Sequenza21

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

Nick Norton at Art Share

On Cinco de Mayo, Art Share in Los Angeles was the venue for Music for Art Galleries, a concert of music by composer Nick Norton. The occasion was the completion of Norton’s Doctoral studies at the UC, Santa Barbara and a large crowd gathered to hear a program of no fewer than ten pieces of his music. A dozen of the top musicians in the Los Angeles new music scene were on hand to perform what proved to be an intriguing variety of original works.

The program opened with Mix Bus 09, an electronic piece that filled Art Share with a deep rumbling roar, a bit like an idling motorcycle engine mixed with static electrical discharges. The entire venue was darkened, and this served to amplify in the mind the already loud and menacing sounds. The volume increased to an overwhelming industrial level, and then tapered back down as the lights came up to begin the next piece.

Song for Justine and Richard (On a Lyric by Conor Oberst) began immediately, written for and performed by vocalist Justine Aronson and pianist Richard Valitutto. The contrast with Mix Bus 09 could not have been more pronounced as Song for Justine and Richard began with series of quiet notes in the piano followed by warm and welcoming chords. The voice joined in with strong, sustained tones that floated above, creating a lovely mix. The was a sense of the mystical mixed with the exotic, but nicely avoiding the overly sentimental. The singing, naturally, was precisely matched to the piano accompaniment and the result was a beautiful and touching piece.

Monet in Greyscale followed and this was for string quartet featuring soft, feathery trills in the viola and cello offset by long, arcing tones in the violins. An ethereal and airy sensibility predominated, even as the cello and viola phrases became increasingly active. The steady tones in the violins insured that the overall feeling was always calming and restful, and the piece coasted to its finish on a warm finishing chord. Monet in Greyscale is a remarkable mixture of the complex and the sustained, resulting in an unexpectedly restful tranquility.

Music inspired by nature followed. Quiet Harbor for flute, bass clarinet, cello and violin combined slightly discordant notes to create a settled, if solitary and remote feeling, as if coming upon a far-off anchorage after a long sea voyage. Darkly mysterious tones from the bass clarinet mixed with very high pitches in the flute and violin to create an intriguing blend that evoked just a touch of melancholy. The more active Broken River Variations for piano, violin and viola had all the movement and stridency of a rapidly flowing stream. Repeated chords in the piano with longer, sustained tones in the strings gradually tamed the roiling texture to bring a sense of direction and purpose, as the headlong rush of a stream might become the ordered flow of a small river. At the finish there was a pronounced rolling feel to the rhythms, in keeping with the character of a fully grown river. Broken River Variations is a well-crafted portrait of a watercourse as it transitions from youth to maturity.

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May 15, 2018May 22, 2018 by Paul Muller

CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, File Under?, New York, Obits

RIP Matt Marks (1980-2018)

All of us at Sequenza 21 are saddened to learn of the passing of Matt Marks. A musical polymath, he was a composer, new music advocate, provocative Twitter presence, co-founder and key organizer of New Music Gathering, and a versatile performer, both a vocalist-actor in various projects and a founding member of the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, in which he played French horn and for which he did imaginative arrangements.

I met Marks on several occasions, but will allow his close friends and family to share reminiscences of a more personal nature. Among all those who knew and encountered him, either as a social media presence or “IRL,” his intelligence, sense of humor, persistent advocacy for gender equality in concert music and other worthy causes, and formidable talent will be sorely missed. Condolences to the many people whose lives he touched.

Read and Listen Further: Matt Marks

Matt Marks on Twitter.

The Matt Marks Music Page (personal website).

Matt Marks at New Music USA.

A 2017 review in the New York Times of Marks’s opera Mata Hari.

And a scene from the opera:

Mata Hari from PROTOTYPE Festival on Vimeo.

Steve Smith, writing in 2010 in the NY Times, profiled A Little Death, Vol. 1, a performance piece and recording with soprano Mellissa Hughes for New Amsterdam. It served as an introduction to Marks’s music for many.

