Benjamin Lackner, piano; Mathias Eick, trumpet; Jérôme Regard, bass; Manu Katche, drums
ECM Records
Pianist Benjamin Lackner makes his ECM debut with Last Decade. Joined by a stalwart group of collaborators, many of them ECM alumni who have appeared on many of the label’s releases, Lackner is in an ideal situation to present his compositions, as well as one by bassist Jérôme Regard. A few of the constraints the pianist placed on himself, no electronics, a staple of his previous recordings, and the addition of trumpeter Mathias Eick to his usual piano trio format, have afforded him the chance to stretch. Lackner has described rethinking harmonic voicings and allowing space for a melodic voice as aspects that were spurred on by Eick’s presence.
Lackner’s originals move away from his prior post-jazz leanings back toward the modern jazz tradition. The recording’s opener, the smoky “Where Do We Go from Here,” begins with a slow tempo trumpet solo with a memorable melody that is then deconstructed by Lackner, with the two exchanging mid-tempo lines.Katche and Eick are well known to each other, having played on many ECM albums together, some as leaders and others as collaborators. Regard has been the bassist in Lackner’s groups since 2006. The two duos combine as an acoustic quartet that is distinctive and well-attuned. Lackner’s flourish-filled solo on “Circular Confidence,” followed by the slow build solo that follows from Eick, who emulates the climax of the piano material, is an engrossing piece. “Hung up on that Ghost” includes prominent bass pedals and a slow intro from Lackner, followed by a mid-tempo main section in which Katche provides variety from the kit. Gerard and Lackner continue their colloquy with burnished melodic play from the bassist. Eick’s belated arrival is no less welcome, his solo here angular, adding motives for the others to explore only scarcely outlined in the changes. The group ends up playing their material in counterpoint, creating a quilt of amalgamated textures.
The title track begins with a chordal presentation of the melody, with Gerard and Katche creating an undulating rhythmic canvas. Lackner’s solo gradually moves through 3:2 passage work to fleetly rendered arpeggiations. As it builds, the pianist burrows into the middle of the piano, ferreting out chromatic seconds. Eick’s solo instead begins with a light touch, gradually moving into the upper register but maintaining a piano dynamic. The piece ends with his solo, Katche providing a snatch of sizzle as punctuation.
Gerard’s composition “Émile” finds the bassist playing a funky solo reminiscent of his work with Lackner on previous outings. It is succeeded by the album closer, “My People.” Initially tried out in rehearsal in the polyrhythmic meter 11/4, the recording’s introduction instead shows a free rhythmic context in which Katche guides them without a strict time. Eick’s solo responds to this wayward context with free jazz lines that eventually are coaxed by the drums into a swinging post-bop essay. Lackner interposes lines with Eick, the two here playing some of the most creative music on the album. The tempo and demeanor shifts to a mournful minor-key ballad, sending the conclusion satisfyingly sideways.
Matthew Shipp, piano; Michael Bisio, bass; Newman Taylor Baker, drums
On World Construct, pianist Matthew Shipp is joined by bassist Michel Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker. Shipp has recorded with a plethora of current jazz performers. Each collaboration brings about different aspects of his playing and the ensemble vibe.
A short prelude, “Tangible,” establishes the vibe here, with melodic interplay between piano and bass, and drums punctuating the action. “Sustained Contrast” demonstrates Shipp’s connection to the jazz tradition, with plaintive descending arpeggiations in a ballad context. This is counterweighted with low register chords, enigmatic in their tonality.
“Spine” begins with fleet soloing from Bisio and angular voicings from Shipp. Baker joins with fills that complement Bisio. A repeated bass note and spiderweb melody signal a transitional moment, after which all three take a more forward-pressing demeanor.
“Jazz Posture” is the first tune on which the trio stretches out. Clocking in at eight and a half minutes, it begins with the rhythm section setting down a furious groove. Shipp enters, playing runs throughout the piano’s range. Rhythm section alone and piano cadenzas alternate. Each time, Shipp consolidates his playing to a particular type of voicing, while still retaining florid runs. Finally, a drum solo breaks the pattern, and Baker lets loose a volley that rivals Shipp’s exertions earlier. At the very last Bisio joins, and they conclude quickly.
