void as an aural document has a beguiling sound world. 

 

Cheung’s partnership with Kairos continues to expand, encompassing a variety of techniques and inspirational material. Accompanying videos of these pieces would be welcome – dare we hope for a DVD release?

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey