Best Of 2021: Classical

I tried mightily to deliver to your ears the many excellent releases in this category as they came my way, but the deluge got the best of me pretty early on. As is usual in these genre-specific lists, I'll first give you links to what I've previously covered followed by pocket reviews of other albums that helped define my year. Selections from everything that's on Spotify* are included in this playlist or below. That said, I got a new CD player this year and have delighted in rediscovering the impact and expressiveness the format can have - many thanks to all the labels still providing physical promos!

 

Celebrating 2021: New Year, New Music
Tak Ensemble - Taylor Brook: Star Maker Fragments
Sid Richardson - Borne By A Wind
Susie Ibarra - Talking Gong
Patricia Brennan - Maquishti
Adam Morford & Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti - Yesterday Is Two Days Ago

Record Roundup: Sonic Environments
Mariel Roberts - Armament
Benjamin Louis Brody/Ian Chang - Floating Into Infinity
Angelica Olstad - Transmute

Record Roundup: Chiaroscuro
Akropolis Reed Quintet - Ghost Light
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė - Saudade
Christopher Cerrone - A Natural History of Vacant Lots and The Arching Path

Record Roundup: Song Forms
Will Liverman and Paul Sanchez - Dreams Of A New Day: Songs By Black Composers
Caroline Shaw - Narrow Sea

Record Roundup: Novelty Is Not Enough
Sō Percussion and Friends - Julius Eastman: Stay On It
Kenneth Kirschner & Joseph Branciforte - From The Machine, Vol. 1
Peter Gilbert - Burned Into The Orange
Chris Campbell - Orison

Record Roundup: Enigmas And Excitations
José Luis Hurtado - Parametrical Counterpoint
Rarescale + Scott L. Miller - 05 IX
Douglas Boyce - The Hunt By Night

Record Roundup: On An Island
Alarm Will Sound - Tyshawn Sorey: For George Lewis | Autoschediasms
Michael Compitello - Unsnared Drum
Molly Herron + Science Ficta - Through Lines
Van Stiefel - Spirits
Ning Yu & David Bird - Iron Orchid

Record Roundup: Solos, Duos, Ensembles
Berglind María Tómasdóttir - Ethereality
Wu Man and Kojiro Umezaki - 流芳Flow
The City Of Tomorrow - Blow
Recap - Count To Five 
Borderlands Ensemble - The Space In Which To See
Loadbang - Plays Well With Others
Tak Ensemble - Brandon Lopez: Empty And/Or Church of Plenty
Ensemble Interactivo de La Habana - Studio Session
Nate Wooley - Mutual Aid Music
JACK Quartet - Christopher Otto: rags'ma
Miki Sawada and Brendan Randall-Myers - A Kind Of Mirror
Julia Den Boer - Kermès

Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion - Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part As I noted in my review, their previous release, Narrow Sea, left me wanting more, and now I have it! Consider this proof of the concept behind that song cycle, which let the Sō percussionists run wild with expressive clicks, clatters, and rhythmic inventions. Except, instead of Dawn Upshaw, it is Shaw herself who sings these 10 art song arrangements of everything from hymns and Joyce to Anne Carson and Abba. Of the latter, I will say that if you're skeptical - as I am - of the genius of the Swedish pop stars, I can at least say that it does not offend in this context. In fact, the album flows beautifully, with Shaw's crystalline soprano connecting all the dots, and ends with a sublime take on Some Bright Morning (also known as I'll Fly Away), which sounds wonderfully ancient and modern all at once.

Adam Roberts - Bell Threads I may be a romantic at heart, but when I see artists like AndPlay, Hannah Lash, the JACK Quartet, and Bearthoven on a portrait album, I like to think of them clamoring to play the music of an exciting composer. For all I know, it's just another gig for them - "work is good," as we used to say in the freelance photo biz - but at least it also serves as a guarantee of quality in the performances! In any case, had I been paying closer attention, I might have remembered Roberts' playful piece for Transient Canvas on their 2017 album, Sift, but I'm not that cool. This is also his second portrait album, with the first coming out on Tzadik in 2014, so I'm even further behind than I thought. But maybe you are, too, so I can only urge you to get to know this colorful, inventive, and versatile composer ASAP - and you might as well start here. 

Whether you drink deeply from the dark and tangled duos for violin and viola (Shift Differential (2011) and Diptych (2019), masterfully played by AndPlay (Maya Bennardo, violin; Hannah Levinson, viola), or get lost in the sparkling web of Lash's harp in Rounds (2017), you will find yourself drawn into Roberts' world as if by a brilliant storyteller. There's also an Oboe Quartet (2016-17), played by the JACK with Erik Behr, that toys with classical form like a cat with twine, and the title piece (2009), a fine solo work for Levinson's viola. The deal-sealer for me, however, was Happy/Angry Music (2017), an angular, ruminative, and ultimately explosive suite of composed almost-jazz - not dissimilar from Sylvie Courvoisier's recent stuff - played with total immersion by Bearthoven (Karl Larson, piano; Matt Evans, percussion; Pat Swoboda, bass). Bell Threads was a wonderful, if belated, introduction to Roberts, now someone for whom my radar is firmly set.

David Fulmer - Sky's Acetylene This piece for flute (Mindy Kaufman), harp (Nancy Allen), percussion (Dan Druckman), piano (Eric Huebner), and double bass (Max Zeugner) has been sitting in the can since 2017, when the New York Philharmonic premiered it as part of their now-defunct Contact! series. The music remains well in advance of its sell-by date, however, a fresh and fascinating exploration of interplay and solo sonorities of the imaginatively assembled forces for 13 dazzling minutes. A chamber work with orchestral sweep. I should pay closer attention to Fulmer, whose Speak Of The Spring was one of the works gracing Michael Nicholas' remarkable Transitions back in 2016.