“Beyond Understanding” takes on a mysterious cast, with shimmering cymbals, bass glissandos, and dissonant piano verticals. Shipp and company channel Crumb and Webern here. “Talk Power” is distinctive in the way that each instrument’s part goes its own way, yet the trio manages to lock these constituent fragments together.
“Abandoned” arrives thunderously, all three explosively attacking their instruments. The piece is a chance for them to play with abandon throughout, recalling hard-blowing free jazz by progenitors such as David S. Ware and Cecil Taylor. There is an eye of the hurricane moment, with repeated passages played by both Shipp and Bisio. A shimmering coda lands as an utter, compelling surprise.
“A Mysterious State” moves the trio back into a swinging groove, with Bisio walking and swinging roulades from Shipp. Baker’s playing is interesting here. He often takes things double time and then slides back into the primary groove with syncopated fills. An insistent two-note melody ushers in a middle section, followed by more intricate chordal repetitions. Chords build thicker and thicker, until released into a post-bop inflected piano melody that once again morphs into a series of repetitions. Diminuendo of piano and drums leaves Bisio’s bass forefront at the close. Bisio reappears shortly, his showcased soloing on“Stop the World” haloed by sustained chords from Shipp. The bassist moves from glissandos to short melodic bursts to walking lines. “Sly Glance” features a suave post-bop tune, accompanied by splashy runs, vibrant drumming, and a bass ostinato.
The title track closes the album with a ten-minute piece that is distinctive, even in comparison to Shipp’s many other large-form improvisations. It begins with a solo in the pianist’s patented disjunct harmonic style, Bisio and Baker providing syncopated counterweights to Shipp’s emphatic accentuations. Like a wheel losing its tread, the groove periodically sheds its impetus and then leaps back upright. Locking together in a two-against-three pattern, followed by a Rite of Spring type bitonal ostinato, the piece erupts in a vibrant panoply of interlocking rhythms. With the rhythm section continuing apace, Shipp adds narrow-ranged melodies and an upper register repetition that again recalls Stravinsky, this time Petroushka. I’m sure these aren’t deliberate hat-tips, merely shared fluency. Heated piano soloing is added to the polymetric grid and Bisio lets loose as well, while Baker coordinates with the various layers, quite a feat in itself. A lovely denouement finds the group arriving at a new melody, and Bisio taking things out with a thrumming low E.
World Construct demonstrates that Matthew Shipp is still full of surprises and as versatile as ever.
Whit Dickey, drums; William Parker, bass Matthew Shipp, piano;
TAO Forms CD
Procedural Language CD
Live at SESC Blu-ray DVD
Ivo Perelman, saxophones; Matthew Shipp, piano
SMP boxed set
In both solo and group settings, Pianist Matthew Shipp has continued to prolifically record in 2021. His collaborations with longtime partners, drummer Whit Dickey and bassist William Parker on Village Mothership, and Procedural Language, a celebration of his two-decade musical odyssey with saxophonist Ivo Perelman, are scintillating reminders of Shipp’s development of a fluid musical language that adapts to different scenarios. In these, he simultaneously suits and provokes the playing of his colleagues. In turn, Dickey, Parker, and Perelman bring out some of the best in Shipp. Over the years, their work has been formative in creating captivating examples of ecstatic jazz, as evidenced by the three CDs featured here, which are among our selections for Best of 2021.
A feature on the solo release Codebreaker is rapid shifting between surface rhythmic patterns while keeping the same underlying tempo structure. This is particularly evident on “Spider Web,” where right-hand oscillations and trills mimic the knitting activity associated with the title. Just as one begins to forget where the downbeat resides, Shipp supplies a deft reminder with a brief chordal and walking bass texture, revealing that the melody has ventured afar. We hear this too on “A Thing and Nothing,” the opening piece on Village Mothership, where in the midst of a steady midtempo articulated by the rhythm section, Shipp adopts solo breaks of propulsive angularity that fit odd groupings into the meter. Similarly, “Track 5” of Procedural Language features Perelman and Shipp playing melodic gestures with different sets of syncopations, Perelman starting his gesture after a rest off the beat and Shipp eventually moving from a dueling melodic role to chordal punctuations and swinging bass register interpolations. Independent rhythmic activity, either between the hands or among groups of musicians, is one of the hallmarks of free/ecstatic playing. It is the level of sophistication and interaction that these players can accomplish that suggests the language is ever-evolving. In this Dickey is simply a marvel. When one compares earlier recordings to his current approach, it is clear that he has reinvented his role behind the kit with poly-limbed polyrhythms abounding.