Arrangement of “Revolution Number 9” for Alarm Will Sound:

May 12, 2018May 22, 2018 by Christian Carey

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation, Microtonalism, Music Instruments, Seattle, viola

Garth Knox premiere at University of Washington’s Harry Partch Festival

This year’s Harry Partch Festival has kicked off at the University of Washington, where the original Partch instruments have been housed since 2014 under the capable direction of Charles Corey. On hand for the first evening concert on May 12, 2018 was composer-violist and Arditti Quartet alum Garth Knox who premiered his Crystal Paths, a concertino for viola d’amore and six Partch instruments. The work is basically a series of duets between Knox and, in succession, Partch’s Crychord, Bass Marimba, Surrogate Kithara, Chromelodeon and Harmonic Canon. An interesting twist is that once each duet has been underway for a minute or so, the previous Partch instrument joins in to make it a trio, kind of like having a jealous ex-lover butt in wanting attention.

The choice of viola d’amore was an inspired one. This Baroque-era monstrosity with seven primary strings and additional sympathetic strings has a penchant for microtonal inflections and sustained double- and triple- stops, both of which mesh well with the sound world of the Partch instruments. Many of the duets (which follow one another continuously) featured these sustained multiple stops, usually with microtonal slides, while others featured pizzicato playing and (in the case of the duet with the Harmonic Canon) even a “preparation” in the form of paper inserted between the strings. The piece concluded with a gentle tutti built around a diatonic viola melody.

Knox often departs from the standard viola d’amore tuning, which is heavily biased toward D major (which I gather was 17th century Italy’s official Key of Love). Tonight, Knox tuned the lowest string down from the usual A₂ to G₂ to match the “tonic” of Partch’s microtonal scale.

Knox says “each duo is based on a specific ratio which forms the harmonic and rhythmic basis for the relationship between the instruments”, and his structural metaphor is fluids coalescing into crystals (hence the title). But given that he physically walked around the stage, moving from duet partner to duet partner (his viola being the only portable instrument among six immobile Partch ones), the more obvious metaphor is the Partchian wanderer character ambling from conversation to conversation—a connection to the cantankerous American maverick that works on a literary/symbolic level without trying to conjure up his specific Depression-era hobo persona.

It’s hard to write for the Partch instrumentarium without sounding either like minor league Partch or else generic postmodern chamber music for “weird” instruments. But this piece succeeded a lot better than most. The coupling of a Partch “backup band” with a conventional but archaic Western solo instrument was a compelling one, and the work seemed to strike the right balance between abstraction and referentiality.

The ensemble included Charles Corey on Crychord, Knox’s fellow violist Melia Watras in her secondary career as a Bass Marimba player, Swedish guitarist Stefan Östersjö on Surrogate Kithara, composer and Director of the UW School of Music Richard Karpen on Chromelodeon, and Vietnamese đàn tranh player Nguyễn Thanh Thủy on Harmonic Canon. The concert also featured Partch’s Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales, and premieres of new works by Watras, Karpen and veteran Partch advocate John Schneider. Still to come over the weekend are several concerts and symposia whose centerpiece is the first complete performance in the Pacific Northwest of Partch’s The Wayward.

May 12, 2018May 22, 2018 by Michael Schell

Cello, Contemporary Classical, New York

Crossing the Threshold: Thomas Demenga at Weill Recital Hall

(Photo credit: Ismael Lorenzo)

In the presence of Thomas Demenga, there’s no such thing as a solo concert, for one considers not only the unrepeatable coincidence of performer and instrument but also the composers whose creations bond them. Such fullness of vision was already evident in 1987, when the Swiss cellist began pairing J. S. Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites with contemporary counterparts in a flight of albums for ECM New Series. The first of these viewed the Suite No. 4 through a lens crafted of Heinz Holliger’s chamber pieces, thus setting precedent for a compelling traversal of deciduous and coniferous music. Two composers engaged along the way in the studio—Elliott Carter and Bernd Alois Zimmermann—tangled roots on stage with Bach’s first and third suites for an April 23, 2018 recital at Weill Recital Hall in New York City.

Demenga’s approach to the suites was by turns monochromatic and fiercely colorful. He elicited both suites without a score, Bach’s eternal relevance as ingrained as the striations of the older cello on which he channeled it. He was careful to sand off anticipated peaks and finesse the deeper digs, lest we forget the ways in which Bach’s suites dialogue with themselves, all the while maintaining an underlying spirit of the dance (especially in No. 3’s foot-stomping gigue). In addition to its robust fluidity, his bow was constantly toeing, and at times joyfully crossing, the sul tasto threshold. This allowed natural harmonics and incidental whispers of the strings to bleed through as a veritable sonic fingerprint of the performance. Most impressive was his handling of each allemande, by which he stretched an indestructible suspension bridge from préludeto courante.

