Record (And A Concert!) Roundup: On An Island

I may be in the minority, but I'm still not ready to go to indoor concerts. Whether it's in a glorious sweatbox like Market Hotel or the immaculate Merkin Hall, I can't seem to project myself into a space where everyone is sitting or standing together - masked or unmasked. I hope all my favorite artists, whose tour dates flash past in my newsfeed and my inbox, will forgive me. And I hope even more strongly that they get the audiences they deserve! Fortunately, some artists and presenters are being creative and I have so far been to concerts in a cemetery, an orchard, and will tonight experience one from a canoe in the Gowanus. But, most recently I visited a tiny, manufactured "island" in the Hudson River. Words on that below and on a few albums on islands of their own.  

International Contemporary Ensemble: Tyshawn Sorey - Autoschediasms While I can see arguments against them, as a lifelong New Yorker I am a fan of some of the investments made to revitalize the far west side with projects like the High Line. So I was curious about the latest to open, the Little Island, which has replaced Pier 55 on the edge of the Meatpacking District, but I couldn't see any reason to go there, especially with the Delta Variant cropping up everywhere. But then I got an invitation to one of the concerts in NYC Free, a month-long series of events on Little Island that will hopefully become an annual summer institution. How could I resist the opportunity to see the International Contemporary Ensemble in their first live concert since 2020, with Tyshawn Sorey conducting Autoschediasms, his classic work of spontaneous composition? In short, I couldn't, so my daughter and I drove downtown and, after parking at a meter on Gansevoort (it can happen, people!), we walked over to the Little Island. 

Supported by a series of udder-like concrete stems, the place is a fully terraformed two-plus acres, with paths and hills and at least two areas for music performance. There are also food and drink concessions, tables to eat at, and a wide variety of plant life. The night we went (Thursday, August 19th), the place was buzzing, too, with a crowd diverse enough to set an urban planner's heart a-flutter. Was it a little more crowded than we would have liked in some areas? Yes, but most people were wearing masks and we employed a time-honored NYC strategy: keep moving. At least after my daughter had a quick meal of a tasty grilled cheese sandwich and a can of wine, we kept moving. We followed the signs to the Amph, which is a gorgeous amphitheater facing west, and were able to choose seats far from other people, many of whom wanted to sit with a direct view of the river and the sunset to come.

Sorey admires his handiwork

As soon as the musicians assembled and Tyshawn Sorey began eliciting sounds from them with his trademark blend of hand gestures and instructions on a small whiteboard, I noticed the excellent amplified sound coming from the web of speakers above us. It was natural enough for the urban soundtrack to interact with the music, but loud enough so the sounds of the city couldn't become a distraction. As I did the last time I heard this piece - which is never the same twice - I took notes. Here's what I heard:

• Ghostly wails and guttural noises from Alice Teyssier (flute and voice), joined by Cory Smythe (piano)
• Cymbals and bells from percussionist Levy Lorenzo, splashy and nautical
• Dan Lippel down-tunes the E string on his electric guitar and attacks it with an e-bow, drawing fourth deep, burred sounds
• Mike Lormand's trombone inquires and Rebekah Heller's bassoon answers.
• An airplane weighs in with white noise from above.
• Teyssier on bass flute making whoops and whispers, a little comedy from Lormand's muted trombone.
• Hypnotic groove emerges from Lorenzo's toms and suddenly we’re deep in a jungle, jazzy stabs from the piano.
• Lippell starts to sparkle but…
• Everyone STOPS and Smythe goes OFF, then it's back to the groove, Lippel soloing with a furious delicacy.
• Things start to get frantic. And fragmented.
• Baton held high, Sorey brings the hammer down and…silence. For a second, anyway, before a new section begins, spacious and abstract, a prop plane commenting from the skies.
• Increasing angularity from percussion and guitar, brass and woodwinds in their own serene world.
• Repetitions from the woodblocks join up with a twangy riff from Lippel, then Sorey leads Lorenzo into a percussion solo, funky and virtuosic.
• Sorey starts micromanaging the percussion with his baton, directing rhythms and moving Lorenzo from instrument to instrument in his massive kit.
• On to vibes and piano with a smooth underpinning from the woodwind and brass.
• Lippell stars working his wah-wah and whammy bar, weaving a spell, Teyssier making strange incantations through her flute.
• Smythe digs deep on the bottom end of the keyboard while Lorenzo gets intimate with his side drum, leaning in, keeping the mallet close to the skin.
• Woodwind and brass get squirrelly, Smythe building something in the background, until Sorey pulls him to the fore.
• Things quiet down and break apart, Lippel getting downright nasty.
• Then we’re back in the ghost space again, Lippel, Smythe and Teyssier leading the way. Heller joins with percussive pops from her bassoon. 
• Lippell is now using his slide and things get quiet until…an OUTBURST - and then “Goodnight, thanks!” And it’s over. 

Sorey steps down and walks off, followed by the musicians. Spectacular! Everyone should see this engaging, entertaining piece at least once. Even some of the children (those brave parents!) were captivated.

Alarm Will Sound - Tyshawn Sorey: For George Lewis | Autoschediasms Rather than being antithetical to the spontaneous nature of the piece, having recordings of Autoschediasms is actually a delight. At bottom, they confirm the impression that in the end, Sorey's methods are resulting in music - and excellent music, at that - spiky and alluring in equal measure. His collaboration with Alarm Will Sound is as deep as that with the International Contemporary Ensemble. So much so, that you would never know that one of these performances was recorded on Zoom during lockdown. I watched it happen in real time and it's a stunning tribute to the flexible strength of both his conception and the musicians involved. While I somewhat miss the edge-of-the-seat engagement with each musician's reactions to Sorey's directions, that's only because I've seen it happen. However, the two Autoschediasms here are almost bonus tracks to accompany the immaculate world-premiere recording of For George Lewis, a nearly hour-long homage to a towering figure in contemporary composition and one of Sorey's mentors. 

This magnificent piece is the kind of music that compels you to breathe along with it, deep, lingering breaths to entrain with the succession of extended tones and chords from the ensemble. Some of the gravitas of later Messiaen is here, along with Morricone at his most pensive, but the totality of the work is all Sorey. The way the woodwinds and brass link up and then separate, the extraordinary use of the piano's low end, and the immense subtlety of the percussion are just some of the very distinctive touches here. Another is the way he builds drama within a very narrow dynamic range, which is essentially unchanged throughout the piece, toying with your expectations and keeping you riveted throughout. And then, just as the conclusion is drawing near, an ever-so-gentle reference to jazz, with mournful, soaring trumpet, is seamlessly evoked. There is much to discover in this monumental work and I'm grateful for the journey.

Michael Compitello - Unsnared Drum My first listen through this album for solo snare drum went through a few stages. I started skeptically, unsure that it was even a good idea. Then as it launched on the wings of Nina C. Young's remarkably textured, electronically enhanced Heart.Throb (2019), it turned into a high-wire act. Could Compitello really keep up this level of interest on pieces by Hannah Lash, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Tonia Ko? After the resonance and mystery of Young's piece faded, Lash's Start (2018) arrested with its brittle bursts, causing my admiration for her to rise, not to mention my astonishment at Compitello's brilliant technique. Ghost In The Machine (2019), Kirsten's entry, leans into the clanky funk of the drum's possibilities, even calling Michael Blair's work for Tom Waits to mind. Finally, we get Negative Magic (2019) by Ko, which starts as an exploration of the instrument's authority and evolves into an expression of its flexibility. Besides causing a paradigm shift in my view of the snare drum, Compitello's album is just a damned good listen. It's a handsome package, too, in case you still do the whole physical media thing.

Molly Herron + Science Ficta - Through Lines What causes an instrument to fade from view? Presumably, it's because new techniques and technologies make successor instruments "better" at the same job: more expressive, perhaps, while also sometimes being louder and easier to play and maintain. Whatever the reasoning, this album of music for viola da gamba will have you reconsidering that whole notion. Now, a quick read through the Wikipedia entry for this relative of the guitar and ancestor of the cello tells me that it fell out of fashion in the mid-18th century and has had periodic revivals of interest in the late 20th century and early 21st century, mostly around music of the baroque and renaissance era. But Herron is one of the few to simply use the instrument as a basis for new music without any reference to the past, and what a wonderful gift she has given us by doing so. 

Herron is also lucky to have Science Ficta, a viol da gamba trio made up of Loren Ludwig, Zoe Weiss, and Kivie Cahn-Lipman, as her collaborators, as they navigate the music and instruments with aplomb. Now, if you heard Through Lines without knowing what they were playing, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a cello trio, but there is a taut, almost metallic dryness to these sounds that is full of character. The music itself is quietly introspective and songful and occasionally radiates a woody hint of a Nick Drake solo guitar piece. Herron also seems to have a post-modern bent, as in Trill, which takes a Baroque ornament and makes a whole piece out of it. Just one remarkable invention on an album full of them!

Van Stiefel - Spirits Electric guitar wiz Stiefel throws a lot of names into his liner notes for this album of multilayered guitar pieces - Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Glen Campbell - but I would have to add Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno into the mix, thinking of some of the "country and western" tracks on Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, or some of Lanois' pedal steel explorations. This often very chill but dimensional album also slots neatly with recent releases from Corntuth and Jeffrey Silverstein, making me think one of the spirits evoked here is the zeitgeist. But no matter; these intricate pieces, weaving electric guitar, lap steel, piano, and electronics in seamless fashion, can stand fully on their own and will enrich your universe.

Ning Yu & David Bird - Iron Orchid Yu's debut, 2020's Of Being was mightily impressive, but this album, a collaboration with composer David Bird, is a whole other animal. Bird, who first caught my ear on andPlay's wondrous Playlist, is obviously a deep thinker about sound, refusing to accept any limitations on what an instrument can do, in this case the piano, which is pushed to its limits as an object of wood and metal and plastic. Surrounding the sometimes startlingly heavy sonics generated by Yu are not only electronics but recordings collected from the Echo Chamber, an 11-foot tall sculpture created by Bird and Yu with Mark Reigelman that contains a speaker in each of its 56 metal tubes. That's all fascinating to know, but the overall experience of the album is of inventive, mind-expanding electroacoustic soundscapes, some spiky and herky-jerk, like a malfunctioning Terminator taking baby steps, others, like the staggering album-opener Garden, nearly overwhelming oceans of wall-shaking sound. I'm no audio elitist, but that latter quality is only fully realized on my good, old-fashioned component stereo. If there's one nearby, you owe it to yourself - and the dedicated team who made this extraordinary album - to play it there and at high volume.

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Record Roundup: New Music Cavalcade

Record Roundup: Electro-Humanism

Record Roundup: Avant Chamber and Orchestral

Record Roundup: Vox Humana

From choruses to individual singers, there is something about the sounds of other people's voices that can elicit strong emotions - and make us feel less alone. In sorting through the flood of new music from the last few months, I found my attention drawn by several albums that put the focus the human voice, making them perfect for these times of isolation and limited contact with others. 

Roomful Of Teeth - Michael Harrison: Just Constellations It's easy to take this vocal ensemble for granted, such is the consistency of their excellence. But they continue to push into new territories and this EP, reflecting a deep collaboration with the composer, is a great example of how their preternatural skill can translate into a heavenly listening experience. The difficulty of the piece, sung in just intonation and designed to be heard in the extremely resonant space of The Tank in Rangley Colorado, is all under the hood, as the results sound as natural as breathing. Read their notes to go deeper into the La Monte Young influence and look at Harrison's titles to pick up the poetry behind his conception, but neither is necessary to be transported by this remarkable work.

Roomful Of Teeth - Wally Gunn: The Ascendant Based on the evocative, high modernist poetry of Maria Zajkowski, this enigmatic work shows the range of Roomful, both stylistically and in terms of octaves. The deep bass and higher notes are knit together by the metronomic percussion of Jason Treuting of SO Percussion, which also lends a sense of ritual occasion to the piece. There's a barely banked wildness to The Ascendant, like a placid landscape where nature's violence is hidden only by distance from which you're viewing it. In short, it's furiously compelling, and the power of the piece is even greater than I imagined based on the three parts sprinkled throughout Roomful's 2015 album, Render. It's easy to see why the vinyl edition of this (and Just Constellations) sold out in short order!

Lorelei Ensemble - David Lang: Love Fail (Version for Women's Chorus) 
Quince Ensemble - David Lang: Love Fail
This beautiful work from 2012, which weaves legends of Tristan and Isolde from various sources with short stories by Lydia Davis, was originally recorded in 2014 by those masters of the Medieval, Anonymous Four. Now, we have two new recordings, with one being a reworked version for more voices, which Lorelei premiered in 2016. The Quince Ensemble display more verve and warmth than Anonymous Four, making their recording the new go-to in the original scoring. But it's the Lorelei Ensemble, and Lang's brilliant use of harmony, that fully illuminates the haunting power of the piece, giving it a spacious 3-D quality that is truly immersive. A triumph on every level, lot least in the way the percussion is integrated into the sound world, which neither of the other recordings seem to get quite right. That two note refrain in the last movement, played on tuned bells in, takes on a burnished weight that lingers long after the music stops. While all three recordings are more than worthwhile, it's to the Lorelei's version that I will be returning most often.

Michael Hersch - I hope we get a chance to visit soon There's so much positivity around "fighting cancer" in American culture that it is unexpectedly satisfying to hear it addressed as being as awful as it really is. Which is exactly what Hersch does in this painfully searing and intense work. Drawing on letters between him and his friend Mary Harris O’Reilly, some written while they were both being treated for cancer, and weaving in poems by Rachel Elson, the piece is as unflinching in its text as it is in its scoring. The music, is sharp and fragmentary, sometimes adjacent to the words and sometimes acting as an anguished Greek chorus. Hersch's mastery begins with his conception, which is scored for two sopranos (Ah Young Hong and Kiera Duffy, both outstanding), with one singing the poems and the other speaking the letters in a halting and slightly horrified tone that perfectly captures the way the mind protests the mere fact that you've been diagnosed with cancer. Like all of Hersch's work, I hope... is a very serious work of art, but the dignity and compassion he brings to this lacerating material elevates it to a point where anyone who has suffered loss in their lives (which is everyone, right) will ultimately find it a balm for their wounded soul. We owe Hersch a debt of gratitude for never turning away from subject matter that would make other artists uncomfortable. Kudos, too to the Musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Tito Muñoz, who find the perfect emotional balance between restraint and rage in this beautifully recorded live performance.