The aforementioned rapid juxtapositions in rhythm are joined by corresponding contrasts of harmonic color and melodic inventiveness. Dickey and Parker are involved in customary rhythm section roles, but they telegraph and respond to melodic material in such a way as to make the trio texture seamless. The voicings Shipp picks are often made more intricate by bass note choices from Parker. The two often engage in duets between multiple bass lines, one by Parker and another by Shipp, which anchor the music and allow that register a sense of melodic as well as harmonic import. The duets Perelman and Shipp engage in often resonate with overtone series upper partials that create a series of polychords against the grounding of the bass register. Perelman’s addition of microtones to the mix also involves bending notes in bluesy fashion and alluding to nonwestern music with complex scalar passages. Shipp has incorporated 20th century classical harmonies into his playing for years. There is no more eloquent example of this than on Codebreaker’s “Suspended,” a memorable ballad in Schoenbergian style.
The Procedural Languages set also includes an hourlong DVD of the duo live in San Paolo at SESC and a thoughtful booklet essay about their artistic partnership by Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg. Many Perelman/Shipp recordings have been made, but a document with video and discussion of their work puts this at the top of the list. Likewise, A Village Mothership captures the go-to trio for ecstatic jazz at the height of their powers. Finally, Codebreaker reveals that Shipp is capable of topping himself with inquisitiveness, imagination, and superlative technique. Recommended.
I first became aware of pianist Craig Taborn in the early aughts, writing about him for (dearly departed) Copper Press and Signal to Noise and contributing reviews of his various outings as leader and sideperson since. In his recent playing, Taborn has displayed increasing expansiveness and interest in diversely complex formal designs. Shadowplay is a 2020 live recording of the pianist at Konzerthaus, Wien. The full hour and a quarter of it is improvised material, some pieces providing a fresh perspective on Taborns creativity.
The opener, Bird Templars, is representative of the frequent juxtapositions of musical techniques employed on the recording. It starts pianissimo with a repeated mid-register tremolo and a gradually unfolding melody in the lower register, then doubled in rumbling octaves. The oscillation builds into chordal tremolos with the countermelody now placed in the middle register. A repeated figure in the bass starts to define the harmony, and it builds into octave arpeggios over the tremolos, now more insistent, and then a series of close-spaced intervals, a collection that will reappear in various guises. The roles shift, with chords in the left hand and a continually repeated unison in the right. These are the building blocks for the material that ensues, with a development in which sharing of material between hands is expanded and reconsidered. The middle section finally concludes with a keyboard spanning scale with the sustain pedal held down. This is followed by a section that puts the chords in the left hand and a mournful melody in the right in a grand crescendo of activity, which dissolves into the close-spaced interval group played inverted in the left hand while thirds in the right climb upward and revert back to tremolos to close. To work out such a framework on the fly takes technical skill, contrapuntal chops, and tremendous concentration.
Beginning with dissonant fragments of material, Shadowplay demonstrates concern with stylistic plurality. It moves through swing time sections, ostinato arpeggiations, thick repeated chords, a passage of minimalism, and an extended coda of repeated mottos in both left and right hand that link together in polyrhythmic post-bop fashion. At the very end, the motto pops up an octave to explore the soprano register and then, abruptly, stops.
The listener is treated to several more long form improvisations with compositional deployment of formal design, including the pair of Discordia Concors, a Schoenbergian essay with glissandos alongside melodic angularity and Concordia Discors that more resembles the color chords of Messiaen accompanying a mercurial ballad melody, which then goes into a double time ramble. There is a build to a protracted clarion repeated unison, then slowing to a glacial version of the ballad tune. Conspiracy of Things begins with a blustery cascade of dissonances that moves into an ebullient set of bebop variations. It finishes with an accelerando of chromatic passagework over a repeated bass groove.
