Best Of 2020: Classical

Since much of the "classical" music I listen to is by living composers and performed by non-profit ensembles made up of young musicians, the shutdown of live music has hit them particularly hard. So, if you hear something you like below, consider purchasing it from Bandcamp or another service. If you prefer not to acquire music, even as a download, make a donation where it will help. 

First up are links to my posts covering 50+ albums(!) in this sphere, followed by short takes on many other fantastic releases that astonished with their creativity, commitment, and impact.

Listen to excerpts from most of these in this playlist or below.

Of Note In 2020: Classical
Ekmeles - A Howl, That Was Also A Prayer
Y Music - Ecstatic Science
Quarterly - Pomegranate 
Barbora Kolářová - Imp In Impulse
Richard Valitutto - Nocturnes & Lullabies
Cenk Urgün - Sonare & Celare
The String Orchestra Of Brooklyn - Afterimage
Clarice Jensen - The Experience Of Repetition As Death
Luis Ianes - Instrucciones De Uso

Record Roundup: Unclassifiable
Wet Ink Ensemble - Glossolalia
Jobina Tinnemans - Five Thoughts On Everything
Amanda Gookin - Forward Music 1.0
Ning Yu - Of Being
Andy Kozar - A Few Kites 
Dai Fujikura - Turtle Totem
Collage Project - Off Brand
Matteo Liberatore - Gran Sasso
Sreym Hctim - Turn Tail

Record Roundup: Vox Humana
Roomful Of Teeth - Michael Harrison: Just Constellations
Roomful Of Teeth - Wally Gunn: The Ascendant
Lorelei Ensemble - David Lang: Love Fail (Version for Women's Chorus) 
Quince Ensemble - David Lang: Love Fail
Michael Hersch - I hope we get a chance to visit soon
Sarah Kirkland Snider - Mass For The Endangered
Miyamoto Is Black Enough - Burn / Build
Missy Mazzoli - Proving Up
Du Yun - A Cockroach's Tarantella

Record Roundup: Songs And Singers
Christopher Trapani - Waterlines

Record Roundup: Fall Classics, Vol. 1
Michi Wiancko - Planetary Candidate
Clara Iannotta: Earthing  - JACK Quartet
Gyða Valtýsdóttir - Epicycle II
Tomás Gueglio - Duermevela
Kaufman Music Center - Transformation

Record Roundup: Fall Classics, Vol. 2
Grossman Ensemble - Fountain Of Time
Páll Ragnar Pálsson - Atonement
Sarah Frisof and Daniel Pesca - Beauty Crying Forth: Flute Music By Women Across Time
Bára Gísladóttir - Hīber
Patchwork
Hildegard Competition Winners Vol. 1

Record Roundup: Fall Classics, Vol. 3
Christopher Cerrone - Liminal Highway
Christopher Cerrone - Goldbeater's Skin
Stara: The Music of Halldór Smárason
Third Sound - Heard In Havana
Jacob Cooper - Terrain

Record Roundup: New Music Cavalcade
Ash Fure - Something To Hunt
Anna Thorvaldsdottir - Rhízōma 
Jacqueline Leclair - Music For English Horn Alone
Dominique Lemaître - De l’espace trouver la fin et le milieu
Brooklyn Rider - Healing Modes
Nicolas Cords - Touch Harmonious
Johnny Gandelsman - J.S. Bach: Complete Cello Suites
Chris P. Thompson - True Stories & Rational Numbers

Record Roundup: Catching Up (Sort Of)
Wang Lu - An Atlas Of Time
Sarah Hennies - Spectral Malsconcities
Tristan Perich - Drift Multiply

John Luther Adams - Become River and Lines Made By Walking Become River, the first of The Become Trilogy to be composed, now receives the same gorgeous treatment from Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony as Become Ocean and Become Desert. While quite a bit shorter than either of those, it is no less satisfying an opportunity to contemplate the wonders of our natural world and Adams' gifts as a composer. Lines Made By Walking is also Adams' String Quartet No. 5, and is just as lush, elegiac, and architecturally sure as it seemed when I saw the New York premiere performed by the JACK Quartet, who play it here. The album also includes Untouched, another three-movement piece for string quartet, but one in which there are no stopped notes, only the sound of natural strings and harmonics, and a wonderful immersion in the drone and sparkle of these instruments. 

Kirsten Volness - River Rising On these six pieces for electronics and mostly solo instruments, Volness displays both a piquant melodic sense and an adventurous command of texture. Whether inventively dissecting ragtime in the nearly club-ready dance rhythms of Nocturne or spiraling into the ether on the yearning title track, brilliantly played by violinist Lilit Hartunian, there's plenty of variety and no shortage of personality on this wonderful album. It will stay with you - as will the trippy visuals for the "Psaltriparus minimus mix" of Nocturne, one of the best videos of the year!

Patrick Higgins - Tocsin I was not previously familiar with Higgins, who also works in the realms of math rock and electronic music, so I probably got to this through Mivos Quartet or Wet Ink Ensemble, both of whom perform on this assured and explosive collection of chamber music. SQ3, performed with frightening ease by Mivos, makes the most of the instrumental possibilities while also carrying you through a four-movement narrative. In Wet Ink's hands, EMPTYSET [0,0] is a fascinating little engine of interconnected sounds.  We also get the title piece, an alternately busy and spectral trio for piano and two cellos, played with swagger by Vicky Chow, Mariel Roberts, and Brian Snow. There's also a sweet arrangement of Bach's unfinished Contrapunctus XIV, mere icing on a dense cake baked with intensity by an emerging master.