Michael Pisaro-Liu - Stem Flower Root "Holy shit, that's the most romantic-sounding thing I've ever heard you play!" So said composer Ingrid Laubrock when hearing trumpeter Nate Wooley playing a dress rehearsal of this piece. Commissioned by Wooley as part of his For/With Festival, and composed for b-flat trumpet with a variety of mutes and sine waves, the 30-minute piece has three distinct parts. Laubrock was probably talking about Flower, the middle section, which has a languor one might associate with Chet Baker. In the dense but beautiful essay included in the chapbook that accompanies the project, Pisaro-Liu notes that it is a "symmetrical collection of five arcs or five petals on a flower, with each petal picking up where the previous had left off." The opening and closing sections are meditations on tone, single notes blown through different mutes. The chapbook also has a series of "Anatomies" by Wooley (from whence the Laubrock quote comes), where he writes: "Every time a trumpet is muted, a pathway to a new sonic universe is laid." So true, whether it's Miles Davis playing Someday My Prince Will Come or the incantations Wooley lays down here. This sublime project is the first of the For/With pieces to be recorded - more to come in 2022. While the $7 digital download comes with a PDF of the chapbook, for just another $5 I recommend splurging on the physical book to treat yourself to a more immersive experience. There's something to be said for looking away from a screen from time to time!

Dustin White - Ri Ra Boasting seven world-premiere recordings of 21st century works for C, alto, and bass flute - all inspired by middle eastern traditions - this debut highlights an engaged and adventurous musician. His generosity extends to his website, with ample bios for each composer (Parisa Sabet, Erfan Attarchi, Sami Seif, Imam Habibi, Ata Ghavidel, Wajdi Abou Diab, Katia Makdissi-Warren) and links to their socials. This was especially helpful as all were unfamiliar to me. The album flows nicely, rising to a head on the penultimate track, Diab's The Awiss Dance (2020), based on an ancient rhythm used by Arabian tribesmen to make horses and camels dance. It's a wonderful piece that may have you get up from your seat to match its percussive flair. How often can you say that about a flute album?

Amanda Gookin - Forward Music Project 2.0: In This Skin When I reviewed the first volume in this series focusing on women composers, I remarked I would be on high alert for the next one. Now, that anticipation has been repaid by this new collection, featuring seven pieces commissioned by Gookin to spotlight female empowerment and strength. Many of the pieces use visceral techniques to reflect their rootedness in the body, whether the "everyday erotics" of Alex Temple's Tactile, the three ages of woman reflected in Kamala Sankaram's Belly, or the embodied anger of Shelley Washington's Seething. In addition to Gookin's stunning cello playing, the tracks may feature spoken word, singing, electronics, or bass drum, creating a variety of compelling textures. While Tactile highlights Gookin's own bell-like vocals, Veiled by Niloufar Nourbakhsh uses the voices of Chelsea Loew and Solmaz Badri to pay tribute to the resilience of women who have stood up to Islamic extremism. As on volume one, the inspirations and background stories (Paola Prestini cites the Kavanaugh hearings as fuel for her piece, To Tell A Story) certainly enrich the experience of listening but are not required reading to know that the composers and Gookin are being given free reign of expression and are exploring areas of true passion. All of that comes through in the music, loud and clear. Bring on 3.0!

Gyda Valtÿsdöttir - Ox (also on Limited edition vinyl) On her last album, the Icelandic cellist, composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist traversed 2,000 years of musical history. On Ox, she focuses on erasing genre, creating a transporting song cycle that touches on ambient, electronic, art-pop, and chamber music. Based on its title alone, Cute Kittens Lick Cream may be the archetypal piece here, embracing an up-to-the-minute languor that should decorate whatever place in which you shelter with gentle colors and gauzy textures. Let it envelop you.

Berglind Maria Tómasdóttir - The Lokkur Project: Music For Lokkur | Lokkur Reworks | Duet When I reviewed Ethereality, Tómasdóttir's "spellbinding" album of flute music earlier in 2021, little did know that I had just been granted a key to a marvelous world of invention and surprise. But I did not hesitate to respond with an enthusiastic "YES" when she offered to send me her next album, which was accompanied by a cassette and a book related to the project. Based on a pair of supposedly ancient Icelandic instruments - which she invented and built - Tómasdóttir has created a lighthearted investigation into national and cultural identity that has also led to some very real and very captivating music. The Lokkur, and its earlier incarnation, the Hrokkur, uses a foot-powered wheel to create a spidery drone on a stringed instruments, which can also be plucked or knocked to create other sounds and manipulate the pitch. Music For Lokkur opens and closes with solos that give an idea of the beguiling possibilities of the instrument.  The four tracks in the middle are compositions by others that also include vocals, making for impressionistic folk songs that could point Björk in some new directions. All are profoundly odd and yet somehow comforting, except for Langlínusamtal viõ fúskara, which has some distorted vocals that I found off-putting. 

The cassette, which includes "reworks" by friends and collaborators including Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, Clint McCallum, Elín Gunnlaugsdóttir, and Erik DeLuca is a gem throughout, however. Each composer was sent a bank of sounds from the Lokkur and Hrokkur and encouraged to let their imaginations run free, creating atmospheric soundscapes that could create an alternate history of minimalism, not to mention electronic and ambient music. An early favorite is Kurt Uenala's Weltraum Rework, which accrues more synthesized details as a Lokkur loop repeats hypnotically, eventually arriving at an abstract groove not far from something by Autechre. 