A Code with Spells brings together a bluesy ballads melodic embellishments, repeated bass riff, and imaginative chordal exploration. Here as elsewhere, many different dynamic shadings and variations of phrasing create an abundant variety of impressions. The repetition eventually spreads to the entire texture, in successive ferocious builds and then a decrescendoing denouement daring the listener to guess when it will cease. Near the end, a triplet figure inserts itself and proliferates to take over the rhythm, accelerating to an abrupt close.
Now in Hope finishes the concert with a gospel/bop hybrid that is the closest material to traditional jazz on Shadowplay. At its conclusion, enthusiastic applause is left untrimmed – feel free to join in.
Composed between 1985 and 2001, the 18 Etudes by György Ligeti are an eloquent summary of the techniques he had developed throughout his career. They rival the best collections of etudes for piano while adding substantially to the variety of technical means to be explored, particularly in the realms of polyrhythm and sonority.
There are a number of recordings of the Etudes and it is difficult to choose a favorite: different ones excel at various aspects of these multifaceted works. Danny Driver’s is a strong contender. Amply powerful where required, Driver’s playing also brings out a variety of dynamic shadings, with passages of exceptional delicacy (notably absent in some other interpretations). For instance, Driver’s rendition of “White on White,” in which both hands play white note collections, is diaphanous in the beginning and coda and incisive in the moto perpetuo middle. He demonstrates mastery over the technical challenges and has a keen sense for the reference points found in each Etude.
Several interests that Ligeti developed late in his career impacted the language of the Etudes: the minimalism of Steve Reich, African music, and an abiding love of rhythmic canons that expanded to encompass the work of Conlon Nancarrow. One can also see in the list of dedicatees – Pierre Boulez (to whom the first three Etudes are dedicated), Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtág, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard among them – the music and performance qualities of others respected by Ligeti that in turn filter through the Etudes.
There are three books of Etudes, the first containing six, the second eight, and the last book four. Many have self-imposed restrictions that create intriguing, at times playful results. For instance, the first Etude Désordre consists of ascending and descending polyrhythms, with the left hand playing only black keys and the right white keys, thus juxtaposing pentatonic and pandiatonic collections. Galamb Borong also has a different scale for each hand, the two whole tone collections meant to stand in for the scales of Balinese gamelan. Automne à Varsovie is a canon in polytempo, with overlapping relationships of 3,4,5,6,7, and 8, and a perpetually descending motive.
Coloana Infinita, the 14th Etude,is the tour-de-force among formidable pieces. The original version was viewed as unplayable by humans, and made into a player piano piece a lá Nancarrow. The revised version is scarcely less daunting, Thick pile ups of chords build a multi-textured ascent. It sounds like at least three hands are required, but Driver manages just fine with two, wielding intensity and virtuosity in impressive fashion. He provides a similarly energetic performance of Vertige, its fortissimo, chromatic music, this time descending, devolves into a soft rumble only at its conclusion.
The final work of Book Three, a brief Canon, is rendered with effusion and a coy, pianissimo coda that is an enigmatic valediction. Canon demonstrates Ligeti’s continued inspiration and considerable imagination late in life. Driver’s recording is a fitting celebration of the composer’s legacy. Recommended.
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein has been playing Philip Glass’s music live for the past few years. Her interpretations, recorded on an Orange Mountain CD (Glass’s label) reveal dynamic subtleties and a romantic sensibility that creates a sense of vulnerability in the three etudes presented here; many others have focused on the motoric quality of their compositional processes. When I heard Glass play these pieces, he suggested that an approach akin to that of Dinnerstein is correct. It is refreshing to hear a pianist with superlative technique play the etudes with such musicality.
Dinnerstein presents the Glass etudes alongside a watershed work of the early nineteenth century: Franz Schubert’s final piano sonata. Where Mitsoko Uchida emphasizes a poetic interpretation and Jeremy Denk the pathos of the piece, Dinnerstein imparts delicacy and subtle shifts of harmonic hues. Not that requisite power isn’t brought to bear when Schubert indicates forte passages. But in seeking “A Character of Quiet,” Dinnerstein’s approach explores varieties of touch and resonance that give the sonata a valedictory quality entirely in keeping with its date of composition (1828, the year of the composer’s death). One of finest piano recordings of the year, it makes our Best of 2020 list.