Sarah Kirkland Snider - Mass For The Endangered While at first this felt a bit traditional for my taste, it is so sincere and eloquent in its absorption of the great masses of the past by Bach, Palestrina, etc. - and so sheerly gorgeous - that it is undeniably uplifting. The text is by Nathaniel Bellows, the poet, musician, and artist (he also did the album cover art) with whom Snider worked on her lush and dramatic song cycle Unremembered, which was released in 2015. The "endangered" in the title is all the flora and fauna put at risk by human activities, and the mass appeals, in Snider's words, "...to a higher power--for mercy, forgiveness, and intervention--but that appeal is directed not to God but rather to Nature itself." But even without those details, the sublime counterpoint and expert architecture, all perfectly executed by Gallicantus, an English ensemble conducted by Gabriel Crouch, would be enough to reward full immersion in the piece. May it be performed in many houses of worship - and elsewhere - when in-person gatherings are again safe and people themselves no longer feel endangered.

Miyamoto Is Black Enough - Burn / Build This incendiary album comes on with such elemental force that at first I was repelled. But upon revisiting, I leant into the heat and let it cleanse me. Catharsis. It also helped that as I was trying to grasp what was going on, I made the connection between Roger Bonair Agard's vocal approach and that of the great Linton Kwesi Johnson (whose Bass Culture celebrated its 40th anniversary earlier this year). Both are poets of Caribbean origin who worked in spoken word before combining their talents with music. Agard also has a little of Johnson's quality of rage - restrained, vaguely amused, but ready to explode if just one more ember lands on him. The musical backing is quite different from the roots reggae Johnson employed, however, which also stopped me in my tracks. Centered around Andy Akiho's steel pans and Jeffrey Zeigler's cello, and anchored by Sean Dixon's drums, bass, and electronics, it references reggae and hip hop, but is also angular and post-punk, ending up sounding like nothing else. The subject matter, including songs about Blackness and gentrification, is firmly on the pulse of our moment and served up with the immediacy of a status update yet with the craft only a true poet can deliver. If you're curious about the name they chose for the group, Google "Ariana Miyamoto" - but whatever you do, don't miss this album.

Missy Mazzoli - Proving Up While I've seen parts of Mazzoli's first opera, Song From The Uproar, I've managed to miss both of her other collaborations with librettist Royce Vavrek, Breaking The Waves and Proving Up. Fortunately, we now have a complete recording of the latter, and it is a revelation. A compelling exposé of the lie behind the American dream told through the stories of Nebraskan homesteaders in the 19th century, it puts many of Mazzoli's virtues on display - the forward motion, the sleek embrace of darkness - while foregrounding some new ones. As much of her music as I've heard in the last eight years, I was not prepared for something that was as utterly American as Aaron Copland and as cannily theatrical as Benjamin Britten. I'm sure Vavrek helped with the latter, but without the libretto in front of me (or performers on a stage, for that matter), I'm enjoying it mostly as a musical experience with a strong narrative thrust. While the baritone of John Moore is a standout, the singing is uniformly fantastic, as is the playing by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, ably conducted by Christopher Rountree. Proving Up is easily the best new opera I've heard in years and further proof of Mazzoli's mastery. Hope we get a recording of Breaking The Waves soon.

Du Yun - A Cockroach's Tarantella We hear a lot about "resilience" in these quarentimes, and there is no better symbol of resilience than the lowly cockroach, a survivor's survivor for over 350 million years. In this piece, which Du Yun completed a decade ago, the wonderfully imaginative composer goes Kafka one better, arriving at a complete mind meld with the titular insect. And her roach is a true individualist, sick of lugging around her eggs and longing for human emotions. For all the times when our feelings are a burden, consider seeing 20 of your children exterminated and not being able to feel anything. Du Yun, as committed a performer as she is a composer, delivers the roach's tale in a tart, conversational fashion, in both English and Chinese, not overselling the fantastical nature of the piece. If this all sounds a bit abstract to you, get a gander at Julian Crouch's wondrous short film, and all will become clear.

In this recording, miraculously made just a month or two ago, Du Yun is given the perfect accompaniment by the JACK Quartet, who navigate the dynamics of the piece perfectly. They also shine on Tattooed On Snow, a 15-minute piece for string quartet from 2014 getting its first recording here. It has a cinematic sweep and no small amount of insectile sounds of its own, making for a compact introduction to Du Yun's sound world. The album is bookended by two short pieces,  Epilogue and Prologue (in that order), with the former featuring field recordings from Wuhan's market just after the lockdown was lifted. While the subjects of alienation and feeling uncomfortable in one's own skin are evergreen, this is an album that will help us locate what it meant to human in 2020. 

Listen to selections from these albums in this playlist or below.



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Concert Review: Shadows And Hope At Carnegie Hall
Three Portraits: Cheung-Trapani-Du Yun
Focus On: Contemporary Classical
Record Roundup: Electro-Acoustic Explorations
Missy Mazzoli: Lush Rigor
Skylark's Liminal Journey
Best Of 2017: Classical
Conversing Across Centuries, Part 2: Italia

Record Roundup: Contemporary Kaleidoscope

Before the Best Of lists begin, here's one more “regular” post, a quick run through just a few spectacularly colorful recent releases in the contemporary classical arena. Push "play" on this playlist to listen along in real time.

Zosha Di Castri - Tachitipo Color. Texture. Emotion. Craft. All those virtues are fully on display on this stunning portrait debut from Di Castri, a Canadian composer with whom I was completely unfamiliar. If you’re in the same boat, paddle over and climb aboard a luxury liner packed with talent. In the engine room are Di Castri’s compositions, which demonstrate an astonishing facility with a variety of forces, from vocal group to string quartet, and from solo piano to chamber ensemble. Then, you have the staterooms, appointed with such luminaries as Ekmeles, Talea Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Julia Den Boer, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and Yarn/Wire, each one performing at the top of their game. That’s no mean feat when you consider something like the opening track, The Animal After Whom All Other Animals Are Named (2013), which has Ekmeles dishing out all manner of vocal effects while engaging in a fractured duet with glitched-out electronics. It’s a gauntlet thrown and one ably picked up by Cortège, which has Lorraine Vaillancourt through a dark funhouse of tension, release, and smart orchestration. 

String Quartet No. 1 (2016) is like raw steak tossed into the JACK’s cage: they attack the score with gusto and make quite a meal for all of us. While deeply connected to the tradition, Di Castri also approaches it with a disarming freshness. May it be played often by string quartets everywhere. Dux (2017) also gives Den Boer a lot to chew on, whether it’s the keyboard spanning runs or techniques seemingly derived from Cage and Nancarrow. Unlike those two masters, however, Di Castri seems to be leading with her heart more than her head. La Forma Dello Spazio (2010), performed by ICE, is next, all flashing swords and lances, like knights on skittish horses. The percussion part adds atmosphere and the inventiveness continues to the very last note.

Yarn/Wire, a quartet of two pianos and two percussionists, now have, in the title track (2016) a new piece that should long find a place in their repertoire. Named after a brand of typewriter, it’s a showpiece for both players and composer, full of wit, charm, and moments of limpid beauty. And if all of this variety has you wondering if there's is anything she can't do, witness Diego Espinosa Cruz Gonzalez performing How Many Bodies Have We To Pass through, a deep exploration of percussive possibilities. The name Zosha Di Castri is memorable all on its own, but this knockout album guarantees it will be on the lips of anyone who loves new music. Shell out for the CD - it comes in a letterpress package by Kiva Stimac that is the ideal visual and tactile companion to the sounds within. Dare I say it's the perfect stocking stuffer?

