Record Roundup: Evocative Voices

The origins of all music lie in the body and the voice. Here are some remarkable recent releases that foreground the voice in various ways.

The Crossing - Born "So this is his mother. This small woman. The gray-eyed procreator." So begins Born, the arresting poem by Wislawa Szymborska that provides the text for the emotionally incisive piece (2017) by Michael Gilbertson that opens this album. Scored so it feels like the singers are feeling their way through the poem's universe and reacting in real time, it's a gorgeous tribute to the mother of conductor Donald Nally, whose sure hand guides the choir. Gilbertson's Returning (2021), which draws on Biblically-inspired text from Kai Hoffman-Krull, closes the collection in two parts of dynamic, searching music. In between those bookends is Edie Hill's Spectral Spirits (2019), 13 short movements meditating on extinct birds through the poetry of Holly J. Hughes and observations by Henry David Thoreau and other naturalists. Hill uses the words and occasional vocalise to create gently flowing phrases, interspersed with short solos announcing the naming of the lost animals. It's a gorgeous elegy and an original way to reflect on all the ways humankind has been unkind to the earth. Typically for an album by The Crossing, the recording and performances are impeccable. 

Carlos Simon - Requiem For The Enslaved If a piece of music can be seen as a container for emotion, then Simon's extraordinarily powerful Requiem is near to bursting. Such is the weight of what he's conveying - "marking eternal rest" for the American slaves sold off in 1838 to keep Georgetown University afloat - that it would seem an impossibility for any work of art to encompass it. But Simon is both brave and skilled enough that he pulls it off in a way that should silence any argument about slavery's central role in the American legacy. The idiom he creates, drawing on musical colors associated both with the European classical tradition and the diaspora, including spirituals, hip hop, New Orleans jazz, and others, would become a morass for almost any other composer, but Simon moves his brush around the palette with dazzling ease and great depth of feeling. 

While I hope this bold, at times shattering, work becomes a concert hall staple, it's going to be hard to match Simon's collaborators here, including rapper and spoken word artist Marco Pavé, who also wrote the text, trumpeter Jared "MK Zulu" Bailey, and Hub New Music, a quartet that sounds like an orchestra. Simon himself takes on the piano part, lending it the dynamic range and compelling flow of a great preacher, making it another voice in the piece. Another masterstroke is Simon's complete ownership of the 10-movement requiem structure, using the soul-nourishing force of ritual to his own ends. To be clear, however, while there is a healing force here, there is also deep sorrow and anger. Pavé's text ends with this blistering couplet: "Now when you read the word slave in your false history books...you will know the truth. The so-called masters unknowingly elevated the souls of their property while simultaneously building a tomb in hell for themselves." Amen. 

Kate Soper Feat. Sam Pluta - The Understanding Of All Things On this fantastic and fantastical collection, Soper shoulders her way into a small but elite group that includes Scott Johnson and Laurie Anderson. Using her voice to convey content that is both informational and musical, all with a wry wit that seems to say, "Can you believe I'm getting away with this?" she takes us on a thrill ride grounded in her piano and Pluta's electronics. At times her voice is a ghost in the machine, getting pulled like taffy or chopped into bits, while never losing sight of the thoughts she wishes to explore. Pulling texts as wide-ranging as Kafka, Parmenides, and W.B. Yeats, to explore the meaning of existence, this is like hippest philosophy class - or Ted Talk - ever, and one you can play over and over again. To be honest, however, I wasn't feeling it much on my first go round. But then I listened to Season Two of the Miller Theatre's Mission Commission podcast, on which Soper is a featured composer, and something clicked. Whatever journey you take to find this, get started now. You don't want to be late for class. 

Loadbang - Quiver This quartet puts baritone voice (Jeffrey Gavett) alongside trumpet (Andy Kozar),  trombone (William Lang), and bass clarinet (Carlos Cordeiro or Adrián Sandi) almost as if it were just another breath-powered instrument  - yet one that can outdo the others in flexibility and variety. As on their last album, which featured a string section, they unflappably take on whatever the pieces demand, whether it's the (mock?) solemnity of Gavett's own Quis Det Ut (2016), which takes inspiration from the renaissance, or the gasps and warbles of Heather Stebbins' fragmented title track (2014). Other pieces by Quinn Mason, Cordeiro, ZangYun WE, Kozar, and Chaya Czernowin, are more text-based, featuring poetry by Lydia Davis, William Blake, and others, in settings like you'e never heard before. Venture in and be as fearless in your listening as Loadbang was in the act of creation.