Harbour, a recital recording of Anna Höstman’s piano works played by Cheryl Duvall, reveals an emerging composer who both synthesizes her research interests – she has written about Feldman and Linda Caitlin Smith – while developing a significant voice of her own. Thus, gradually developing fields of sound remind listeners of the aforementioned composers, but Höstman’s gestural palette is significantly different. Examples of this include the ornaments on “Allemande” and the blurring gestures of “Yellow Bird.”
The title piece is a twenty-five minute long essay that begins with flourishes that remind one of Messiaen’s birdsong, as well as gliss-filled descending lines, set against a slow moving series of polychords. Registral expansion affords these three elements considerable latitude and points of intersection. The verticals take on a reiterated ostinato that alternates with linear duos and the glissandos, allowing for the music to gradually grow more emphatic in demeanor. There is a long-term crescendo that allows for these elements to take on a certain bravura that transforms them, at least for the moment, into emphatic post-Romantic material. However, the sound soon scales back and Harbour returns to a quietly mysterious space.
Pianist Cheryl Duvall is an excellent advocate throughout, bringing a graceful touch and finely detailed shadings of dynamics and voicing to the music. Composer and pianist seem to be an ideal pairing on this consistently engaging release.
Pianist Philip Thomas is a prolific artist. A member of Apartment House, he recently participated in their recording of Ryoko Akama’s compositions for Another Timbre. Also on Another Timbre is Thomas’s gargantuan CD set of piano music by Morton Feldman, which includes several previously unreleased pieces.
Two of the pianist’s other recent projects focus on other members of the New York School. His deep dive into Cage’s Concert for Piano (again with Apartment House) has resulted in a book, recording, and an interactive online project, Cageconcert (cageconcert.org) that also includes apps to work with segments of the piece and make one’s own versions. He has also released a recording of Christian Wolff’s piano music. Finally, Thomas has recorded a CD of composer-pianist Chris Burn’s work, including transcriptions of improvisations by the late guitarist (and author of one of the key books on improvisation) Derek Bailey. As the interview below demonstrates, Thomas’s performance and recording schedule shows no signs of let-up. (Note: Philip and I talked before the pandemic, so some of his future projects are now TBA).
How did you and
Martin Iddon come to collaborate on a book about Cage’s Concert for Piano
(1957-’58)? Were the book and recording in process before the website and apps
were conceived or was the idea of multiple presentations part of the initial
concept?
This goes back a long
way! I had it in my thoughts that, having performed the piece a number of
times, with Apartment House but also with others, including the Merce
Cunningham Dance Company for the dance ‘Antic Meet’, it was a far richer piece
than had perhaps history had credited it. It’s such a well-known piece, not
least from its visual appearance, and its historic performance value has
influenced what we think of as a Cage-ian performance practice. Plus the
premiere performance and recording is notorious from its depiction on the
Twenty-Fifth Retrospective Concert album. But I felt strongly that there was
much that is not more widely known when digging a little deeper, both about the
way it can be performed, about the graphic notations of the ‘Solo for Piano’,
and about the instrumental and conductor parts. And I was aware that
performance as both historical and contemporary practice has a lot to say about
the music, not least because of the unusually long time one has to spend with
the piano part in order to arrive at something which is playable. So I set to
thinking about this as a major research project and immediately thought of
Martin as being an ideal collaborator, particularly due to his brilliant book
about Cage and Tudor, as well as his Darmstadt book. So over lunch in London
one day we dreamt up the project, which over the following year developed and
formed to include the book, the website and apps, as well as the involvement of
Apartment House. Then there was the inevitable long wait until we found out our
grant application was successful. The grant was for a 3-year project but
inevitably aspects of that spill over into the months since – and I’ve just now
finished the index for the book! The apps grew from a simple idea that we
thought might be nice to a far more complex concept than any of us could have
imagined, forming a vital part of the project. The team expanded to include two
research assistants, Emily Payne and Chris Melen – Chris being the developer of
the Solo for Piano app – with additional help from others, including Stuart
Mellor who designed the Concert Player app.