Mario Diaz de Leon - Cycle And Reveal Both Talea Ensemble and ICE appear on this latest collection of works by Diaz de Leon, each the result of long collaborations between artist and performer going back at least a decade. The four works here find Diaz de Leon using space and silence in new ways without losing the sense of wonder and ceremony that I have come to expect from him. Sacrament (2017) opens the album with the beautifully rounded sounds of the marimba (played by Alex Lipowski) combined with flute and eventually clarinet and electronics, moments of dense sound synthesis alternating with fragmented sections, the instruments seeming to chase each other around the room.

Labrys (2017), composed for and performed by ICE bassoonist Rebekah Heller, also has a fragmented feel, with plenty of air around the expectorations of the reed instrument and the bright synth tones. Part of the fun is putting it all together in your head an effort which comes to a crashing halt when the commanding tones of Mariel Roberts's cello digs into the opening notes of Irradiance (2016), a cavernously involving piece. Diaz de Leon as master of darkness and electronics (and deeply informed by pop and metal) comes to the fore here, releasing startling images in my mind such as a black rose crushed into diamonds, glinting with all the colors of the universe against a velvety night sky. It must be heard to be believed! The ICE trio of Heller, Claire Chase (flute), and Joshua Rubin (clarinet) finish the album with Mysterium (2016), which lives up to its name with the narrative tension of a great Lalo Schifrin score. If you haven't been tracking Diaz de Leon's career thus far, Cycle And Reveal is a ideal point of entry.

Tak Ensemble - Oor This no-holds-barred group debuted in 2016 with Ecstatic Music, devoted to the compositions of Taylor Brook and one of the best classical releases of that year. They dedicated their second recording to Diaz de Leon for another remarkable excursion into his sound world. If those weren't proof enough that they were ready for anything, Oor will convince you that nothing is too wild or wooly for Tak. Naturally, Tyshawn Sorey is an ideal co-conspirator and Laura Cocks (flute) and Carlos Cordiero (clarinet) easily meet the demands of his aggressive and witty Ornations (commissioned by Tak in 2014), which I had the privilege to see Claire Chase and Josh Rubin perform at the Miller Theatre earlier this year. That's not even as much fun as album closer, The Colors Don't Match by Natacha Diels, who puts vocalist Charlotte Mundy (who also sings with Ekmeles) through her paces as she she recites the names of notes ("D flat...E...E flat") in a variety of attitudes while the rest of the band tries to keep pace. Def puts Diels on my radar. 

David Bird's works shone on AndPlay's wonderful Playlist so it's great to hear his talents applied to the wider palette of Tak, who take his ball and run with it a long distance. Ashkan Behzadi, who also had a piece on Playlist, takes full advantage of Mundy's adventurous spirit in Az Hoosh Mi..., almost casting Marina Kifferstein's violin as another vocalist in an investigation of a modern piece of poetic Persian erotica. The album also includes Erin Gee's Mouthpiece, which gives Mundy even more space to play, and Anne Cleare's Unable To Create An Offscreen World, a colorfully harsh fantasia with some splashy moments for percussionist Ellery Trafford and guest cellist Meaghan Burke. Equally as exciting as Oor itself is the fact that it was released on their own Tak Editions label - perhaps a hint that their is much more to come from this extraordinary bunch of players.

Jessica Meyer - Ring Out In which supremely talented violist Meyer reveals herself as a delightfully varied, and emotionally connected, composer. Not surprisingly for someone who only began composing five years ago, many of the most assured works are for strings, whether the headlong rush of cello (played by Andrew Yee of Attaca Quartet) in Released (2014), or the skillful intertwining of violin and cello, played by Miranda Cuckson and Caleb van der Swaagh respectively, in the Rumi-inspired three-part suite, I Only Speak Of The Sun (2018). But Meyer also branches out beautifully in a song cycle, Seasons of Basho, written for viola, countertenor (Nicholas Tamagna), and piano (Adam Marks), and Ring Out, Wild Bells (2017), composed for the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, and taking full advantage of the unique resonance of the TANK in Colorado. Bringing together the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson,and field recordings of Parisian church bells, it spins off many possibilities for Meyer's future as a composer. If you listen to Ring Out you'll likely be waiting with bated breath for more.

Ted Hearne - Hazy Heart Pump Composer/performers don't come much more polyglot than Hearne, who is equally at home deconstructing Madonna songs or composing a choral dissection of the Citizens United ruling. But I think his personality (personalities?) as an artist have never been as searingly committed to a single album as they are here. You can almost visualize the funnel going into his brain, with Charles Mingus pushing past poetry (Saul Williams and Dorothy Lasky) and jockeying for space with David Lang and, say, Bela Bartok, where it's transmuted into his own particular art. The wonder of this album is in the full package, too, thanks to the liner notes from Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, which not only describe their friendship but also superbly explicate the background to each piece. Lanzilotti is present as a performer as well, adding her viola to Hearne's piano and the violin of Miki-Sophia Cloud for Vessels (2008), which employs alternate tunings and muted strings to arrive at a chopped and screwed vision of Neue Weiner Schule serialism. At least that's what happens in my head - your results may vary.

The album kicks off with For The Love Of Charles Mingus (2016), which finds Cloud layering six violin parts for an oblique response to the universe of the great jazz bassist. Williams joins forces with the Mivos Quartet for The Answer To The Question That Wings Ask (2016), a series of questions ("What time is it? Who set the clock? Who coded/decoded time? Are there different ways of keeping it?) with the Mivos either following or competing with the poet's intense recitation. The four jagged and funky parts of Furtive Movements (2015) will have you questioning why more works aren't written for cello and percussion - then again, not everyone has Ashley Bathgate and Ron Wiltrout at their disposal to make those dreams a reality. Nobody's (2009) is wisely at the center of the album, a short bit of shattered Appalachia for solo viola (Diana Wade - and her stomping feet) that leads perfectly into Vessels. The album closes with the Argus Quartet's reading of Exposure (String Quartet No. 1) (2017) and you would be correct in thinking that the subtitle indicates a confrontation with the storied tradition of string quartets. Hearne's pen is more than up to it, too, resulting in a piece that should be played far and wide in halls big and small. Trust me, Hearne's latest will have your heart pumping in ways that are not at all hazy.

Daniel Lippel - Mirrored Spaces Even if Lippel never released another album under his own name, we would all owe him a debt for his wise and generous steering of the ship that is New Focus Recordings, which issues a seemingly endless stream of great albums each year. And that's not to mention his superb work within many ensembles, ICE and counter)induction among them. But here he has followed up last year's remarkable ...through which the past shines with yet another gift, a vast collection across the possibilities of guitar music as sprawling and adventurous as the White Album, featuring pieces by Orianna Webb, John Link, Kyle Bartlett, Douglas Boyce, Ryan Streber, Ethan Wickman, Christopher Bailey, Dalia R. With, Sergio Kafejian, Karin Wetzel, Sidney Corbett, and Lippel himself. From solo acoustic gems like Wickman's Joie Divisions to electro-acoustic works like the alternately sparkling and serrated Like Minds by Link, Lippel wants us to hear it all, feel it all, and marvel at it all. 