Finally, there is the book, a beautiful hardcover with an embossed cover and many illustrations, containing a dialogue between Tómasdóttir and her alter ego, Rock River Mary (derived from Berg (rock), Lind (river), Maria (Mary)), in which they spar amusingly about the origins of the Lokkur Project, the challenges of being a woman in academia and the music world, differences between Iceland and America, and many other subjects. The sense of going through the looking glass while reading this delightful book is not unlike how I felt reading Pale Fire by Nabokov. All together, the Lokkur Project reveals Tómasdóttir as an utter original. I will endeavor to be less surprised when she blows my mind again.

Ensemble Dal Niente - confined. speak. The idea that the pandemic has brought with it both challenges and opportunities is by now a near cliché. However, there's no doubt that this flexible Chicago group has met the former and grasped the latter in exemplary fashion. After working up six pieces by composers including Hilda Paredes and George Lewis for livestream performances, they realized they had an album in the making. Featuring works for anywhere from two to 14 performers, the ensemble's versatility is on full display here, along with their brilliance in a variety of modes. From the mysteries of Andile Khulamalo's Beyond Her Mask (2021), which also features soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw, to the sardonic wit of Lewis's Merce And Baby (2012), composed for a John Cage tribute, they run the full gamut. Executive Director and harp genius Ben Melsky gets a starring role in Paredes' Demente Cuerda (2004), while ensemble members Igor Santos and Tomás Gueglio both have new works performed. All is full of color and detail, making for a rich listening experience. Somewhere along the way, Dal Niente also found the time to contribute to New Works From The Virginia Center For Computer Music, which includes more great harp music and throws electronics into the mix. It highlights a robust academic program of which I was previously unaware, yet there's nothing studious about the music, which is consistently absorbing. Their name literally means "from nothing," and it seems nothing can hold them down!

Richard Carr - Over The Ridge Carr is also someone who has used the pandemic fruitfully, taking a break from his usual metier of improvised and electronic music to put pen to paper and write material for string quartet. His rolodex is also impressive as he reached out to violist and composer Caleb Burhans, who assembled an ad hoc group - including cello maven Clarice Jensen - to play it. With violinists Laura Lutzke and Ravenna Lipchik filling out the group, and Carr himself adding violin on five tracks, the sound is full and involving. The result is this gorgeous album, which somehow manages to combine a Medieval stateliness with an earthy naturalism, even drawing in strains of Americana. Four of the pieces have all players improvising based on structures created by Carr. It's testament to their taste and creativity that all the music here, whether scored or improvised, displays the same taste, musicianship, and creativity. A quiet wonder.

Now Ensemble - Sean Friar: Before And After Completed after a three year process of improvisation and collaboration between composer and ensemble, this often has a burnished, pensive quality, with occasional bite from Mark Danciger's electric guitar. There's also a swirling business to some sections, that seems to have a psychological impetus, like a Bernard Herrmann soundtrack for a Hitchcock film. There is, in fact, a programmatic element to the eight-movement work, with Friar calling it "a rumination on the lifespan of civilizations, on our own small place in the larger rhythm of the world." But you will be excused for thinking your own thoughts while listening, or just for admiring the beauty of the sounds and the adventurousness of the artists involved, who also include Logan Coale (bass), Alicia Lee (clarinet), Michael Mizrahi (piano) and Alex Sopp (flute).

John Luther Adams - Arctic Dreams Since it is unlikely that a mere mortal such as I will ever experience listening to "wind harps on the tundra," as Adams did while conceiving of this glorious shimmer of a piece, this album will have to do. Composed for four singers (the superb Synergy Voices) and a string quartet, and enhanced by three-layers of digital delay, the seven movements, each with titles like "Pointed Mountains Scattered All Around," seem to suspend time itself as they assemble in your ears. While individual words rarely register, the texts describe natural Arctic features in the languages of the Iñupiat and Gwich’in peoples of Alaska, adding additional depth to the music. Adams brings a technical rigor and a humbleness before nature to bear here, not unlike the work of his namesake, Ansel Adams, who did the same in his photography. Though the forces are far smaller, Adams' achievement here is equal to epic orchestral works like Become Ocean - massive!

These are far from the only albums in this realm that provided delight and fascination throughout 2021. For more, I urge you to check out my Of Note In 2021: Classical (Archive). To hear what the Recording Academy deemed "of note," give a listen to my handy Classical Grammy Nominations 2022 playlist. And to see what develops this year, please follow Of Note In 2022 (Classical). 

You may also enjoy:

Best Of 2020: Classical
Best Of 2019: Classical
Best Of 2018: Classical
Best Of 17: Classical
Best Of 16: Classical
Best Of 15: Classical & Composed
Best Of The Rest Of 14: Classical & Composed

*I am fully aware of the multitude of issues around Spotify, whether their payment structures or their lax approach to content mediation, and am actively researching alternatives.

Record Roundup: Song Forms

The combination of words and music is as old as language and songs continue to be astonishing transmitters of thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and are limited in form only by their creators' imaginations. Here are a few recent releases mapping out multiple geographies of song form.

