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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Words + Music, Part 2: Scott Johnson And Alarm Will Sound

In Part 1 of this mini-series, I looked at Landfall by Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet, which sprinkled her wry and poetic storytelling amongst gorgeously dark strings and electronics. Here we have something quite different from a former collaborator with Anderson that also puts words and music together in intriguing ways.

Mind Out Of Matter - Scott Johnson and Alarm Will Sound Scott Johnson dropped two bombshell albums in the 80’s that have been in my musical DNA ever since. The first was John Somebody (1986), which I read about in the New York Times and bought without hearing a note. More than three decades later its introduction of Johnson’s brilliant method of turning speech into music has not lost its capacity to startle and delight. What he does is meticulously notate the intrinsic melodies in natural speech, and then use those melodic fragments as the seeds of wild fantasias incorporating the instrumentation and techniques of both rock and classical music, with a focus on his proggy and dense guitar chords and arpeggios. 

That description doesn’t do justice how John Somebody turns a banal party conversation (“You know who’s in New York? You remember that guy - the - he was sort of a, sort of a...) into sheer wonder, a feat repeated on the other pieces on the album, including one which uses laughter as its inspiration. Perhaps even more surprising was that Johnson was able to adapt his methods to create the soundtrack for Patty Hearst (1988), Paul Schrader’s spooky evocation of the newspaper heiress’s forced adventure with the Symbionese Liberation Army. The theme took the late Natasha Richardson’s voice from the film, as she (as Hearst) calls for her parents from the closet in which the SLA has confined her: “Mom? Dad?” It’s as haunting and indelible as those “la la la’s” from Rosemary’s Baby. 

Both records were in high rotation and I was even lucky enough to see Johnson perform John Somebody at Lincoln Center, which included probably the most six-string shredding that august institution had ever experienced to that point. After Patty Hearst, however, I lost touch with Johnson’s work, partly due to things happening in my own life and to the sporadic nature of his output. That’s why I missed a step in the evolution of his approach, namely the idea that he could use his speech-to-music method to deliver content as well as melodic inventions. If this description sounds slightly dry, that’s a reflection the one early example I found, How It Happens, which is a multi-movement work for string quartet and the voice of I.F. Stone, the legendary journalist. Even with Kronos Quartet sawing away dutifully and Stone spouting some interesting notions, it’s a lackluster affair. Maybe that’s why Kronos chose to sprinkle it among a few albums rather than devoting a whole release to it. Americans, from 2010, is far more successful, a dense and angry treatise on stereotyping and prejudice. I highly recommend one of our major ensembles revive this important work, so relevant to our times.

Mind Out Of Matter, based on a lecture by Tufts professor Daniel C. Dennett, is however a further evolutionary step, a leap even, in Johnson's craft. First there’s the music, performed with both precision and sparkle by the virtuosi of Alarm Will Sound, one of the finest new music ensembles around. While Johnson in his liner notes repeats his mission statement of combining both the instruments and traditions of rock and classical music, I hear an alternate lineage to the sound world of MOOM, namely that of composed jazz. This was the short-lived movement that grew out of the sessions by Miles Davis and Gil Evans that became The Birth Of The Cool. The main protagonists were people like Jimmy Giuffre, Shorty Rogers, and even my old favorite Kenyon Hopkins. They took the sound and instrumentation of jazz and used it to create through-composed pieces devoid of significant improvisation. Check out Giuffre’s The Train And The River or Hopkins’s ballet score Rooms for some notable examples. 

So, while there is some of Johnson’s trademark guitar (played here by Caleb Burhans), alternately snarling, twanging or suspending chords like Pete Townshend, the woodwinds and brass dominate the overall texture. There’s also marimba and piano, percussion and a drum kit, and the rhythms are firmly in a jazz mode, never getting into a 4/4 rock groove, although there are touches of Latin-tinged funk. Take the first movement, Cow Design, which kicks off with a brass fanfare that quickly grows knotty, bolstered by the woodwinds and guitar and pushed along by the drums. It’s immediately involving and then there’s a hard stop to allow Dennett to enter with his first line: “Who designed this cow?” 