The project has its roots in a 2008 performance, represented here by a live recording of Lippel's own Scaffold for electric guitar, full of moody string-bending, feedback and distortion, which will echo in your head long after the album ends. I'll leave it to the sociologists to look into why, after a peripatetic series of collaborations, premieres and recording sessions, Mirrored Spaces comes to us in the same season as All Mirrors by Angel Olsen or mirrored heart by FKA Twigs, but I will say it is as vital a reflection of our times as either of those fertile and exploratory journeys into the heart of pop expressionism. I will be listening to, and taking nourishment from, Mirrored Spaces for quite some time. I suggest you start now.

Dither - Potential Differences If it's more guitar goodness you seek, don't, er, dither about grabbing on to this third album from a most versatile electric guitar quartet made up of Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, James Moore, and Gyan Riley. Whether exploring various techniques and tones in Jascha Narveson's marvelous four-movement suite, Ones (2011) or going full atmo-prog in Mi-Go (2012) by Lopes, these guys can do it all. Each of them contributes a piece, in fact, with Riley's hypnotic The Tar of Gyu (2013) and Levine's post-punk freakout, Renegade (2013), being especially memorable. We also get more Ted Hearne in Candy (2010), which is filled with patterns and textures you can imagine David Torn contributing to a Bowie album. Maybe we can get someone to commission a guitar quintet and have Lippel sit in with Dither...a person can dream. Until then, I'll just continue enjoying the ride. 

There's something for all tastes and occasions above - let me know which ones move you the most.

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Glints In The Darkness: Mario Diaz de Leon

Record Roundup: Electro-Humanism

Early works for prerecorded tape

I can still connect to the feeling of holding the future in my hand when my father handed me a record featuring Helices, a work composed by his old friend Manny Ghent for violin, piano and prerecorded tape. “Of course!" I thought, "Putting acoustic and electronic instruments together is not just for rock music!” Hey, I was young. One thing I didn’t consider, however, was the inequality between instruments that had been developed and perfected over centuries and ones that were only a few decades old.

But I think we can safely say that rapid innovation has fairly well erased any level of sophistication between something made of wood and activated by air or vibration and something that needs software or recorded sound to work. Or at least that’s what these three records would have me believe, all electroacoustic masterpieces that should make a believer out of you as well. 

Rand Steiger/International Contemporary Ensemble - Coalescence Cycle Volume 1: Music for Soloists and Electronics That long title gives you the basics. I could add that there are five pieces here, all except one featuring a single player in combination with audio signal processing. I could throw around terms from Steiger’s liner notes like “virtuosity” and the “intersection of tempered and just intonation,” but in the end, it’s all about sensation and emotion. For the first, there’s the almost tactile nature of the electronic sounds, rich and rounded clouds surrounding clarinet, flute, cello, piano and bassoon, all so perfectly played and recorded that you will feel their physical presence. Miller Puckett, Steiger’s longtime collaborator who writes the software, deserves special mention here, as do the musicians of ICE: Joshua Rubin (clarinet), Claire Chase (flute), Kivie Cahn-Lipman (cello), Jacob Greenberg (piano), and Rebekah Heller (bassoon). 

As for the emotion, Steiger’s command of harmony and melody is so finely calibrated that it seems to have a direct connection to my inner state, allowing me to engage on a visceral level. Translation: these five pieces sound fantastic and make me feel all kinds of ways. Regardless if your experience of processed sound comes from Brian Eno or autotune, I think you will agree. And the best news is that Volume 2, featuring the same techniques applied to larger ensembles, is already in the works. If you can’t wait, make sure to revisit A Menacing Plume, Steiger’s superb album with Talea Ensemble from 2014. 

Daniel Wohl - Etat In 2013, I called Corps Exquis, Wohl’s debut, “jewel-textured and compulsively listenable” while including it in my Top 20. But I was left cold by the follow-up, Holographic, which was accomplished but lacked a certain spark. Not so for Etat, which maybe as close to a pop album as we get from this furiously inventive sonic architect. Y Music and the Calder Quartet are here to expertly actualize the acoustic elements, but Wohl’s most important collaborator this time around might be Ryan Lott, who co-produced Etat with Sae Heum Han, an electronic composer who works under the name mmph. Lott, whose art-rock project, Son Lux, is occasionally radio-adjacent, is wise in the ways of shaping both songs and sounds.

Corps Exquis had already proved that Wohl could combine the organic and synthetic seamlessly, finding a perfect realization for his emotion-laden compositions. Etat finds him delving deeper into modern production techniques and at the same time becoming yet more soulful. Concision is a factor here, too, as each piece is short and self-contained, reminiscent of the classic work of Wohl’s countryman, Erik Satie. There's also some of the epic feel of Vangelis's work for the original Blade Runner - if they make another sequel, Wohl might be the man for the soundtrack. There’s even a "single" in the form of Angel, which features Channy Leaneagh, the vocalist for indie-pop group Poliça. But a track like Melt proves Wohl doesn't need words to get under your skin, which this remarkable album will do immediately when it comes out May 31st. 

Drinker - Fragments The main organic ingredients on this moody song cycle are Aaron Mendelsohn's voice and guitar, which are surrounded by all manner of rich electronic textures, from percussion and handclaps to sleek keyboards and bass. If you've been following closely, you'll note that I've been tracing Mendelsohn's muse since 2013 when I discovered his band Isadora, who were for a time one of NYC's best live bands. While Mendelsohn moved to California after Isadora dissolved, he had already begun collaborating with Ariel Loh, a New York-based electronic composer and producer (Yoke Lore is one of his projects), and they soon formed the group Drinker. Singles have been coming out since 2017, including the excellent Which Way Is South?, but Fragments is their first album.

While California is often associated with sun and sand, Mendelsohn's songwriting is more attuned to its moonlit alter-ego, the LA of Riders On The Storm rather than Good Vibrations. Massive Attack's slightly bruised majesty is also in the mix along with a subtlety that seems drawn from bossa nova. Just watching Mendelsohn's restraint as he sang some of these songs at the album release party a few weeks ago had me thinking of Frank Sinatra's work on the Sinatra/Jobim album, where he had to tone down his brassy quality - and that of the band - in order to find a new mode of expression. Sinatra's imprecations to the trombone player to soften his attack had the musician complaining "If I played any softer, I'd be blowing out the back of my neck." Mendelsohn seems to have achieved that on some of these songs, with Follow, in which he finds new falsetto contours in his voice, a perfect example.

The link between Drinker and Isadora is Mendelsohn's innate melodic talent, an ability to create songs where the music pulls you through the narrative as much as the words. In Loh he has found an ideal collaborator, someone who can push songs into unexpected directions that, after a few listens, seem inevitable. He and Mendelsohn also know when to layer sounds and when to strip everything back to a single instrument, techniques from dub and remix culture that keep the songs feeling fresh even as they become familiar. While Fragments is somewhat austere, it's also suffused with a deep humanity, delivering on electronic pop's promise to combine man (or woman) and machine in a way that adds new dimensions to both. A remarkable debut.

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Best of 2018: Electronic

Record Roundup: Electronic Excursions

Record Roundup: Electro-Acoustic Excursions

2019 First Quarter Report: Concerts

An unpredictable schedule this year meant that every concert I've seen except one has been in the realm of contemporary classical music. But within that, much variety - read on!

No Filler At The Miller I was speaking with Melissa Smey, Executive Director of the Miller Theatre, and she was relating the challenge they're going to have capping off their 30th anniversary next season. A challenge because their programming has been so strong in 2018-19 that it's hard to know how they can top it in 2019-20! From the Du Yun Composer Portrait I saw last November to the three shows I've been to so far this year, they are hitting all the marks - and there's still more to come.