Will Liverman and Paul Sanchez - Dreams Of A New Day: Songs By Black Composers You would need know nothing about this album's contents, or even its name, to be immediately struck by Liverman's voice. From the first notes, that we are in the presence of a masterful baritone is immediately clear. He has depth and power to spare, but the transparency and delicacy of his upper range is very distinctive. The contents are special, too, as Liverman followed his passions to present a range of Black composers that takes us from Henry Burleigh, born in 1866, to Shawn Okpebholo, born in 1981. From the latter, we have a world premiere recording of Two Black Churches, commissioned by Liverman, and comprised of a song each for two era-defining acts of violence, the Birmingham church bombing in 1963 and the Charleston shooting in 2015. The first is a setting of Dudley Randall's poem, Ballad Of Birmingham, and Okpebholo has constructed a fascinating piano part (brilliantly played by Sanchez), which seems to both fuel and fragment Liverman's steadfast delivery of the words, occasionally seeking a hymn-like resolution. The second somberly sets The Rain by Marcus Amaker, which provides a stunning bookend to an image from the first song on the album, by Damian Sneed and based on Langston Hughes' I Dream A World. Hughes writes of "joy, like a pearl" attending the needs of mankind, while Amaker's view is bleaker: "When the reality/of racism returns/all joy treads water/in oceans of buried emotion." Okpebholo and Liverman have given us a signature piece for our era that will resonate through the future we are building. And that's just a microcosm of what Sanchez and Liverman have accomplished on this crucial collection.

Caroline Shaw - Narrow Sea From the opening words, "I am a poor wayfaring stranger," you may suspect we are in the world of 19th century American song, specifically hymns. But even if you come to it without that foreknowledge, the creamy, deeply felt soprano of Dawn Upshaw will make you feel those words in your bones. Accompanied by Sō Percussion's wild array of instruments that click, clink, and clatter alongside Gilbert Kalish's searching piano chords, Upshaw sounds completely at home in Shaw's deconstruction of these old songs. My only complaint is that at about 20 minutes, this song cycle leaves me wanting more. Even with the addition of Shaw's Taxidermy, a little gem for percussion and spoken word, Narrow Sea makes me nostalgic for the glory days of "peak CD," when Upshaw and Nonesuch were putting out brilliantly curated albums like The Girl With Orange Lips or White Moon: Songs To Morpheus. I can imagine Shaw's cycle being given context among works by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, and Christopher Trapani - or some of those composers sourced by Will Liverman. Instead of wallowing, I think I'll just make a playlist with Narrow Sea and Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part, Shaw and Sō's next collaboration, which features 10 new song adaptations sung by Shaw herself, coming June 25th. 

Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince This is Aftab's third album but the first for me and I can't help feeling I've joined a trajectory near its apogee. That's just another way of saying: WOW. Her complete command of the eclectic environs through which this album transits is nothing short of amazing. She moves through many genres, including art song, folk, and in one delicately devastating moment in Last Night, reggae. All of this is infused with the modes and moods of her Pakistani heritage and blended with such subtlety that any seams are invisible. Her taste in collaborators is as finely honed as her compositions, most notably violin wizard Darian Donovan Thomas, who lavishes Baghon Main with his special brand of liquid light. The album is dedicated to Aftab's brother who died during the early stages of its creation and no matter what losses you've experienced in the last few months or years, there is succor and peace to be found in these remarkable songs. As Aftab sings in Saans Lo, with lyrics by Annie Ali Khan: "There’s no one in this desolate world but you, but at least you have yourself/Breathe."

Domenico Lancellotti - Raio After the years that separated his last two albums, Cine Prive (2012) and The Good Is A Big God (2018), having Vai A Serpente, which opens Raio, slide into my Release Radar was an unexpected delight. Begun following a move from Brazil to Portugal, much of Raio was recorded after the pandemic hit, but you would never know any of it was made by remote collaborators. In fact, it feels even more unified than his other albums, almost a song cycle, with themes and textures appearing and reappearing throughout. He's still mining an encyclopedia of Brazilian sounds, leaning more towards the folky and jazzy sides of his homeland and saving his wackier Tropicalia-influenced side for the wry groove of Lanço Minha Flecha and parts of Newspaper, the instrumental that closes the album. Raio is a wonderful album and can serve as an introduction to this special artist as aptly as the others. Start here, start there, just start!

Jane Weaver - Flock My introduction to Weaver was 2017's Modern Kosmology, an explosion of melodically fueled art-pop that was an instant addiction. Now, nearly 30 years into her career, she's gone even further towards pop on Flock, incorporating the raptures of Goldfrapp and Stereolab along the way. With lighter-than-air synths and danceable grooves, Flock is infused with an inspiring sense of unfettered creativity and zero compromise. There's also not a trace of insincerity in Weaver's breezy soprano, which she often uses as an additional musical element, singing repeated lines and sometimes sampling herself. While fans of the bands mentioned above are likely already onto Weaver, there's absolutely no reason why devotees of, say, Billie Eilish wouldn't also be into this - let's hope the algorithms serve them well.

Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg Delivering completely on the promise of their 2019 EPs, this London quartet continues to find variety and invention in their patented blend of Florence Shaw's interior monologue speak-singing and colorfully angular post-punk played by Thomas Paul Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard (bass), and Nicholas Hugh Andrew Buxton (drums). John Parish's production has found the ideal balance, sinking Shaw's voice just enough into the mix and treating each instrument with care. Even if the songs weren't so good, New Long Leg would be notable for the bass sound alone, a rounded throb somewhere adjacent to Jah Wobble's work with PiL or Philip Moxam's in Young Marble Giants. The songs can read like stream of consciousness rambles (from Leafy: "I run a tight ship/Helicopter circling/Kalashnikov to look forward to/It’s a glam musical") but somehow assemble in your mind to become stories of fractured relationships, forensically detailing what's left behind or what an imagined future could hold. Speaking of days to come, I hope I get to see them in concert when such things happen again - looks like fun!