Chuckle if you like, but what follows is no joke as the professor goes on to compare how modern cows evolved from aurochs to the way “Religions started out wild and then were domesticated.” This being Johnson, however, there are strategically repeated lines, melodic development based on those repetitions, counterpoint reacting to those melodies, variations building on those melodies, and almost imperceptible segues to the next nugget of musical and spoken information. When you consider that Dennett, intellectually dynamic as he is, is not an especially melodious speaker, MOOM becomes more and more like a high wire act, and a spectacularly successful one at that. 

You may be excused for wondering if this content-heavy piece bears repeated listening, or if you extract everything of value from it at once, like a tea bag, and subsequent hearings just grow more diluted. MOOM is fundamentally a musical work and I think you would be doing both it and yourself a disservice if you approached from that point of view. I have found it nearly endlessly enjoyable to just let it go by, absorbing soundbites here and there, letting Dennett’s ideas take shape in my mind as if by osmosis. 

And what ideas! This is one of our great minds, synthesizing biology, anthropology, evolution and technology into a wonderfully original theory about the roots of religion, comparing it to everything from memes, to the common cold, and to parasites which hijack ants to colonize large mammals. For example, in the movement Good For Itself he says: “Every human group has religion, so it must be good for something. Every human group that’s ever been studied also has the common cold. What’s that good for? It’s good for itself. The common cold evolved because it can evolve. It’s not good for anything else, it just evolved because it can evolve. And ideas can evolve because they can evolve, too. They don’t have to be good for anything. The fact that they are universal only shows that they do a very good job of living in that particular ecological niche.” Heady stuff, indeed, and rich food for thought. 

You’re probably figuring out by now that Dennett’s view, while clear-eyed and respectful, is ultimately atheistic. This aligns with Johnson’s views (and mine), which he has promulgated in various essays over the years. Suffice to say that if you are not secure enough in your own beliefs to have them challenged, you might find yourself offended by some of what Dennett says. But more likely you will learn something no matter what your level of orthodoxy - and you may even find yourself feeling a bit of anthropocentric pride in the uniquely human development of belief systems. 

The final movement is called Awe, which begins with some ruminative, starlit sounds before Dennett enters: “The traditional accompaniment to awe is a sense of mystery. But we know that there is another kind of awe, which is accompanied not by mystery but dawning understanding.” And: “The idea that if you remove the mystery from the world, you remove the sources of awe, it’s just an obsolete idea. Modern understanding of the world is more awe-inspiring by orders of magnitude than the old mythological, threadbare visions of several thousand years ago.” I couldn’t agree more and my awe is now directed at Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson, for their perfect performance of a difficult work, and at Johnson for his alchemical work of creation, which probably shouldn't work as well as it does. There are some mysteries and miracles left in the world after all.

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Record Roundup: Classical Composure

Record Roundup: Classical Composure

While I'm not sure that the paradigm of sitting motionless and silent while teams of black-clad virtuosi play music makes sense any more, I still believe that classical and orchestral music are among humanity's great achievements. As much as I might like to blow up the performance paradigm, I am equally heartened by the vitality of the scene when it comes to exciting composers and performers who are doing exactly what they want to do. Here are a few of them. 

Errollyn Wallen - Photography This Belize-born Briton is an uncommon hybrid of composer, singer, pianist and songwriter. On this, the second album featuring her classical writing, she displays a remarkable facility with composing and arranging while - crucially - connecting to emotion and storytelling. The white-hot inevitability of her music has me sold even though I often inveigh against contemporary classical that uses essentially traditional forms. The opening Cello Concerto is a one-movement work for cello and string orchestra that is constructed with the proportionality of a master architect. The cello line is impassioned but controlled and there is evidence of a deep understanding of not only classical form, but even Baroque styles. This is history-mining of the highest order, played flawlessly by Matthew Sharp, and you will hang on every note. Hunger follows, a short piece for full orchestra that is not so much in debt to Shostakovich as channeling him. The title even implies a moral dimension, which would please him no end - but not as much as the sheer narrative excitement and clever orchestration. Photography features the string orchestra again for four movements of sheer, shimmering beauty. Wallen isn't pushing any envelopes here, just displaying fully engaged artistry, like a chef who renews a familiar dish by using the finest ingredients. 