On February 21st, I took in the Wang Lu Composer Portrait, giving me another opportunity to hear Urban Inventory, last performed in New York back in 2016 by Third Sound, who also recorded it on Wang Lu's stunning 2018 debut album. Here, the International Contemporary Ensemble worked their magic on the piece, also playing the witty Childhood Amnesia (2017) and Siren Song (2008), which found Stravinsky barreling into a Chinese opera house and causing quite a commotion. There was also A-PPA-Aratus, a world premiere played by Yarn/Wire and a stunning addition to their repertoire for two pianists and two percussionists. I hope they record this spectacular 21st century poéme mecanique very soon.

Yarn/Wire performing A-PPA-Aratus
Photo by Rob Davidson for Miller Theatre

A week later I was back to see Third Sound themselves, making their Miller debut at one of the theatre's innovative Pop-Up concerts. These are the free shows where the audience sits on the stage and enjoys free beer along with the music. They also usually last just about an hour, so Third Sound, founded in 2015 by composer Patrick Castillo with violinist Karen Kim, cellist Michael Nicolas, pianist Orion Weiss, flautist Sooyun Kim and clarinetist Romie de Langlois, programmed a set that had enough variety to show what they can do while also keeping it concise.

Ingrid Arauco’s Fantasy Quartet was a perfect opener - sparkling, astringent and colorful, it gave many opportunities for the musicians to shine. Next was Music For Four composed by the group’s founder, Patrick Castillo, and inspired by watching his young son at play. It was a piece infused with warmth and joy, making equally canny use of repetition and surprise. Finally, in keeping with their mission to embrace to whole sweep of chamber music, they stormed through Webern’s imaginative reduction of Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie, Op. 9. All of the work’s angst and artfulness was brilliantly exposed by their passionate playing, earning them an enthusiastic ovation. I think they'll be asked back.

My last visit to the Miller was just this past Thursday, when they presented a Composer Portrait of Tyshawn Sorey to a buzzing and packed house. The excitement was more than justified by what followed as were treated to an embarrassment of riches in two sets of music presented seamlessly, without applause or space between works. This was similar to the first half of the Du Yun concert and if anyone else is putting on shows like this I’d love to know about it. Special note should be made of Isabella Byrd's lighting, which helped immeasurable with all the transitions and lent a sense of atmosphere and occasion.

One theme of the night was how to pay homage to your mentors while speaking in your own voice. The first piece, In Memoriam Muhal Richard Abrams (2018), paid tribute to the founder of the AACM with a meditation for violin (Jennifer Curtis) and celesta (Cory Smythe). It was a gorgeous combination of sonorities that both quieted and engaged the mind. Sorey’s lyrical gifts were much in evidence as they would be later in the night. The next piece, Ornations (2014) provided a welcome and witty shock to the system as flautist Clair Chase faced off with clarinetist Joshua Rubin. The word “puckish” may be overused when it comes to Chase, but as she danced opposite Rubin, who was anchored in place by his contrabass clarinet, it was impossible not to think of Shakespeare’s sprite. The music matched the mood resulting in tremendous fun that was not without an edge of aggression. The JACK Quartet closed the first half with the NY premiere of Everything Changes, Nothing Changes, a work requiring tremendous concentration as they passed around sustained notes creating an unbroken canvas of sound. I look forward to hearing it again so I can just let it happen without wondering what would happen next. 

Claire Chase faces off with Joshua Rubin in Ornations
Photo by Rob Davidson for Miller Theater

After a brief intermission, Sorey and Chase sat down for an illuminating discussion that amplified some of the material in Lara Pellegrinelli’s superb program notes, chiefly the distinction between hybridity and mobility. Sorey sees the former as a tired trope about "jazz" musicians writing "classical music," "crossing over," etc. Instead of a hybrid composer, he sees himself as a mobile one, able to do what he wants with whatever instrumentation he wants in whatever setting he chooses. Amen. They also reminisced about their first meeting, about a decade ago, a tribute to the tight relationship between composer and musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble. That connection would come in handy in the world premiere presented in the second half of the concert, but first we heard For Harold Budd (2012), a gleaming trio for piano, flute and vibraphone that had Smythe and Chase working with percussionist Levy Lorenzo. It really was beautiful, with some of Budd's painterly qualities, but the brushstrokes were all Sorey's. 

Autoschediasms (2019), a Miller Theatre commission followed. It was scored for "Creative Chamber Orchestra," an ensemble seemingly entirely flexible as the program listed seven musicians to which was then added one more - plus the four members of the JACK. This piece builds on an idea from Butch Morris about "conducted improvisations" that had Sorey leading the group with a series of very specific hand gestures as well as instructions written on a small whiteboard. The players were well-drilled, moving from section to section without hesitating, and the sounds were consistently engaging. My western brain was seeking crescendos, the kind of tension and release we're so conditioned for, but what I heard was more of a continuous tapestry. The effect was a little like listening to a radical remix of a song you never heard before and I'm curious how different it will sound the next time it's performed.

Tyshawn Sorey (right) conducts ICE in Autoschediasms
Photo by Rob Davidson for Miller Theatre

As Autoschediasms was fading out, Chase came to the front of the stage with her flute and Sorey stepped off the podium and sat down at a conventional drum kit so they could play Bertha's Lair (2016), a piece that's become a bit of a signature for the duo. Here came the release, the crescendos and so much more as I was witness to some of the greatest drumming I've ever heard, in the same class as Art Blakey, Tony Williams and Leon Parker. But Sorey went further, nearly into a kind of performance art, as he removed a ride cymbal, put it on the floor tom for some intriguing effects - and then stacked it on the other ride cymbal and kept going from there. This was all while Chase was making an action painting in platinum, playing a piccolo flute and an enormous contrabass flute in addition to her standard concert model. It was the perfect ending to a night that earned Sorey and his collaborators a standing ovation and had the audience buzzing once again.

Tales Of Talea Even if I wasn't a board member, I would try to get to as many shows by the estimable Talea Ensemble as possible. This season they have not only been presenting wonderful music, but have made big strides in opening up important conversations about the role of music in our lives, how music works, and what it means to be part of the "new music" community. Much of those discussions happen at their iNSIDE Out series at The Flea Theater, and the one I attended on February 24th was a perfect example. Called Side By Side, the afternoon began with music for duos, kicked off by Vasko Dukovski (clarinet) and Chris Gross (cello) playing Iannis Xenakis' thorny Charisma (1971), which portrayed the instruments as isolated individuals pursuing their own paths. Catherine Lamb's In Passing / PARALLEL (2008), played by the violins of Emilie-Anne Gendron and Anna Kridler, was more of a joint effort - and a bit of an endurance test - as they passed long lines in a continuous tone that somehow created tension. Hearing them follow it up with some choice Bach, with its dance rhythms and folk melodies, threw everything we had already heard into stark relief. 

Performers & Panel at The Flea Theater

After a brief intermission, we reconvened for a very engaging panel discussion featuring Gross, Marcos Balter, Lauren Ishida, Eun Lee and Victoria Chea - and the audience. As these things are wont to do, perhaps more questions were raised than were answered, but we all left with a lot to think about, including my own musings about how Talea’s identity as a premiere presenter of European avant-garde composers meshed with the need for inclusivity on both sides of the concert stage. 