Ethan Woods - Burnout After 2019's Hyperion Drive, a sleek and sexy collaboration with Alice TM, Woods returns to similar realms as his earlier Mossing Around EP, applying his warm singing to  meandering melodies in chamber-folk arrangements of his most assured set of songs yet. Many of the lyrics address animals or are even from the point of view of the feathered and the furred, adding to the gently dissociative vibe that could be called psychedelic, but also reaches back to Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Woods' approach to song-craft is unique enough that it's easier to see it as a parallel path rather than tangential so when you get tired of our storyline, give a listen to his.

Moor Mother - Jazz Codes Though not obviously a concept album, there's a cinematic sweep to this latest from poet, professor, composer, and visual artist Camae Aweya that calls back to Barry Adamson's movie of the mind, Moss Side Story. While there is great musical variety here, with bright touches from Mary Lattimore's harp, Nicole Mitchell's flute, and other guests, the whole thing is slathered in a rhythmic juiciness, like a lost dream of the late, great Ras G. The vocal blend is top notch, with singers Orion Sun, Wolf Weston, Melanie Charles, and others lending their hearts and souls to the project alongside rappers including Yungmorpheus and Akai Solo. But dominion over all comes from Moor Mother herself: her composition, her intention, her spoken words, and even her sharp flow on Rap Jasm, the obvious single here. Her kaleidoscopic overview of the Black musical experience encompasses everyone from Woody Shaw to OutKast and Linton Kwesi Johnson. Her lyrics are impressionistic, revealing, and arising out of a depth of knowledge and feeling that power through any haziness due to their roots in the traditions of "great Black music, ancient to the future," as the Art Ensemble of Chicago put it. The song Evening gives us plenty of bread crumbs to follow, from "Free jazz lifestyle, yeah, I'm off the cuff," to "Spirits in the dark, let Nina sing, because it DON'T mean a thing/If it ain't got the blues." I mentioned a lot of names here, but the only one you should remember is Moor Mother's as she continues to astonish and become ever more crucial to the tenor of our times.

Lizzo - Special When her last album, Cuz I Love You, exploded in the sky over 2019, I worried about the influence success might have on her future work. But as she was just remaking pop, hip hop, and r&b in her own image, I was probably overthinking it. Either way, I'm overjoyed that her latest goes down so easy you might play it twice just to keep feeling so good. No song overstays its welcome and if Am I Ready causes a slight cringe with its Katy Perry-esque chorus, its still catchy as heck and goes by fast. Standouts are the pure disco of About Damn Time, the electro overshare of I Love You, Bitch, and the swinging folk-pop of If I Love You, but she plays to her strengths throughout for a fun, fizzy ride. And we all owe her thanks for the great opening lines of The Sign, an epitaph for a pandemic that is not quite over: "Hi, motherfucker, did you miss me?/I've been home since 2020/I've been twerkin' and making smoothies, it's called healing/And I feel better since you seen me last." So do I, now that I have Special in my life.

Billie Eilish - Guitar Songs While the death of the album has been an ongoing debate for a decade or more, it seems like singles are the things that can disappear more easily. So I'm pinning this here, like the beautiful butterfly it is. With Eilish in intimate, reflective mode, accompanied by her brother Finneas' delicate backing, these two songs show off her songwriting and singing in their purest form. The lyrics are deeply personal, with TV finding her alone on the couch after a breakup, asking "What's the point of anything?" and The 30th detailing the aftermath of a friend's terrifying car accident. But her sense of drama never leaves her and the way she finds comfort in a stadium audience near the end of TV, or the crescendo of The 30th ("You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive!"), are strokes of genius that nail the songs to your soul like the end of a Raymond Carver short story. Deceptively simple stuff and hopefully a signpost to her next album.

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Record Roundup: Solos, Duos, Ensembles

We are officially in the fourth quarter of 2021, which means all the albums I have yet to tell you about are starting to weigh heavily upon me. Here's an attempt to catch you up with some next-level new music releases featuring solo players, duos, and ensembles. Get comfy!