You may also enjoy:
Record Roundup: Catching Up (Sort Of)
Record Roundup: Songs And Singers
Record Roundup: Forms Of Escape

AnEarful acknowledges that this work is created on the traditional territory of the Munsee Lenape and Wappinger peoples.

Record Roundup: Past Is Present

The albums described below are all linked by their dialogue between the past and the present. This may come via musical references or inspiration from literature, art, or architecture, all transmuted into something resolutely of our times by the composers and performers alike.

JACK Quartet - Filigree: The Music of Hannah Lash The durability of the string quartet never ceases to amaze me and with artists like Lash and the JACK perpetuating the medium it should be around for centuries to come. The album hits the ground running with Frayed, which brilliantly employs extended techniques to sound like it’s literally coming apart as you listen. Suite: Remembered and Imagined engages with Baroque dance rhythms across its six short movements, using Lash’s inventiveness to remain relentlessly modern. The title of Pulse-Space may make you think of a Pink Floyd outtake, but is instead a threnodic outpouring of pure emotion, with only Lash’s restraint keeping it from neo-romanticism. Inspired by Medieval weaving techniques, Filigree In Textile also features Lash on harp (it was originally performed by her teacher, the great Yolanda Kondonassis, who has a fine recent album of her own) and allows you to add the finishing touches as you assemble the threads in your mind. As expected, the JACK makes all of this sound as natural as breathing and it's hard to imagine a better presentation of this excellent, deeply involving music. 

Wild Up - Christopher Cerrone: The Pieces That Fall to Earth In these three song cycles, Cerrone’s variety of expression is a direct reflection of his laser focus on the words, both their sound and their meaning. It’s easy to hear why he was attracted to the words of Kay Ryan for the title piece as her poems are full of sonic interest. Take Sharks’ Teeth, the fifth of the seven songs in the cycle: “Everything contains some silence,” Ryan wrote, “Noise gets its zest from the small shark’s-tooth shaped fragments of rest angled in it.” Cerrone sets this one with a rhythmic ostinato over which soprano Lindsay Kesselman whispers the words theatrically, letting you turn them over in your mind. The next song, Insult, bursts out of the quiet with rattling bells and tense, jagged strings, supporting one of Kesselman’s tour de force performances, as she manages to hit crescendos just this side of a shriek - appropriate for a song with lines like, “Insult is injury/taken personally/Saying this is not a random fracture that would have happened to any leg out there/This was a conscious unkindness.”

As stunning as the title piece is, for me some of its spike and clangor are on the borderline of the expected. Where the album truly ascends into the ether is in the second cycle, The Naomi Songs, a setting of four poems by Bill Knott sung by Theo Bleckmann in a perfect match of singer and song. Bleckmann brings everything he’s learned over his eclectic career to these sensual, mysterious songs, which blend the haunting drones of ancient troubadour tunes with modern production techniques such that Bleckmann is often duetting with himself. This works most spectacularly in the third song, which intertwines Knott’s two lines (“When our hands are alone, they open, like faces. There is no shore to their opening.”) to mesmerizing effect. In addition to the drones, additional drama comes from pizzicato strings and big piano chords. The Naomi Songs creates its own space wherever you happen to be, whether on a city street, at your sink washing dishes, or in a forest glade. Let it in and let it happen. 

The final work, The Branch Will Not Break, is nearly as wonderful. For this setting of seven poems by the great James Wright, Cerrone uses a small chorus of eight voices (here including Eliza Bagg, who was so fantastic in Alex Weisser’s And All The Days Were Purple) and keeps the harmonic range tight, like early polyphony. This further elevates Wright’s already heightened view of the quotidian, giving marvelous lines like, “In a field of sunlight between two pines/The droppings of last year’s horses/Blaze up into golden stones” a hymnal quality. 

Throughout the album, the musicians of Wild Up, under the direction of Christopher Rountree, meet the varied challenges of Cerrone’s scoring with sensitivity and spirit. Note should also be taken of the warm and involving sound of the record, for which credit is due to Nick Tipp. That his production, engineering, mixing, and mastering is so seamless is even more remarkable when you realize the vocalists and musicians were recorded separately. Great work on all counts and another brick in the edifice of achievement Cerrone has been building for the last several years. 

Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti - in manus tuas I wonder if they still make viola jokes. If yes, this gorgeous album by Lanzilotti, which engages head and heart in equal measure, should put an end to that branch of humor. Not only does she exhibit a technique that is both furiously virtuosic and fabulously free, but her conception of the album - her debut as a solo performer - is an exemplar of how to create a complete work of art. She achieves this by starting from a neat organizing principle, which is that all the works “are transcriptions or involve the act of transcribing,” as she puts it in her beautifully written liner notes, concluding the thought with this lovely passage: "Transcription enables us to learn from others as well as precess our own thoughts. In doing so, we deepen our understanding of each other. Transcription - empathy - as creative process." 

The boldest example of this may be the last piece, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Transitions (2014), which was originally written for cello and given a definitive performance by its commissioner, Michael Nicolas, on his landmark album of the same name. Before hearing Lanzilotti's version, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to hear any other cellist play it, much less a violist! But she makes it work wonderfully well, illuminating the structure of the work with her musically intelligent transcription and deeply committed playing. Also originally for cello is Caroline Shaw’s in manus tuas (2009), which was inspired by the experience of hearing the Thomas Tallis’s motet in a Connecticut church. But there’s no background necessary to immerse yourself in this meditative snapshot’s yearning lines and disordered pizzicato. 