The next time I caught up with Talea, they were kicking off a residency at The Stone, John Zorn's performance space at The New School. There, we were also treated to more spare sounds, mostly solo works played by Adrian Morejon (bassoon) and Marianne Gythfeldt (clarinet). A link to the Flea concert was a piece by Eun Lee, a brief and action-packed world premiere called Yun (2018) for solo bassoon and played with real flair by Morejon. He also gave first performances of Edward Jacobs' Concentre (2014), filled with a sense of spontaneity, and Triplum (2014) by Filippo Santoro. The last was a trio, with two prerecorded bassoons played off an iPhone, which kept Morejon on his toes in a rhythmic, angular and witty piece. 

Gythfeldt also thrilled in Mikel Kuehn's signature piece Rite of Passage (2014), which had every last sound made by her bass clarinet picked up and manipulated and played back along with her live instrument - fantastic! She also gave a flawless performance of George Aperghis's Simulacre (1991-95) and then joined Morejon for the bouncy groove of Black (2018) by Mark Mellits. If you’re starting to feel FOMO - and you should be - I will point you to Gythfeldt’s marvelous 2018 collection, Only Human, which includes the Kuehn and other intriguing music. 

You can also trigger my own fear of missing out by attending Talea’s Tenth Anniversary celebration on April 20th. I can’t go, but it promises to be a memorable night revisiting many pieces from Talea's past and also presenting the world premiere of Hans Thomalla's Harmoniemusik 1 (2019) and the U.S. premiere of Framing... (2018) by Georg Friedrich Haas.

Switched On At Areté If any world is a small world, it’s the world of contemporary classical. So I was invited to this New York appearance by Boston’s [Switch~ Ensemble] by Zach Sheets, who used to work with Talea as our development and communications person. Something was in the air on February 28th as I had the choice of about eight concerts, but I decided on this one because it brought me to a venue I’ve never entered to hear pieces by unfamiliar composers. Risk, as Captain Kirk told Bones, is what it’s all about. Areté proved to be a small space arrived at through an arcade in a multi-use building in Williamsburg. The vibe is friendly and scrappy but not disorganized - the concert started right on time as the group launched into the electro-acoustic maelstrom of Adrien Trybucki's Infinite Extension (2017), a world premiere of a piece they commissioned. It was a wonderful introduction to their tight ensemble and excellent taste.

The next piece was Sivan Eldar's sleekly mysterious Tarr (2014), almost a series of notated sighs and whispers - and very beautiful. Third was a surrealistic audio collage by Esaias Järnegard called Songs For Antonin (2017), as in Artaud. It was wacky and gripping in equal measure, with bits of an old radio play mixed in. I don't doubt that Järnegard studied with Pierluigi Billone, as it had some of his absurdist spirit. Switch closed the concert with Timothy McCormack's karst survey, a dark journey indeed, which had T.J. Borden grinding at his cello like a Norwegian black metal guitarist. Overall, the concert showed off Switch to excellent effect - I would keep an eye out for the next time they come to your town.

BOAC Takes Off In PCF I try to never miss the People’s Commissioning Fund concerts by Bang On A Can, where their All-Stars present world and U.S. premieres as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival. There are also usually some classics from their repertoire to fill out the night, which this year included a Glenn Branca work they hadn’t performed for 20 years. The new pieces came first, however, beginning with Henry Threadgill's With Or Without Card, fractured and flamboyant, with a throughline that linked Jimmy Giuffre to Ornette Coleman and gave clarinetist Ken Thomson a lot to chew on. Next was Josué Collado Fregoso's lovely, evanescent Joi de Vivre, which put Mariel Roberts' cello and Robert Black's bass in the foreground. Black also blew some minds in the uncanny notated funk of Trevor Weston's Dig It - it somehow managed to avoid being a "crossover" pastiche. More please. This is where the night's theme of "dance music" truly came into focus, an emphasis that continued in Nicole Lizée's Dancist, a delightfully witty work that was accompanied by her fascinatingly messed up film. I would happily watch - and listen - to it again.

Scenes from the BOAC PCF Concert at Merkin Hall

The highlights of the second half were Annie Gosfield's fabulously imaginative - and furiously complex - The Manufacture Of Tangled Ivory (1993), which pushed pianist Vickie Chow to new heights of synthesizer magnificence, and Branca's Movement Within, a microtonal masterpiece that had Merkin Hall throbbing like the Mudd Club on an average Saturday night in 1980. John Schaefer of New Sounds was on hand to introduce each piece and interview the creators and the discussion with guitarist Mark Stewart and producer Adam Cuthbért about the reclamation of Branca's piece was a gripping tale indeed. Let's just say that recreating Branca's samples, which were stored on Zip Discs, was not a task for the faint of heart. But the All-Stars are a brave bunch and the whooping audience was all too eager to follow them wherever they journeyed. Try to be there in 2020!

Marissa Nadler

Coming Together At MoMA PS1 For the third year in a row, the Museum of Modern Art's Long Island City outpost held an incredible two-day festival called Come Together, created in collaboration with Other Music. Just like the first year, it was filled with a label fair, panel discussions, film screenings and live performances. Of the latter, I was able to see Marissa Nadler, whose 2018 album, For My Crimes, was one of the best folk albums of the year. It was short but intense solo performance, with Nadler creating a web of sound, either fingerpicking on an acoustic or looping a 12-string electric. At the center of it all was her gorgeous voice, which had emotional range enough to cover her dark originals and a cover of Fred Neil's bittersweet Just A Little Bit Of Rain. I was happy to see her earning new fans among the diverse crowd.

Negroclash: Prince Language, Duane Harriott and DJ Lindsey

It was chilly outside when we left the VW Dome, but DJ Duane Harriott was spinning so there was no question about how we were going to warm up. He already had the crowd in a Dionysian frenzy when he was joined by Prince Language and DJ Lindsey for a reunion of their collective Negroclash, which first performed at PS1 almost 20 years ago. Even while dancing, it was impossible not to be stunned at their synchronized routine, with each playing a song (and often manipulating it) before ceding the decks to the next DJ for a sumptuous flow of incredible beats, from disco to funk to electro. It was a high-wire act - and highly musical. They ended the set perfectly, too, with Sylvester's classic (You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real, sending us off happy and exhausted into the Queens evening.

Duane Harriott, man at work

And what live music have you enjoyed in 2019?

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Best Of 2018: The Top 25

Another year is coming to a close. In light of the daily outrages on the geo-political stage, I am likely not the only one more fervently seeking solace and acknowledgment in music. Thankfully, some of our finest artists met that need with incredible records in 2018. What follows are the 25 that not only rose to every standard of excellence but engaged me on a deeper level, bonding to my very soul. Is that too high-falutin’ a sentiment for you? What else do you expect from AnEarful?

1. Holly Miranda - Mutual Horse Not only is Miranda’s third album a beautiful work of art, it’s also an act of giving - to her listeners, to her family, and to herself. 

2. Jonathan Wilson - Rare Birds On his third album proper, Wilson took more chances musically, lyrically, and production-wise. What hasn’t changed is his wide-eyed sincerity and optimism. Some parts of the hippie ideal were worth preserving, after all, especially if the music sounds this incredible.  

3. Pusha T - Daytona It was a mad year for Kanye West fans but at least we got this one classic out of it, along with parts of Kids See Ghosts and Teyana Taylor’s album. Pusha T’s "luxury street rap" never sounded more incised in stone and some of the lyrics even allow for hints of self-reflection. As the man says, If You Know You Know. 