Note: feel free to press play on this playlist, which has selections from eight of the albums below.

Berglind María Tómasdóttir - Ethereality Icelandic flutist and multidisciplinary artist Tómasdóttir opens her latest album in quietly spectacular fashion, with Carolyn Chen's mysterious Stomachs Of Ravens (2018). An exploration of the flute's breathier tones, it has a rhythm that darts here and there, then stretches out, creating an abstract narrative. The recording is as superb as Tómasdóttir's technique, which is true for the whole album, including the folkish charms of Tryggvi M. Baldvinsson's Riposo (2015) and Anna Thorvaldsdottir's title track, composed in 2011. The latter makes stunning use of extended techniques, making for some startling noises amidst a wide dynamic range. It's an epic in 6:21 and, as this is the premiere - and only - recording, it will likely stand as definitive. The same can be said for Clint McCallum's Shut Open (2021), which arises from bass notes to a suspended, silvery cloud of sound, like the soundtrack for an as-yet-unwritten creation myth. In a word: spellbinding!

Wu Man and Kojiro Umezaki - 流芳Flow In 2014, I raved about Umezaki's (Cycles), praising it as the most complete picture to date of this master of the shakuhachi, the Japanese flute. I looked forward to more and now, seven years later, I finally have it in this gorgeous collaboration with Wu Man, as much as virtuoso on the pipa (a Chinese lute) as Umezaki is on his instrument. A series of solo and duo compositions/improvisations inspired by the classical Chinese garden at the Huntington museum near Los Angeles, and drawing on their deep experience of both folk and contemporary traditions, these gentle and spare pieces will transport you there - or wherever you let your imagination take you. 

The City Of Tomorrow - Blow The three works here serve as both an introduction to this pioneering wind quartet and as a justification for the role of such an ensemble in contemporary music. The centerpiece is a world premiere recording of Hannah Lash's Leander and Hero (2015), an episodic series of nine short movements, which uses the Greek myth of lovers kept apart by an apocalyptic storm to bring the climate crisis down to the level of individuals trying to survive on the planet. But there's nothing didactic or obvious about the music, which is consistently fascinating as it pulls you through the story. Blow, Franco Donatoni's piece from 1989, opens the album and dazzles in its layering of the instruments, with muted horns backing up swirling flute and oboe with three-dimensional effect. The final piece is Esa-Pekka Salonen's Memoria (2003) and, while it meanders a bit, the assured ensemble writing lets these remarkable players revel in the tones and textures of their instruments - you will, too.

Recap - Count To Five There is every kind of struck object on this fantastic debut from a new percussion quartet, resulting in a kaleidoscopic array of sounds. Angelica Negron's title track, which includes the crackles and thwaps of found instruments, opens the album with a ritual flair as it interpolates fragments of what sound like field recordings. The ceremony continues with the bongos and side drums of Hammers by Alison Loggins-Hull, which finds the drums chasing Tiahna Sterling's flute in a merry dance. Ellen Reid's Fear | Release introduces bells into the equation, with playful trills and a stop-start bass drum pattern that gains inevitability as the piece goes on. It's delightful and unsettling all at once. Equally arresting is Hedera by Lesley Flannigan, who first caught my attention when she opened for Tristan Perich a few years ago. With rumbling drums and the composer singing long held notes, it maintains a level of intrigue for a full 20 minutes. As the layers of voices accumulate, it becomes ever more a mournful balm for our times, both comforting and acknowledging how hard things can be. New music from Mary Kouyoumdjian is always welcome and Children Of Conflict: Samar's Song is among her most powerful works. Andie Tanning's violin soars elegiacally over pensive eighth notes, a dramatic meditation on loss and tragedy. Caroline Shaw's arrangement of the 1897 hymn, Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown, with the composer's clear soprano and Recap joined by Transit New Music, sounds both luxurious and spare, like a Shaker table made of rich mahogany. It strikes the perfect note of hope and strength to end a masterfully sequenced collection. I would be remiss if I didn't note that all the members of Recap are BIPOC females, not the most common thing in this space, and all the composers are women. But this band needs no special pleading to get on your radar and on your repeat playlist.