Lanzilotti’s own composition, gray (2017), is next, its startling alarm bell percussion (played by Sarah Mullins) shocking you out of your reverie. Based on a work for dance, this music-only version lacks nothing as the haunting viola lines interact like dark ribbons with the percussive sounds, the latter growing increasingly abstract as the bottom of a snare drum is employed alongside Hawaiian bamboo rattles called pū’ili. External sounds, like the rattling keys of a fellow commuter, fit right in, exposing the Cagean nature of the piece. 

Two works by Andrew Norman fill out the album, with the first, Sonnets (2011) giving Lanzilotti the opportunity to play with masterful pianist Karl Larson and indulge in occasional long lines that are almost romantic. The five short movements draw on fragments of Shakespeare sonnets, seeking to transcribe specific words (or feelings, at least) into sound. The second song, to be so tickled, takes its cue from Sonnet No. 128 and is especially delightful. Sabina (2008-09), the second Norman piece, also originates from a germ of extra-musical information, in this case the way light shines through the translucent stone windows of the Basilica Of Santa Sabina, and spins it into a fascinating web of sound. Even without knowing the visual inspiration, I think Sabina would still create shapes and shades in my mind. It must be treat to see Lanzilotti play it live. Hopefully she will include it - or any of the pieces from this remarkable album - the next time she graces NYC with a performance. 

Tracks from all of these albums, and so many more, can be found in my playlist, AnEarful: Of Note In 2019 (Classical). Click the little heart to keep up with comes out during the rest of the year - and please let me know what I've been missing.

You may also enjoy:
Record Roundup: Contemporary Classical In Brief
Record Review: Beauty...And Darkness
Best Of 2018: Classical

Record Roundup: Contemporary Classical In Brief

The backlog is real, people, and the torrent of creativity from new music labels, composers, players and ensembles represents one of the most vital forces in culture today. In an attempt to lasso the whirlwind, here are brief reviews of some contemporary classical albums that have kept me coming back time and time again.

Seattle Symphony Orchestra - John Luther Adams: Become Desert This celebration and lamentation (in Adams’ words) is also a meditation. Like Become Ocean before it, this single-movement work is an invitation, in suspended chords and chiming bells, to your own mind. If you wish to contemplate the ecological issues that fuel Adams as he composes, that’s a valid choice as that's something that concerns us all. Or you could just sink into another masterful exploration of texture and structure from one of our finest composers. Of the Seattle Symphony and its conductor, Ludovic Morlot, I’ll only say that their touch is so sure you won’t give them a passing thought, as if the music were pure and unmediated - which may be the highest compliment of all. 

Caleb Burhans - Past Lives Remembering past friends like songwriter Jason Molina and composer (and Alarm Will Sound founder) Matt Marks has put Burhans into an appropriately elegiac mood in these four works for varied ensembles and performers. But there is always light in the darkness with the realization - which seems to dawn as you listen - that they will be known for their works, and works they inspired, long into the future. A Moment For Jason Molina is a perfect example, an essay in shimmering, layered guitar, gorgeously performed by Simon Jermyn, with a sense of constant ascension. The JACK Quartet play the reflective Contritus with what feels like barely held emotions and Burhans himself constructed the brief and mysterious Early Music (For A Saturday) from heavily treated electric bass and violin, further proving his versatility as a composer and performer, which can be said of Past Lives as a whole.

Alex Weiser - And All The Days Were Purple It's a rare thing when you hear new music that sounds both fresh and as if it has always existed. From the deeply felt performance by soprano Eliza Bagg and the sensitive playing of the ensemble to Weiser's deeply involving compositions, there is a palpable sense of stars aligning during this song cycle. The songs are based on Yiddish and English poems, which Weiser discovered in the YIVO archives, connecting with his own past as a child of Yiddish-speaking grandparents. As someone who heard some Yiddish around my house growing up, I was moved right away. Listen to the first track, My Joy, and tell me you're not instantly interested in hearing more. The beautifully recorded album also includes Three Epitaphs, another fine work by Weiser featuring an ancient Greek text alongside poems by William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson, and additional evidence that Weiser is a very fine setter of words.

Matt Frey - One-Eleven Heavy Another recent vocal work that also serves as an act of reclamation and homage is Frey's chamber opera, which over its 15-minute length packs an emotional wallop you won't soon forget. Based on the tragedy of Swissair Flight 111, which crashed into the Atlantic in 1998 killing all 229 aboard, Frey incorporates Air Traffic Control recordings into gorgeously mournful vocal parts sung with extraordinary compassion by Jenny Ribeiro and Karim Sulayman. Hotel Elefant, conducted by David Bloom, find the perfect balance between detail and forward motion throughout, in an expertly balanced production. As Frey pointed out at a recent listening party, it's hard to know what the future is for this work, as it's so short and has never been staged. If it provides even a moment of comfort to those who lost loved ones on the flight, that will be even more important than the way it illuminates and humanizes the story for us listeners. His next piece is a musical about Mary Kay Letourneau - he's obviously unafraid of difficult subjects - and there wasn't a hint of exploitation in the excerpts I've heard, which is even more remarkable. Frey is now firmly on my radar and I recommend you keep an eye out for more from him as well.

Caroline Shaw - Orange One of the most astonishing things about this record is that it is the first to solely feature the music of Shaw, who won the Pulitzer-Prize six years ago. At the very least it seems like a marketing opportunity was missed! Over six pieces for string quartet, Shaw takes a number of approaches, all of which are embraced fully by the members of the Attacca Quartet. While she is free to be dissonant and dynamic, there's always a remarkable sense of proportion and balance, a measured sense of restraint and clean architecture. Lyricism abounds as well, as in Punctum's almost folk-like melodies. The recording is light and dry, perfect for her tart (yes, I went there) sound world. While I suspect Haydn (or Bartok) would not be shocked by what they heard here, it's likely they would also approve highly. It also strikes me that even for all of her accolades (not to mention highly visible collaborations with others like Kanye West and The National), I'm still getting her style and personality as a composer in focus. This album helps as will a portrait concert at The Miller Theatre on February 6, 2020 - put it on your calendar!