As a pianist who
specializes in experimental music, Concert for Piano seems like a natural work
to explore from multiple vantage points. When did you first become acquainted
with the piece, and what does it mean to you as an interpreter?
I’ve mostly played it
with Apartment House. I think possibly the earliest occasion was in 2008 when I
organised a 50th anniversary concert
of the 25-year retrospective concert. My experience then was as it continues to
be, that this is an exceptionally rich and lively piece, full of surprises, and
one which is a total joy to perform – each moment is alive and fresh, and my
experience as a performer is of being part of music being made, rather than
something which is ‘re-played’. We don’t rehearse, everyone works on their own
materials, and then it’s put together, so for everyone playing the experience
is as new as it is for the audience. This is true of many pieces by Cage of
course, but this piece seems to heighten those senses and the material is so
exaggerated in its range here – noises, pitches, highs and lows, louds and
softs, etc.
The website and apps
provided detailed and varied material from Concert. Will you share with us some
of the features you consider to be highlights?
There’s so much
there, a few of my favourite things include:
Interviews with
Apartment House – I love to hear the musicians of Apartment House talk about
what they do. These interviews are brimming with insight. I especially like the
films which combine their different insights, such as the ‘Performing the
Concert’
film and the last 10 minutes of the conductor film.
Watching the films of
our performances of the ‘Concert’ and also Christian Wolff’s ‘Resistance’ is a particular
thrill, because, as I suggested above, there’s so much unknown in the
performance itself that it’s great to get a stronger sense of the kinds of
things the other musicians are doing.
This one is not yet
on the website but will be appearing very soon – I have made a studio recording
of the complete ‘Solo for Piano’, which has never been done. It’s completely
different from the version I play with Apartment House – for this I recorded
each notation individually, according to a space time measurement of 3 minutes
per page, and then Alex Bonney has mapped them together like a patchwork quilt,
to get a complete 3 hours and 9 minutes performance of the Solo. You can hear
it now actually on the Concert Player app as it’s this recording which we use
for the app.
For the uninitiated person
finding this on the web, what do you think they apps will demonstrate to them?
I hope firstly that
it’ll just be a great entry into the music – that this is music people play and
love to play, and is really great to play, instead of perhaps either that it is
too ‘far-out’ or obfuscatory, or, the flip-side, that it is entirely open and
‘free’! For users trying out the Solo for Piano app, I hope it’ll both be a
great way of playing with the notations and their conditions for performance,
to see what might be possible and conversely what is not possible with each,
and to play with the multiple possibilities the notation offers; and that it
will also be an aid to performance. Of course each pianist will want to try it
out in their own way, but at the least I hope that for some notations this will
be a time-saver, offering possibilities to randomly generate multiple outcomes
and to print them off in usable formats. An obvious criticism of the app is
that it removes the fun of working these things out yourself – I think it
manages to keep the fun of playing with each notation, whilst cutting down on
the work needed to write these things out. And we’ve been careful to always
show where and how we’ve made interpretative decision when others might make
other choices, so it’s clear that this is both a facility AND an
interpretation.
And then the Concert
player app is simply a delight to hear – there are 16,383 possible instrumental
combinations of this piece, and we have a handful of recordings available.
Clearly, a recording of a work such as this can only hint at the slightest
possibility of how this piece may sound. But the app allows users to randomly
generate or select combinations, plus select pages, their durations, their
sequence, and then hear how that might sound. We’ve taken great care to ensure
the space-time properties of the music are upheld (measuring by the pixel!) and
so really this is a pretty accurate – no matter how inappropriate that word is
to this piece!! – realisation. I still listen to it regularly and am surprised
all the time by the combinations. It’s a thrill, so I hope people will just
dive in.
You have been
performing Morton Feldman’s music for over a quarter century. Still, the
recording you did for Another Timbre last year was a mammoth undertaking. How
long did it take to record? How do you keep so much detailed, long repertoire,
with irregular repetitions, in your brain and fingers?