Borderlands Ensemble - The Space In Which To See Opening an album with a world-premiere recording of a piece by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti is a sure way to grab me. Her title piece (2019), four short movements setting a poem by Layli Long Soldier, an Oglala Lakota, is equally rigorous and dramatic, with a dark undertow that is one of her signatures. Like many of the pieces here, it also foregrounds the horn of co-founder Johanna Lundy, who plays with a creamy tone that breathes marvelous life into Jay Vosk's Passing Ships (2019), which seeks to depict human migration in melancholic fashion. Part of the Borderlands brief is to connect the culture of their home base, Tucson, Arizona to that of Mexico, which bears remarkable fruit in Ometéotl (2019), in which Alejandro Vera pays homage to the Aztec god of creation. With tense strings and a dialog between Lundy's discursive horn and the terse guitar of Dr. José Luis Puerta, it has a careful solemnity that seems to be holding back the forces of nature. There are more delights on this well-curated debut, including stylish adaptations of Mexican folk songs, and I urge you to explore the whole landscape.

Loadbang - Plays Well With Others I've been on the fence about this quartet, perhaps due to their unusual combination of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice, but in the grand tradition of Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown's "With Strings" albums, adding a string orchestra has been just the ticket for me to find entry. That's not to say that there isn't still a profound weirdness to what's going on here. For example, there's Heather Stebbins' Riven (2020), which has singer Jeff Gavett moaning incoherently, something making insect noises, plops, clicks, and occasional notes from the trumpet (Andy Kozar), trombone (William Lang), and clarinet (Adrian Sandi), and the strings (conducted by Eduardo Leandro) gradually ramping up the tension to the breaking point. It's a wild ride, equally appropriate for an Italian giallo soundtrack as the concert hall. Eve Beglarian's You See Where This Is Going (2019) is a close enough setting of a poem by Brandon Constantine to be a distant cousin of Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, with marvelous pizzicato strings and Gavett outdoing himself at the top of his range. Reiko Füting and Taylor Brook also contribute pieces of baffling originality, and Scott Wollschleger's CVS may be his most mind-boggling piece yet - you'll never look at that drugstore chain the same way - with the three of them finding a home somewhere in the region of Scott Walker's later albums. Finally, with any last shred of provincialism scoured away, Paula Matthusen's Such Is Now The Necessity delivers a dose of lush beauty. Bold stuff - and consider me knocked off that fence into Loadbang territory. P.S. SCARY-good string section, too, with members of JACK, Wet Ink, Talea, AndPlay, and other notable groups joining in. Note: catch Gavett at the Americas Society on November 5th, performing a Taylor Brook world premiere with Yarn/Wire - should be a heckuva night. Details here.

Tak Ensemble - Brandon Lopez: Empty And/Or Church of Plenty This new release on the cassette label Tripticks finds one of our most esteemed groups collaborating with Lopez, a bassist and composer. While Tak commissioned the piece, the final result arose from more of a dialog between composer and musicians rather than the handing over of a score to place. Lopez joins the ensemble adding a dark, droning bottom end for them to react to, triggering some otherworldly skirling from violinist Marina Kifferstein on Side A and a great clatter of brushes from percussionist Ellery Trafford on Side B. Both sides make for compelling listening, but you get more of a feel of the full group on Side B, with vocalist Charlotte Mundy letting it rip along with Madison Greenstone's Clarinet and Laura Cocks' flute. The last few minutes is wonderfully bonkers. And don't worry, you can stream the tracks on Bandcamp so you don't have to get your cassette deck out of storage. I, for one, couldn't live without mine and enjoy buying cassettes as convenient physical artifacts that cost less than new vinyl - and I play them, too, of course!

Ensemble Interactivo de La Habana - Studio Session Sure, I love the Buena Vista Social Club as much as the next person, but I fear we have been ignoring contemporary Cuban music at our peril. Now, amongst all their other activities, Tak Ensemble has also done the public service of releasing an immersive debut from this Cuban collective on their Tak Editions label. Consisting of one 41-minute continuous track, while rooted in improvisation nevertheless transits through moods and sonic universes that gain inevitability with each repeat listen. Call them movements if you must, but that would just take away from the fluidity that arose when seven years of work by, performing at street fairs and festivals of the avant garde, finally came to fruition in the studio for nine musicians, including percussion, vocals, flute, and more. I'm sure it was deeply satisfying experience for them and that translates fully to the listener. 