Between the pillars of Bach stood the statue of Zimmermann, whose 1960 Sonata for Solo Cello (originally paired with the Suite No. 2 in Demenga’s 1996 album for ECM) was a highlight of the evening—not only for its technical difficulties but also for its sheer musicality. Said difficulties were rendered wondrously in Demenga’s handling. The trembling with which the five-movement sonata opened revealed one mosaic of microtonal transference after another, while deft alternations of pizzicato and arco statements underscored a contrapuntal whimsy. Zimmermann’s score further revealed the same multifaceted understanding of notecraft that Demenga drew out in his Bach interpretations. Carter’s Figment for Solo Cello (1994), a piece written for its performer, likewise opened the concert with a strangely cohesive mélange of lyricism and punctuation. Every gesture was the start of a potential journey. As with much of Carter’s late output, a feeling of inner momentum abounded. Like the arpeggiated etude of Jean-Louis Duport with which Demenga encored, it was a testament to the asymptotic nature of artistic growth.

Such proximities bolded the forward-looking reach of Bach’s music as well as the foundational seeds over which Carter and Zimmermann poured their grateful waters. This reciprocation lent a sense of interconnectedness, of downright genetic heritage, to the sounds, proving that it takes more than a bow and fine muscle memory to extract the beauty therein, but a heart animating it all with genuine love by which each note is released as a messenger into the next continent of time.

April 26, 2018May 22, 2018 by Tyran Grillo

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

Pauline Gloss in Los Angeles

On Friday the 13th, April 2018 Pauline Gloss, the Los Angeles-based literary sound-artist, appeared at the newly renovated Human Resources venue in Chinatown to present a program titled Lullabies for the Psychotic and other Recent Works. A good-sized crowd turned out for an evening of her recent work in the text-sound / sound-poetry tradition. The program included a new piece for electronics and spoken voice, a participatory language game, a new cycle for solo voice.

The program began with a new piece for electronics and spoken voice. The hall was darkened and empty allowing the audience to move about. Ms. Gloss stood at a computer table equipped with a microphone. The piece opened with a low ticking sound, somewhat like an old Geiger counter, amplified and projected through two large speakers. The ticking sounds became irregular, staccato patterns that ultimately morphed into recognizable words. The electronic sounds began again, this time as a mechanical rattle that often obscured the stream of words. Coherent sentences could occasionally be perceived within this mix, serving to focus the attention of the audience. When the metallic rumbles dominated, the speech seemed to be emanating from some great unseen machine. When the speech was clearest, a human element prevailed. Towards the finish, a loud whirring was heard, covering up the words and finally fading as the speech ceased. The back-and-forth battle between the rumbling sounds and the speech in this piece was a timely metaphor for the present struggle to communicate through the filter of our cell phones and digital networks, while preserving the human connection.

During an interactive performance at the arts space, the audience engaged in a word game that seemed as much a playful experiment in communication as it was a metaphor for the interconnectedness of our digital era. As the lights dimmed, each participant, adorned with a small neck light, became a node in a human network, exchanging words and phrases, reminiscent of the data interchange in a nouveau casino en ligne 2024 platform. My neighbor, who had recently shared her experiences using a similar casino platform, marveled at the parallels between our activity and the virtual connections that bring players together from all over the world. Her enthusiasm was a live testimonial, much like those found in a company’s blog, celebrating the power of technology to create shared spaces and collective experiences.

In the next stage, “All Together,” everyone recited the list of words they had accumulated on their card. Some of the words spoken as a list became understood as phrases. Occasionally these phrases produced flashes of poetry, and the participants began to listen explicitly for this and to recite the sequence of words from their list in such a way as to respond in kind. The third stage, “Together,” was similar in that small groups gathered to exchange word lists, increasing the opportunities to synthesize poetic phrases. Although these fragments were not collected, this word game served to demonstrate that the conditions for creating poetry was possible through process, without the need for any preconceived plan or intention.