Somehow it didn’t
feel like a mammoth task, more like a real pleasure to play these pieces again.
Perhaps surprisingly, I didn’t feel any kind of pressure to give a ‘definitive’
statement on the music – my performances on disc just happen to be a
representation of how I play this music today, after many years of thinking
about and playing it. If I were to record it all again in 10 years it may be
quite different, who knows? It was though a particular pleasure to discover a
few pieces that I hadn’t played before, namely the unpublished works I explored
at the Sacher Foundation in Basel, and the transcription I made of the Lipton
film music.
I recorded the music
over a period of about 2 years, in different sessions. It’s funny how the music
at times just sticks in terms of fingering, rhythmic detail, whilst at other
times what should be very familiar to me still seems strange. Certainly,
whereas I thought this project might draw a line in the sand for me – no more
Feldman! – I feel it’s done the opposite, opened up more possibilities, more
ways of thinking about the music. In particular, Triadic Memories, which
I’ve probably played more often than any other single piece of music, changed a
great deal for me in preparation for the recording and what I thought I knew
now feels more experimental, more curious, than ever. There’s a part of me that
sometimes tries to avoid Feldman’s music – it’s almost too gorgeous at times,
and I need to find something else, something of rougher hue, but those chords
keep pulling me back! Thankfully, there’s so much more to the music than just
beautiful sonorities, and in particular the music’s form and narrative feels to
me to be so strikingly original.
Are there surprises
among the previously unrecorded pieces?
Certainly, the
addition of struck drum and glass to the Feldman sound is pretty surprising,
bringing to mind much more the 1940s music by Cage, and here included as part
of a set of three pieces composed for the dance. In fact there’s a surprising
number of pieces composed for dance collaborations, not just for Cunningham,
but also for Merle Mersicano, as Ryan Dohoney has written about in considerable
detail recently. One of these is Figure of Memory which sounds nothing like
Feldman and more like some kind of sketch of a Satie piece, consisting simply
of repetitions of three short phrases.
Another recent
release is of music by Chris Burn, including a transcription of an
improvisation by Derek Bailey. How does that translate to the piano?
Well Chris is a
wonderful wonderful composer, and a brilliant pianist and improviser. And so he
is fully aware of the slightly perverse nature of what he was doing in writing
these pieces, not least as someone who used to play with Bailey. But these
pieces are not just really lovely pieces of music, but they also reveal
something about Chris and how he hears and thinks of music, as well as being
revealing of Bailey’s own work, and in particular of his love of Webern and his
close attention to pitch. So when the guitar-ness of the pieces is removed a
different side to Bailey’s music is revealed which is simply different but to
my ears no less remarkable.
As if 2019 weren’t
busy enough for you, a compendium of Christian Wolff’s piano music was released
on Sub Rosa. In the notes you say that “In all my performances of Wolff’s
music, I aim for interpretations that both interest and surprise me, allowing
the notations to lead me to new ways of playing and thinking about music,
whilst at
the same time trying
to lead the notations toward the unexpected.” When discussing the piano music
with Wolff, what were some insights he offered? What piece will most likely
surprise listeners?
The recent double
disc follows on from an earlier three-disc set, and hopefully precedes another
three-disc set to follow. Christian’s music is, when it comes down to it, the
music I feel closest to. I love the potential for change, for surprise, for
play. On the whole I tend not to ‘collaborate’ with composers (I trust them to
do what they do well and then it’s over to me) and so I love the moment when I
begin a new piece, I put it up on the piano and I start to think ‘ok so what am
I going to do with this’. This is where I am at my most creative, and
Christian’s music works especially well to that effect. I’ve never asked him
for his approval of what I do and most often he doesn’t hear my interpretations
until after I’ve performed or recorded it. Though the very first time we met,
in 2002, I played ‘Bread and Roses’ to him, waited for his response, and learnt
fairly quickly that his typical response was ‘Sure!’. He tends not to validate
not to denigrate peoples’ performances of his music and I appreciate that. He
doesn’t want to say ‘yes, this is how it should be played’ preferring instead
for the individuality of the player to find new solutions, new ways of playing.
And so I do hope with each performance I give of his music that I might offer
something that would surprise him, that might suggest possibilities in his
music which he’d not considered.