Nate Wooley - Mutual Aid Music Picture the scene: Eight of the finest musicians from the realms of new music and contemporary jazz gather at the redoubtable Oktaven Audio and over the course of single day record eight pieces, each about ten minutes long, using a combination of notation, graphic scores, and instructions for improvisation. On top of that, the players - assembled by trumpeter/composer Wooley - are to question "what they add to the ensemble as human beings first and musicians second." Challenging? Maybe for some, but for Ingrid Laubrock (sax), Joshua Modney (violin), Mariel Roberts (cello), Sylvie Courvoisier and Cory Smythe (pianos), Matt Moran (vibraphone), and Russell Greenberg (vibraphone and percussion), this is their bread and butter. Each piece, which traverses a range from the delicate and starlit to the knotty and provocative, has its own character and occupies the center of a Venn diagram where the chamber music and jazz of the 21st century meet and greedily absorb the best qualities of each other. Wooley has been developing the form and philosophy of Mutual Aid Music since 2014 and this album is quite the proof of concept. While the high-minded ideals of "community action and the human drive to provide succor to our fellow humans" are wonderful, even better is just sinking into the expressive wonders of these pieces, marveling at the bravery and generosity of these incredible musicians to try new ways of creative collaboration.

JACK Quartet - Christopher Otto: rags'ma As on another Greyfade release I reviewed earlier this year, there is a lot of verbiage and theorizing behind this compositional debut from Otto, a founding member of JACK. I encourage you to read all of it as you can learn a ton about just intonation and what motivates someone to compose. Or you could just order the album and trust me when I say it sounds like little else written for string quartet. A series of slowly moving transitions played by either two or three quartets overdubbed atop each other, the sound is meditative but multidimensional, at times sounding like nothing other than a prop plane - or two - lazily traversing a summer sky. This might not be for you if you're an impatient listener, but if you can get behind some radical minimalism, look no further.

Miki Sawada and Brendan Randall-Myers - A Kind Of Mirror This collaboration between pianist Sawada and composer/sound-designer Randall-Myers began life as a performance piece thattoured throughout West Virginia that offered an experience (apparently) equal parts Marina Abramovic and Mr. Rogers. But that show only included two movements, which they then expanded to five and have now recorded for Slashsound. The question of whether the visuals are needed is answered in the first minutes of Shadow as a drone gives way to crystalline piano, developing into an extravagantly beautiful piece that gradually becomes nearly overwhelming. Bloom continues that vibe, betraying Sawada and Randall-Myers' shared love of long-distance running. You will be breathless. Then comes Echo, with single notes following each other like raindrops on a window pane. The audio processing gradually adds artificial resonances, creating an enhanced piano of the mind. Mirror presents calming chords surrounded by electronic clouds of sound that gradually overtake the soundscape before leading to the dazzling arpeggios of Cascade, the final track, which delivers the thrills of hitting that final mile of a marathon and discovering it's all downhill. Note: Get to the Public Theater on November 23rd for the album release show!

Julia Den Boer - Kermès Last year, I praised Den Boer's solo piano debut, Lineage, for its "sparkling and contemplative" nature and for its smart curation of four Canadian composers. I also called it a "go-to "morning album" - and, what do you know, she's gone and done it again - with only one Canadian this time. Featuring works by Giulia Lorusso (Italy), Linda Catlin Smith (Toronto, via NY), Anna Thorvaldsdottir (Iceland), and Rebecca Saunders (London), she's gathered together pieces that work well together, with enough contrast to avoid monotony, but also enough shared resonance to make for a complete whole. She's also received the deluxe recording treatment from Oktaven Audio so you can hear her sublime control of dynamics with even more clarity than on Lineage. It was also a coup to feature the first studio recording of Thorvaldsdottir's Reminiscence, a 2017 piece premiered in 2020 by Justin Krawitz. It's an almost skeletal work, held together only by Den Boer's deft pedal work, and seems to explore a world of deep interiority and features some sonic touches that will expand your idea of what the piano can do. This wonderful collection continues the establishment of Den Boer as one of the finest pianists working in new music.

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