The last piece, In Earth, may be the most original on the album, which is slightly ironic considering that it takes off on Purcell's 17th Century song When I Am Laid In Earth, sometimes known as Dido's Lament. So often has this piece been excerpted from Dido And Aeneas, Purcell's operatic masterpiece, that it is practically a second British national anthem. In a flight of fancy I had while listening to Wallen's reimagined version I even found a through-line in this sorrowful song straight to See That My Grave Is Kept Clean - and thus to the British fascination with American blues. But that's a think-piece for another day. All I'll say further is you gotta hear it - and it demands to be played on a decent sound system so you can hear every sepulchral note of Tim Harries' seismic electric bass. You won't soon forget this song, which is beautifully sung by Wallen herself, or the rest of Photography, which is certain bring more attention to this important new voice. 

Lisa Moore - The Stone People Here is someone who will delve without fear into the furthest reaches of piano music (seek out her Frederick Rzewski interpretations) and come up smiling. Her relentless curiosity and absolute commitment have served her well in assembling this album, which contains John Luther Adams' complete music for the instrument. Two of his pieces are quite demanding, but not in the way you might think, as there are no furious runs here. It's more about belief. And Moore believes. There's also Kate Moore's shamanistic Sleabh Bleagh and a memorable vignette, Orizzonte, by Missy Mazzoli, which is well worth the journey. Intriguing works by Julia Wolfe and Martin Bresnick complete a very substantial program. Maybe not for everyone, or for every mood, but you'll never hear these pieces played better. 

Michael Mizrahi - Currents If you're looking for a more meditative contemporary piano album, get up on Mizrahi's soulful collection, featuring short pieces by Sarah Kirkland Snider, Troy Herion, Mark Dancigers, Asha Srinivasan, Mazzoli, and Patrick Burke. It's lovely music that avoids New Age bathos. Let Satie rest next Sunday morning and give this a try.

Alarm Will Sound - Modernists This is a kind of "save the pieces" album for me, but what pieces! The orchestrations of Revolution #9 by The Beatles (I always knew there was music in there) and Edgard Varese's seminal Poeme Electronique are flat-out wonderful. While one might reasonably question the value of taking the electronics or tapes out of pieces famously built on them, I will only say trust me. This is fun, adventurous, and eye-opening music-making. The rest of the album, made of works by Wolfgang Rihm, Charles Wuorinen, Augusta Read Thomas, and John Orfe, is perfectly fine but not especially exciting or distinctive. Put Revolution #9 and Poeme Electronique on a playlist with Bang On A Can's dazzling interpretation of Eno's Music For Airports for a more satisfying mix.

Cypress String Quartet - Beethoven: The Early String Quartets Random records come over the transom and sometimes I'm like "Why? Why did they send this to me? Why did they even make this?" But I put it on and, while I didn't do a full investigation, I can say that this has to be the equal of, or better than, any other version of this sublime music. The recording is close, but not too close (no creaking chairs) and the playing is light and completely free of any stuffiness. I have to say that between this and Leif Ove Andsnes' recording of Piano Concerto #2, I'm starting to have a strong preference for Beethoven's early work. The members of the Cypress obviously love this music, too, and enjoy playing it together, so why not start here if you're looking for Beethoven string quartets? P.S. They also did the Late Quartets but I haven't heard them yet.

Let me know what you think of this "short takes" format - it's a good way to keep up with the deluge!

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