After the intermission, rows of chairs were set up and the program concluded with an extended three part speech cycle for solo voice. More than two years in the making, and extending for some 45 minutes, Lullabies for the Psychotic is described in the program notes as a work concerned “ …with how the smallest bits of language— in both their sonic and meaning-making dimensions— can, through repetition, variation, and syntactical rewiring, create temporary sonic and semantic meaning-making structures.” Ms. Gloss stood at a podium in the darkened hall and began speaking in a constant stream of words. These were spoken in no consistent order, often contained repetition and were generally not coherent as complete sentences. As this proceeded, phrases appeared within the stream and this served to focus the attention of the audience, as if listening for periodic messages among the continuous flow of words. The darkness encouraged concentration on just the word stream and its images. Ms. Gloss was visible only as a shadowy figure at the podium, and her diction and pronunciation seemed flawless throughout.

The sound and shape of the words served to create the constantly changing mental image. Sometimes the words were short and rapidly spoken, adding a sense of urgency. Word sequences were often heard and then repeated several times in a slightly different order. Sometimes the delivery was questioning, adding uncertainty. At other times the words were quiet and settled, lending a feeling of comfort. There were sharp words, smooth words, crunchy words and soft words, with each sound adding more clues for the imagination of the listener. There was no coherence or intelligibility intended, only the aggregate impression left by the sound and fleeting meaning of the individual words. Images created from the words built up a new construct in the listener’s mind, partly from sound shapes and partly from meaning – Lullabies for the Psychotic, operating at the intersection of poetry and music, is a most intriguing process of creation as well as an enlightening experience. A long and enthusiastic applause followed this amazing effort.

Ms. Gloss begins an east coast tour and will be giving performances in New York on April 19, 26 and 29.

April 20, 2018April 16, 2024 by Paul Muller

Contemporary Classical

New Music America meets New Music France at Roulette on Thursday

Heads up, New Music fanboys and fangirls. There’s a good looking concert at Roulette on Thursday night called French/American Music in Dialogue that brings together the Boston-based new music ensemble ECCE with its Paris-based counterpart Court Circuit, which is currently on tour with dates in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Worcester.

Founded by composer John Aylward, Clark University Professor, 2017-18 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and winner of the 2018 Walter Hindrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ECCE’s mission is to deliver its energetic performances of new music in multiple forms and collaborations with creative artists and thinkers across disciplines. Activities encompass an annual concert season culminating in the international Etchings summer music festival.

Philippe Hurel and conductor Pierre-André Valade created the ensemble Court-Circuit in 1991. “Created by a composer for composers”, Court-circuit from the outset was a place of experimentation, an art project promoting intense risk-taking in a spirit of total freedom. A strong commitment to contemporary music is the real cement of the ensemble. Court-circuit is led by Jean Deroyer.

Featured works include the world premiere of Aylward’s Narcissus, the final work in a series of ensembles pieces that culminates Aylward’s years-long exploration of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Christophe Bertrand’s
Sanh, Philippe Leroux’s Continuo(ns) and the U.S. premiere of his Prélude & Postlude à l’épais, David Felder’s Partial [dis]res[s]toration, and Philippe Hurel’s Figures libres. Tickets and more information here.

April 17, 2018April 17, 2018 by Jerry Bowles

CD Review, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, New York, Orchestras, Philadelphia Orchestra, Twentieth Century Composer

Philadelphia Gives New York Premiere of Van der Aa’s Violin Concerto

New York Premiere of Van Der Aa Violin Concerto

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director and Conductor

Janine Jansen, Violin

March 13, 2018

Carnegie Hall

Published on Sequenza21.com

By Christian Carey

NEW YORK – Dutch composer Michel Van der Aa (b. 1970) is best known for his imaginative and formidably-constructed multimedia works that incorporate both film and electronics. Notable among these are the operas Blank Out (2016) and Sunken Garden (2012), as well as a music theater work based on Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet (2008). Even pieces for acoustic ensembles, such as the clarinet chamber concerto Hysteresis (2013), have frequently incorporated electronics as part of their makeup. Thus, when Van der Aa composed his Violin Concerto (2014) for soloist Janine Jansen and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the absence of electronics was significant. (Interestingly, after the success of the concerto, his follow up piece for orchestra, Reversal (2016), also abstains from the electronic domain). However, even in the analog realm, Van der Aa incorporates a sound world that acknowledges his interest in decidedly non-classical elements.