4. Olivia De Prato - Streya Stop with the Bach. This is how you make a 21st Century violin record. 

5. Natalie Prass - The Future and the Past Matthew E. White and the Spacebomb house band stretch themselves to realize Prass’s booty-shaking R&B visions. The results are sharp as a tack, with pinpoint rhythms and hooks galore. Prass delivers the songwriting goods as well, managing to always stay tuneful and positive while also letting you know that she’s very aware of all the social and political situations that are keeping us off-kilter - and the vicissitudes of romance that can have the same effect. 

6. Andy Jenkins - Sweet Bunch Speaking of Spacebomb, this masterclass in songwriting by Jenkins receives the absolutely perfect sound from White, with swampy guitars, a small choir singing backup on some songs, and the typically excellent rhythm work by Spacebomb house band members Cameron Ralston (bass) and Pinson Chanselle (drums). Jenkins’s slightly rueful yet wise persona finds apt expression in his Nilsson-esque voice and all the elements add up to an addictive delight. 

7. Hollie Cook - Vessel Of Love Switching to Youth as producer and including Jah Wobble (PiL) and Keith Levene (The Clash, PiL) among the players leads to what I call post-punk’s reggae revenge - and revenge never sounded so sweet. 

8. Jonny Greenwood - Phantom Thread and You Were Never Really Here Another annus mirabilis for fans of the Radiohead guitarist’s film music as he showed off two of his sides: darkly romantic in the score to the Paul Thomas Anderson masterpiece (four words I’ve never put together before) and just dark in the soundscapes for the disappointing Joaquin Phoenix (also not a common phrase!) feature. I have high hopes that Greenwood scores an Oscar this time around. See the movies or don’t - but listen no matter what. 

9. Christopher Trapani - Waterlines I called the title piece, written in the Katrina aftermath and based on old blues and country classics, an instant classic when I heard it performed by Lucy Dhegrae and the Talea Ensemble, the same forces who grace this recording. The other pieces are also excellent, risky, and fascinating. 

10. Palm - Rock Island On their second album - and a major leap from their 2015 debut - Palm’s tricky time signatures, glossy textures, and bright melodies keep me in a suspended state of sparkle while I listen. Live, their jams are weightier, which wasn’t a bad thing at all. 

11. Anna Thorvaldsdottir - Aequa This new portrait album of the Icelandic composer’s work, performed with authority by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), is yet another showcase of her wondrous work. Thorvaldsdottir is significant because her compositional scaffolding is among the strongest of anyone writing today, but her interest in recorded sound elevates her work into an almost tactile experience. From the first notes of Scape, a solo work for prepared piano (played by Cory Smyth), you can't help but be drawn into her vivid musical imagination. Long may she reign!

12. Shame - Songs Of Praise My love of angular post-punk rock is strong enough that I can overlook some of the familiarity I feel when listening to this young band. Also, the unity of their attack and sense of conviction about what they’re doing makes for a killer album. The sky’s the limit, boys!

13. Du Yun - Dinosaur Scar The only recent Pulitzer Prize winner who’s even more of a badass than Kendrick Lamar, Du Yun manages to harness her big ideas into concise nuggets of passionate information. As she said at a recent concert, “Through music, I always want to tell stories about human relationships,” so the results are far from abstraction. It’ll be a while before we all catch up with her, but this album, persuasively performed by ICE (do they ever sleep??) closes that distance by some measure. 

14. Mutual Benefit - Thunder Follows The Light Listening to Jordan Lee, the one constant member of Mutual Benefit, follow his muse and develop his songwriting into its current hymn-like state has been a central pleasure of our young century. Horns and strings, and almost no drums, push this gorgeous album further toward pastoral chamber pop and I will follow Lee as far as he wants to go down that road. 

15. Anna St. Louis - If Only There Was A River This enigmatic singer somehow manages to sound both completely contemporary and as if she’s been with us forever. Exquisitely sensitive production and stunning songwriting make this one for the ages. 

16. Scott Johnson - Mind Out Of Matter Only Johnson, the master of orchestrated speech, could turn a lecture about religion and evolution into a piece compelling enough for repeated listening. And only Alarm Will Sound (still missing Matt Marks...) could play this complex score with such tossed-off assurance. 

17. Bodega - Endless Scroll I caught these wise and witty art-punk pranksters on one of New Sounds’ Facebook Live performances and was immediately captivated by their energy. Sometimes I laugh out loud at a lyric on the subway. Instead of giving me side-eye, just get the album!

18. Arp - Zebra Lush, cinematic, jazz-and-electronics-infused atmospheres for dreaming. By pulling in more influences but caring less about treating them with kid gloves, Alexis Georgopoulos has made his most distinctive record yet.

19. Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel And Casino Alex Turner’s mind map of the titular structure provided him a means of escape from the cul de sac AM found themselves in after their last album. What was next - louder and heavier? Why? This was a brave direction to take - and one they executed to perfection. Book a room and see if you agree it’s even better than “four stars out of five.”

20. Elsa Hewitt - Quilt Jams As I said in the latest issue of Off Your Radar when I included one of Hewitt’s electronic fantasias on my mixtape: “With or without vocals, each track feels like a psychic transmission filled with crucial information about how we live now.” Dial it in. 

21. Scott Hirsch - Lost Time Behind The Moon What a delightful surprise this album is! I’ve long known Scott Hirsch’s name from the deep dive I took into Hiss Golden Messenger’s history a few years ago, but on this sophomore release, he seems to cut loose from all forebears and find a truly individual expression. There’s plenty of variety within as well, from rootsy fingerpicked delicacies to funky Rhythm Ace-driven workouts. I've added seeing Hirsch headline to my 2019 goals. 

22. Dan Lippel, et al - ...Through Which the Past Shines... Exquisite, modern chamber music for guitar by Nils Vigeland and Reiko Füting played with warmth and authority by Lippel (also heard to great effect on the Du Yun album above), joined occasionally by John Popham on cello and Vigeland on piano. I'm also enjoying the opportunity to further explore Füting's sound world on the recently released distant song.

23. Jeff Tweedy - Warm Even though this is Tweedy's first "official" solo album, it also feels like the return of an old friend. The quiet songs seem to contain banked fires, instead of just being quiet, and the lyrics are even more acute than ever, perhaps a reflection on his recent work writing his memoir. 

24. Raoul Vignal - Oak Leaf This French singer-songwriter's second album is like a warm blanket. Each time I listen to his whisper-singing, fingerpicked guitar, and gentle accompaniments, I feel ensconced in its hushed universe.

25. Domenico Lancellotti - The Good Is A Big God A lot of people view Brazilian music in their rearview, appreciating and delighting in its extraordinary legacy. Lancellotti proves that this legacy has a future with this album's kaleidoscopic view of Brazil's many musical streams, from bossa nova and samba to tropicalia and beyond. 

Excerpts to all of these, except Scott Johnson and Raoul Vignal, are found in this playlist or below. Listen and let me know what moves you.



Still to come: genre-specific lists highlighting the best of classical, electronic, hip hop, R&B, reggae, rock, folk, reissues and everything else!

You may also enjoy:
Best Of 2017: The Top 25
Best Of 2017: Classical
Best Of 2017: Out Of The Past
Best Of 2017: Electronic
Best Of 2017: Hip Hop, R&B and Reggae
Best Of 2017: Rock, Folk, Etc.