Siggi String Quartet - South Of The Circle When I expressed surprise at how good this debut album was, my son said, "What, you thought it wouldn't be?" and I realized that I should never have doubted a record featuring Icelandic compositions and released by Sono Luminus, who have brought wonders like Nordic Affect's Raindamage and Daniel Bjarnson's Recurrence to my ears. Bjarnson's own Stillshot (2015) opens the record and you know you're in good hands right away, with playing that's glassy smooth but warmly nuanced. Another familiar name is Valgeir Sigurðsson, who had two pieces on Raindamage, and whose Nebraska (2011) provides a unique perspective on the American landscape. As seems especially common in Icelandic ensembles, one of the players is a composer as well. Violinist Una Sveinbjarnardóttir's Opacity (2014) boldly explores solo lines by each instrument, just another way of developing the language of this fine quartet.

Duo Zuber - Blackbird Redux What a lovely surprise this is: works for flute and marimba, played by two complete experts, and touching on an international array of composers. Consisting of Patricia Wolf Zuber (flute) and Greg Zuber (marimba), both of whom play with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the duo sounds equally comfortable in the gentle kaleidoscope of Gareth Farr's Kembang Suling, in which the New Zealand-based composer transits through Bali, Japan and South India and William Susman's Amores Montuños, here in a world premiere performance and striking a balance between Reichian repetition and the Claude Bolling's sheer charm. Two arrangements by Zuber, of Messiaen and Villa-Lobos, fill out the album marvelously, proving there's little this combination can't approach with absolute confidence.

Rupert Boyd - The Guitar It's just possible that Boyd's technique has only grown more phenomenal since his last solo album, Fantasias - whatever the reason, he absolutely slays me on the opening tracks here, two Jobim pieces that find composer and player at their most expressive. I would not turn my nose up at an album called "Boyd Goes Brazilian," just saying. But he also assays works by Leo Brouwer and Piazzola, as well as transcriptions of Bach and The Beatles, with the latter his own tender adaptation of Julia. There's also a piece by Graham Koehne, an Australian composer who's new to me, and a fascinating nugget from the past, Fernando Sor's Introduction And Variations On A Theme By Mozart. Composed in 1821 partially to show off Sor's own guitar skills, its playful quality goes beyond mere virtuosity. Naturally, Boyd dispatches it like a child's exercise, but with warmth and feeling, which could describe this wonderful album as a whole.

New Thread Quartet - Plastic Facts Sometimes when listening to this record I forget that it's four saxophones producing all these wonderful sonorities, from the most dulcet of tones to wild flights of extended techniques - and I mean that as high praise. While this is their debut album, they have been playing these works for a few years and three of the four were commissioned by them, which may be why it's all presented so perfectly. Also, with Erin Rogers on tenor you know the musicianship will be at the highest level and Geoff Landman (soprano), Kristen McKeon (alto) and Zach Herchen (baritone) don't let the side down. I'm also grateful to NTQ for introducing me to Michael Djupstrom, Marcello Lazcano and Anthony Gatto, composers with whom I was unfamiliar, alongside Richard Carrick, whose Harmonixity (2012) ends the album in fine style.

Splinter Reeds - Hypothetical Islands This reed quintet pushes things even further than NTQ, emitting all kinds of outrageous squeaks and squawks along with glides and swoops right out of Raymond Scott's bag of tricks - but that must just be their taste as several of the composers here employ such noises. Matthew Shlomowitz's Line and Length (2007), for example, kicks off the album in wild fashion and Eric Wubbels' Auditory Scene Analysis II (2016) adds distorted electronics into the mix. Wubbels, known for his work with the Wet Ink Ensemble, produced the album, too, and lends everything a three-dimensional sense of space and detail, so important when some of the sounds could just be clicks and pops. Of the seven pieces here, including other works by Cara Haxo, Theresa Wong, Sky Macklay and Yannis Kyriakides, four were commissioned by the group, which also shows their good judgment. And Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Bill Kalinkos (clarinet), David Wegehaupt (sax), Jeff Anderle (bass clarinet), and Dana Jessen (bassoon) deserve yet more praise for making everything on this thoroughly modern album sound as natural as a Baroque fantasia. 

Hear tracks from all of these albums (and many more) in this playlist and keep me in the loop if you think I'm missing anything!

You may also enjoy:
Best Of 2018: Classical
Focus On: Contemporary Classical
Collapsing Into Nordic Affect's Raindamage
Immersed In Become Ocean

BOAC At MMOCA: The Eno Has Landed

That there is a pipeline from indie rock to modern classical has been firmly established. What is less clear is the ultimate value of the music emitting from that spigot. My suspicion is that, as time tells its tale, the pieces produced by what might be called "rock informed" composers (Missy Mazzoli, Daniel Wohl) will prove more lasting than what those rockers have created for the concert hall. Or it may just be that if I don't like your band, I'm also not going to like your string quartet.

There is an interesting tangent to this rock-classical dialogue, represented by works like the trio version of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, or symphonic takes extrapolated from The Beatles' Revolution #9 or Brian Eno's Music For Airports, the last of which sucked us north up Route 8 from Stockbridge, MA to North Adams a few weeks ago. North Adams is a classic plot of small-town New England whose faded industry bequeathed us Mass MOCA, one of the most vibrant modern art venues in the northeast. 