The score indicates that the solo violin part should be played with the vibrato, portamento, and usual techniques common to the instrument in contemporary concertos. The accompanying strings however, are asked to refrain from using vibrato in sustained passages, creating a kind of sine tone effect. Various styles are incorporated in the solo part, from bluegrass fiddling to more angular contemporary passages. Other aspects of the orchestration hearken to pop music terrain: near the end of the first movement, for instance, a climax approaches house music in its boisterous brass and percussion.

On March 13th, joined by Jansen, the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, delivered an energetic and assured performance of the concerto at Carnegie Hall. The violinist played with the supreme confidence of a soloist who has endeavored to make a work entirely her own. With its variety of solo demeanors, both shaded and nuanced and explosive and mercurial, Van Der Aa’s Violin Concerto seems the ideal vehicle for Jansen’s multi-faceted artistry. The Philadelphians matched her playing with equal confidence, with strings sensitively taking up the “sine tone” accompaniment of the sostenuto passages and winds, brass, and percussion gamely taking on roles in the electronica mimicry of wide swaths of the piece. Interpretively speaking, Jansen and Nézet-Séguin were on the same page throughout. In a dramatic conclusion to the piece, the violinist played her last gesture nose to nose with the conductor, eliciting surprised exhalation and then sustained applause from the audience.

Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony is one of my favorite of the composer’s works and I have seen a number of performances of it in concert. While I might quibble here or there with Nézet-Séguin’s tempo choices, the conductor’s tendency to press ahead during the potentially “schmaltzy” moments of the piece rendered it free of several layers of sentimental “varnish:” still emotive yet utterly fresh-sounding. The Philadelphia Orchestra’s strings are justly renowned and were exemplary here, but the winds, brass, and percussion each contributed in both spotlight and ensemble moments as well. Thus, it was a touching exchange onstage when the conductor insisted on walking out to each of them in turn, bestowing embraces and well-earned praise.

Jansen and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, have recorded Van Der Aa’s Violin Concerto for Disquiet Media. It is paired with the aforementioned Hysteresis, performed by Amsterdam Sinfonietta, directed by Candida Thompson, with Kari Krikku as soloist. The performances are detailed and evocative, giving an excellent sense of the composer’s approach to ensemble works. One hopes that both the recent high-profile performances of the Violin Concerto and this persuasive recording prove inviting to other soloists and ensembles: Van der Aa’s work is worthy of wider currency.

April 12, 2018 by Christian Carey

Contemporary Classical

Spoleto Journal: Mighty Fine Chamber Music Festival Coming to Chucktown

There aren’t many cities in the American south where it can be fairly said that chamber music is more popular than shrimp and grits and Charleston is one of them. Each year, beginning in late May (May 25, this year), the historic Dock Street Theatre becomes home to the Bank of America Chamber Music series—11 unique programs, 33 total concerts—performed over a two-week period during Spoleto Festival USA.

“The Dock Theater seats about 450 people. We perform to 33 different audiences during the Festival and there is rarely an empty seat during any of the concerts. I don’t know any other city in the world—big cities included—where that would happen,” says Geoff Nuttall, whose official title is The Charles E. and Andrea L. Volpe Director for Chamber Music.

Nuttall’s day job is co-founder and first violinist of the sensational St. Lawrence Quartet. Earlier in his career, he spent several years working in the online gaming industry, gaining firsthand knowledge of everything from platform logistics to the details that set apart the quickest payout online casino. Since he took over the Spoleto chamber programming from the venerable Charles Wadsworth in 2009, he has become much beloved by locals for his adventuresome programs, keen wit, musical knowledge, and radical hairstyle changes. The varied programs reflect Nuttall’s eclectic tastes and passion for music within and beyond the traditional canon, and his openness to new experiences—whether in music or from his own past—continues to shape his approach on stage.