In this recent set
I’ve included a few pieces which are not published, so that surprised him too!
So three variations on Satie, pieces he composed for John Tilbury, which he
never quite convinced himself as worth publishing but hopefully he’s convinced
now they’re out on disc – they’re wonderfully eccentric pieces. Also his
Incidental Music, which he has played and recorded (wonderfully, on Mode) but
which he’d not heard anyone else perform. He was delighted, so that’s great.
And for anyone familiar with Wolff’s music I hope that my playing brings both
recognition and surprise too.
What will be your
next recording/recital? What will Apartment House be up to in 2020?
Next concert, in Cambridge in April, features a brand-new piece that Toronto-based composer Allison Cameron is writing for me, which I’m delighted about. And Simon Reynell’s always dreaming up new ideas and introducing me to younger composers and I’m always happy to play a small part in that project. And as a result of the Feldman release we’ve been able to commission one of my very favourite composers, Martin Arnold, to write a large-scale new piece for me. But that won’t be for a while. Lots of ideas, lots of pieces I want to play, but actually I’m hoping for a bit of a quieter year this year!
Christian
Carey is a composer, performer, musicologist, and writer. His work has been
published in Perspectives of New Music, Intégral, Open Space, Tempo, Musical
America, Time Out New York, Signal to Noise, Early Music America, Sequenza 21,
Pop Matters, All About Jazz, and NewMusicBox. Carey’s research on
narrativity in late music by Elliott Carter, presented at IRCAM in Paris on the
composer’s 100th birthday, appears in Hommage à Elliott Carter (Editions
Delatour). He is Associate Professor of Composition, History, and Theory at
Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey.
No matter how old the violinist Midori is,
I’ll always think of her as a child prodigy, the young teenager in the 1980s who
played with A-list orchestras around the world.
She hasn’t disappeared from public eye between then and now, and the
thrill of a child performing beyond her years is gone, but her name and her
reputation still garner great admiration and respect. This month, Midori is
touring a recital program she devised: works by five living female composers, including
the premiere of a brand-new piece. On November 4, 2019, her performance in New York
City with the pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute was at the nightclub Le Poisson Rouge.
From the first notes of Vivian Fung’s Birdsong,
Midori’s effortless technique and silvery tone were evident. Also immediately evident
was Jokubaviciute’s role as confident and equal partner, rather than solely an accompanist.
Fung’s 2012 work, true to its name, had the violinist flitting the bow across
the strings with subtlety and grace – this was not an “in your face” Flight
of the Bumblebee derivative.
Dancer on a Tightrope by the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina featured delicate work inside
the piano, with Jokubaviciute strumming strings inside the piano with her
fingers and with a drinking glass. Midori drew a wistful melody across the
strings of her violin, accompanied by a tremolo of low notes from within the
piano.
Olga Neuwirth’s 1995 composition, Quasare/Pulsare
called for the pianist to use an ebow, an electronic device that uses a
pickup and sensor coil to vibrate the piano strings. The eerie effect was matched
by the violin’s swooping notes that recalled a moaning ghost.
The world premiere of Unruly Strands by
the Boston-based composer Tamar Diesendruck was just two days prior, at the
Library of Congress in Washington DC (LOC commissioned the work). The most cohesive and coherent work of the
evening, it was played with distinct finesse by Midori and Jokubaviciute. The work
at times had a rather cartoonlike character, as the two instruments seemed to
chase each other like a cat and mouse. The
oldest piece on the program, Habil Sayagi, written in 1979 by the Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, afforded
both instrumentalists plenty of opportunity to display virtuoso technique, with
Midori’s violin replicating the sound of a middle eastern folk instrument and Jokubaviciute
taking a percussive role, rhythmically slapping the piano case with open palms,
ending the piece, and the entire evening, with a flourish.
Distractions from Le Poisson Rouge’s servers
aside (“Did you order the meatballs?”), the audience was rapt by the
performances and the selections. I, however, became fidgety by the last quarter
of the program. Though all the works were
terrific compositions, spanning 40 years and four countries, there was a
certain sameness of style that wore on me.
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.