Mass MOCA also hosts two major annual music festivals, Wilco's Solid Sound and Bang On A Can's Summer Music Festival. Wilco's event is always scheduled around the last day of school in NYC, a less than auspicious time for us to get out of town. Our reasons for missing the BOAC event are less clear-cut but let's just say that the words "Eno" and "live" in an email had my wife excited enough for her to insist I make a plan this year. It was even on my honey-do list. So I got it done, honey. 

Just to keep things simple, we treated ourselves and our daughter to dinner at Gramercy Bistro, the white-tablecloth restaurant that is right in the Mass MOCA complex. It was utterly worth it, with clever cocktails, sushi-grade tuna, and outrageous desserts providing a delicious prelude to what lay ahead. After dinner we ambled down to the building that holds the exhibition spaces, the excellent gift shop, and the performance hall, a large space ideal for any number of live events. 

Soon after we sat down, six members of the All-Stars came on stage for the first half of the show, which consisted of four pieces from their Field Recordings project, some of which were released last year on a collection of the same name. The first, by Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw is brand new, however. Called Really Craft When You, the field recording element came from interviews with quilters Shaw found in the Library of Congress archives, which she set to a fascinatingly fractured impression of jazz, featuring stellar work by drummer David Cossin, cellist Ashley Bathgate, and guitarist Mark Stewart. While she would occasionally repeat a phrase from the interview, there wasn't any Scott Johnson-style melodicism going on, more of a sense of weaving/overlay between words and music. Quilting, if you will. It was a deeply engrossing, and fully successful, piece, which I hope they record soon. Until then, you can hear its world premiere here.

Even with the mandate of the field recordings project, any composer would be up against it incorporating bird song into their music, what with classic works of musical ornithology like Cantus Arcticus by the (sadly newly late) Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara or works by Olivier Messiaen, many of which are inspired by bird song, and which are among the greatest music ever written. Considering all that, Gabriella Smith did an admirable job with Panitao, which was pleasant enough but lacked staying power for me. That I forgot it almost as soon at it finished may also have something to do with what came next. 

The third piece was Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson's lapidary Hz, which used beautiful black and white footage and sounds of a hydroelectric plant as its pre-recorded element. It wasn't surprising that Johannsson included inspiration from the visual realm when you consider his recent sideline composing excellent soundtracks like the gloriously doomy Sicario. Hz is like time suspended, a sound that seemed to hover at the nexus of the performers, turning this way and that for our observation, almost a drone but with more dimension. Fortunately it's included on the album because I was ready to hear it again as soon as possible. 

Would that the intermission came next. Instead we were subjected to Rene Lussier's so-not-funny Nocturne, with a field recording of his wife snoring. Not for me, but fortunately not too long, either. 

The intermission was infinitely more entertaining, as I listened in on some music students chatting in the row behind me. I held my tongue until one of them said: "I just don't know about minimalism. I love Steve Reich but Philip Glass?" I had to weigh in: "Reich beats Glass every time!" They were amused and essentially in agreement. Since music is not a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, if I had wanted to say more I might have talked up Glass's film scores for Koyaanisqatsi and Mishima, or mentioned that I've never seen Einstein on the Beach, which is apparently an essential experience. It also occurred to me later that Reich is a composer who uses minimalist techniques. Glass is simply a minimalist. Somewhere in there lies the difference. 

This discussion was an interesting thing to have inform BOAC's performance of Music For Airports, which they launched into after the stage was filled to capacity with musicians and singers. There was also a brief intro by Mark Stewart, which let us know that Eno approved of their rework but had little to do with its creation, and that because of the structure of the music we should feel free to let our minds drift more than we would if we were listening to, say, Schubert.

As soon as the music started I fell in love again with Eno's drifting soundscape, with its Satie-esque melodies that crop up now and again and overall mood of intelligent melancholy. Also, BOAC's adaptation of his electronic textures sounded uncannily right without being mere mimicry. It could be the intermission discussion influencing me, but listening to Music For Airports in this way made me recognize anew the minimalist principles behind Eno's conception. 

Naturally there is repetition as the piece was assembled from tape loops. There are even repeating cells, just as Reich might use, it's just that Eno's are so long and slow that it takes a while to see them as such. This made the music completely riveting for me as I thirsted for this arpeggio or that trill to recur. Barring a performance of Winterreise, my mind would probably drift more during a Schubert concert! Besides minimalism, Eno's ambient recordings also brush up against New Age, a relationship that came a little too close during one of the noodly clarinet interludes Evan Ziporyn composed for the last section, beautifully played here by Ken Thomson. It was only a brief lapse, however, and without lasting effect.

I can't speak for the rest of the audience, but as someone whose foundational music is rock, I'm primed to take Eno's music seriously. Even so, I'm skeptical enough of these kinds of transformations that I was holding what I heard at Mass MOCA to a very high standard. I'm happy to report that Music For Airports can withstand any scrutiny as a magnificent work of art. Is it "classical music" of even a contemporary stripe? I think the answer is somewhere between "Why not?" and "Who cares?" 

While I would love to hear how Arthur C. Danto would break down the aesthetic philosophy behind what happens when you take an artwork completely out of the context in which it was conceived, in this case a recorded work never intended for the concert hall, and rebuild it elsewhere, I think listening to the sheer beauty we heard that night is enough of a justification for BOAC's project. I would also say that while their recording of Music For Airports is lovely, it's not as essential as seeing them do it live. Get there next time and don't miss your flight.