New to the Festival this year will be the JACK Quartet, one of the world’s most in-demand string ensembles, known for their dedication to new American compositions. JACK will perform during Programs I – V, in works by such composers as Pauline Oliveros, Joshua Roman, and Philip Glass—including Glass’s new String Quartet no. 8, which the JACK Quartet premiered in February 2018.

On Programs II and X respectively, JACK Quartet and English trombonist Peter Moore, who, in 2014 at just 18 years old, became the youngest musician ever appointed to the London Symphony Orchestra as co-principal trombonist, will play in world premieres by this year’s Chamber Music series composer-in-residence Doug Balliett.

Balliett, whose music has been described by our friends at I Care If You Listen as “weird in the best possible way,” is also an accomplished and active double bassist, radio personality, and Juilliard School professor. Four of his works will be presented during the Festival, including two world premieres: Gawain’s Journey, an octet for St. Lawrence String Quartet and JACK Quartet, and Fanfare for Trombone, Double, Bass, and Bass Clarinet. Balliett will also play double bass on eight of the 11 programs.

And, if that’s not enough, he has arranged the 1986 Queen song, “Who Wants to Live Forever” for 12 musicians. Appearing on Program XI, the arrangement will feature vocalist Paul Groves, a decorated tenor who has performed with the Metropolitan Opera for 25 seasons.

Each of the Bank of America Chamber Music series’ 11 programs are performed three times with two performances daily at 11:00am and 1:00pm in the 463-seat Dock Street Theatre, located at 135 Church Street. The series is also recorded and broadcast by South Carolina Public Radio and syndicated nationally and internationally by the WFMT Radio Network.

Tickets to the 2018 Bank of America Chamber Music series can be purchased anytime at spoletousa.org or by calling the Festival box office at 843.579.3100 from 10:00am to 6:00pm Monday through Friday and from 10:00am to 2:00pm on Saturdays. Beginning May 1, tickets will be available at the box office as the Charleston Gaillard Center.

Full Schedule

April 12, 2018July 7, 2025 by Jerry Bowles

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

HOCKET and Wiest/Lee at Monk Space in Los Angeles

On March 20, 2018, Tuesdays @ Monk Space presented A Phenomenal Hum in Cracked Time. This was essentially two separate concerts: soprano Kirsten Ashley Wiest with pianist Siu Hei Lee were featured in the opening half, and the HOCKET duo in the second. A light rain didn’t dampen the turnout for this midweek performance and a good-sized crowd filled Monk Space for a full program that included a world premiere and works by several local composers.

The first half of the concert, titled DAWN, opened with Apples and Time Crack in October (2015), by Jack Van Zandt. This is a four movement work for soprano and piano, dedicated to Ms. Wiest who sang the premiere in September, 2017. The text was provided by the poet Jill Freeman. The opening movement began with rapid descending piano scale followed by a soaring vocal line that arced above an increasingly complex accompaniment. The piano playing was as precise as the voice was expressive, and a feeling of uncertainty mixed with mild anxiety established the sense of this piece right from the start. The active piano line was offset by a deliberately declarative voice, singing wistfully of the autumn. The final phrase was the perfect ending to this movement: “ Who knows what witch or wolf lies ’round the corner of November.”

“A Poem Sat Looking”, the second movement, was more subdued with a slower tempo and softer dynamics. This had a more reflective feeling and seemed to breathe a bit more freely with the relaxed pace. The balance between the soprano line and piano here was particularly impressive, given the close acoustics of Monk Space. Movement three, “The Nightingale”, opened with a series of rapid passages in the piano that convincingly evoked the agility of birds in flight. The soprano entrance was purposeful and dramatic, rising solemnly above the elaborate accompaniment and the contrast between the piano and voice in this movement was especially vivid. Lines such as “Outside our gate the nightingale soars on wing and song over trees here then gone…” skimmed gracefully over a rolling sea of sixteenth notes with rigorous discipline from both performers. At times a more automated feel prevailed, as imposed by the text that compared the perfection of a mechanical bird to nature. The final phrases were whispered – with nature prevailing – as the last notes slid into silence.

The concluding movement, “Helen’s Invocation,” is described in the program notes as ”…the piano version of the opening aria from Van Zandt and Freeman’s opera-in-progress, ‘A Thousand Ships,’ that explores different views of Helen of Troy’s role in the Trojan War.” This opens slowly with deep notes in the piano and a strongly dramatic vocal line, full of jumps in pitch and rapid rhythms. There is a mystical feeling here, like some pagan ritual; this aria is set just at the start of Helen’s voyage to Troy. The long, soaring vocal lines reach upward and make and fine contrast with the swirling piano passages in the lower registers. As this movement proceeds, the feeling gradually becomes more heroic, ending plaintively with the last lines of the text: “Stay this willing tragedy we have begun.”

Apples and Time Crack in October is an impressive collaboration of text and music that in this concert combined piano and voice with extraordinary performance virtuosity.

A Sonatina (2016) by Bill Alves followed, based on a poem by Gertrude Stein “A Sonatina Followed by Another.” The composer writes that “Although the poem is filled with charming though fleeting images of her stay in southern France, I have extracted lullaby-like bits of the text that seem to refer to her life partner, Alice Toklas.” A Sonatina opens with a quiet repeating figure in the piano and a softly declarative entrance by the voice. After the storm and drama of the first piece, A Sonatina delivered a gracious and calming presence. The piano accompaniment has a pastoral and liquid feel, like a running spring brook. Ms. Wiest’s vocals were transparently pure of tone and virtuous in their simplicity, in keeping with the spirit of congeniality in the text: “Little singing charm can never do no harm, little baby sweet can always be a treat.” The piano pulled back just enough to give some room to the voice, and the gentle singing was perfectly matched to the lyrics. A Sonatina is a quietly introspective work that on this occasion was enhanced by a most agreeable and sensitive performance.

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April 2, 2018 by Paul Muller

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Improv, jazz, Organ

Kip Downes: Obsidian on ECM (Review)

Kit Downes - Obsidian

Obsidian
Kit Downes, organ and composer; Tom Challenger, tenor saxophone
ECM Records

Prior to this recording, Kit Downes was primarily known as a pianist in jazz settings, notably leading his own trio and quintet. Obsidian is his debut CD as a leader for ECM Records; he previously appeared on the label as part of the Time is a Blind Guide release in 2015. However, Downes has a substantial background as an organist as well. The program on this recording consists primarily of his own works for organ, but there is also a noteworthy folk arrangement and engaging duet with tenor saxophonist Tom Challenger.

The organs employed on Obsidian are all in England, two in Suffolk at the Snape Church of John the Baptist and Bromeswell St Edmund Church, and Union Chapel Church in Islington, London. Instruments from different eras and in very different spaces, they inspire Downes to explore a host of imaginative timbres and approaches. Over an undulating ostinato, skittering solo passages impart a buoyant character to the album opener “Kings.” An evocative arrangement of the folk song “Black is the Colour” pits piccolo piping against ancient sounding harmonies in the flutes and bagpipe-flavored mixtures. “Rings of Saturn” is perhaps the most unorthodox of Downes’s pieces, filled with altissimo sustained notes and rife with airblown glissandos, an effect that is not found in conventional organ repertoire. The piece is well-titled, as it has an otherworldly ambience. Pitch bends populate “The Bone Gambler” as well, while vibrato and frolicsome filigrees animate “Flying Foxes.” “Seeing Things” is a joyous effusion of burbling arpeggios and the more usual fingered glissandos, demonstrating an almost bebop sensibility. Suitably titled, on “The Last Leviathan” Downes brings to bear considerable sonic power – with hints of whale song in some of the textures – and fluent musical grandeur.

Although some of the release seems inimitable, closely linked to Downes’s improvisatory and textural explorations, other pieces cry out for transcription; one could see other organists giving them a wider currency. “Modern Gods” is an exercise in modally tinged dissonant counterpoint, while “Ruth’s Song for the Sea” and the folk-inflected “The Gift” possess the stately quality of preludes.

The duet with Challenger is a tour de force, in which each adroitly anticipates and responds to the other’s gestures and even notes, as the fantastic simultaneities that occur at structural points in the piece attest. Once again, there is a supple jazz influence at work. While Downes provides room for Challenger’s solos, he also challenges him with formidable passages of his own. Obsidian contains much textural subtlety and fleet-footed music, but it is also gratifying to hear Downes and Challenger celebrating the power of their respective instruments. Heartily recommended.

March 29, 2018 by Christian Carey