Pierluigi Billone - Mani. Giacometti and 2 Alberi Here we have two epic pieces by Billone, the first for violin, viola, and cello and the second for alto sax and percussion. Each is played with pure commitment by Distractfold and scapegoat respectively, two ensembles new to me, and with such expertise that the performance melts away into a pure experience of sound. That same sense of "ritual moment" I felt in 2015 at a Talea Ensemble concert of Billone's works is present on this album as well. Turn your first listen into an event - I guarantee it will be memorable.

Christopher Luna-Mega - Aural Shores Here's another name new to me, but with the involvement of JACK Quartet, Splinter Reeds, Arditti Quartet, and New Thread Quartet, I suspected it would be worth a listen. I was not wrong. Luna-Mega uses field recordings and a deep engagement with natural sounds as leaping-off points into musical innovation and delight. Perhaps most astonishing of all is Geysir, with pianist Seung-Hye Kim in a bizarrely consonant conversation with the titular water feature. In short, burbles and bubbles combining with knotty piano gestures for a truly startling masterpiece. But I love the whole album, which was nearly a decade in the making. Hopefully we don't have to wait that long for more.

Dana Jessen - Winter Chapel The evocative title will not lead you astray as Splinter Reeds co-founder and bassoonist Jessen takes you on a winding pathway of resonant noises in these six improvisations. From bird-calls to sinuous melodic lines, all of which she explores with mastery, nothing about her instrument is alien to Jessen. After a few plays, you will feel the same way.

Jen Curtis and Tyshawn Sorey - Invisible Ritual Shortly into this series of duos between Curtis (violinist with the International Contemporary Ensemble) and Sorey (composer, multi-instrumentalist, here playing drums or piano), I completely forgot they were improvised, so structurally satisfying is each piece. That sense of being in good hands as a listener is there in both the high-wire moments and the contemplative sections, with the latter being some of my favorite moments on this dazzling collection. Everything from Neue Wiener Schule knottiness to jazz fusion thrills to post-rock quietude and more are reference points and connecting the dots is pure delight.

Julia Den Boer - Lineage Of the four Canadian composers represented on this sparkling and contemplative collection of piano music, only Reiko Yamada was known to me. But I quickly fell for the world Den Boer creates from the first notes of 371 Chorales (2016), a short piece by Chris Paul Harman. Tombeau (1996) by Brian Cherney did not break the spell, weaving a tale across its seven movements, and neither did the searching interior monologue of Matthew Ricketts' Melodia (2017). Yamada's Cloud Sketches (2010) closes the album, a very 21st century update on impressionism with a little touch of Schumann. Gorgeous stuff and Lineage has been go-to "morning album" since I first heard it.

Thomas Kotcheff - Frederic Rzewski: Songs Of Insurrection Could there have been a better year to release the world-premiere recording of this 2016 piece? Well, maybe any of the last four, but I'm happy to have it now. Rzewski's applies his pointed and inventive variations to a global lineup of resistance songs, ranging from Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around, that anthem of the Civil Rights movement, to Oh Bird, Oh Bird, Oh Roller, from a 19th-century Korean peasant uprising. Along with Rzewski's tart compositional approach, Kotcheff's stylish playing, including some fearless improv, ties all of these varied works together and reveals a piano work for the ages. And even if you wouldn't sing along to any of these at a protest, as Ted Hearne suggests in the wise essay included in the smartly assembled booklet, we can always "think of the concert hall as the setting, and perhaps the subject, of the protest itself." 

The Crossing - Michael Gordon: Anonymous Man, James Primrosch: Carthage, and Rising w/ The Crossing The variety of works pursued by this choir, whether in the moods they set, or the concerns they address, is as dazzling as their technical skills. Under the direction of Donald Nally, they never cease to amaze in their total immersion within the sound world of any composer with whom they choose to work. The Gordon piece, for 24 unaccompanied voices, gives a biography of the NYC block where he lives, from meeting his wife to finding commonality with the homeless, all served up in melodies and harmonies both plangent and haunting. Carthage, which was nominated for a Grammy, finds Primrosch engaging with texts that explore the nature of our purpose on earth, whether by Meister Eckhart, 13th-century monk, or contemporary novelist Marilynne Robinson. As you might imagine, this inspires an melodic architecture and harmonic counterpoint not too distant from ancient chants, yet there's still a freshness and originality here. The last release of the three contains all of The Crossing's virtues in one extremely enjoyable package - uplifting, even, as the marketing promises. David Lang's Protect Yourself From Infection, composed for the 100th anniversary of the 1918 flu epidemic, is obviously on point, and we also get Ted Hearne's What It Might Say, a soulful piece based on Winnicott's theories of communication between infant and mother. The whole thing, including two stunning Buxtehude cantata movements, is sequenced for maximum enjoyment. If you're looking for choral music, just set up a Google alert for The Crossing and take whatever they give you!

Silkroad Ensemble - Osvaldo Golijov: Falling Out Of Time Almost anything I could write in this format about this extraordinary piece would feel inadequate. A shattering 80-minute "tone poem with voices" based on David Grossman's book of the same name about child loss, there are moments of beauty, moments of pain, and a baffling variety of sonic texture and detail, from the high-pitched pipa to modular synthesizer. I admit to being a Silkroad skeptic, such is the facility with which they please PBS fundraising audiences, but I take it all back. This recording falls into the realm of a public service and the deep collaboration with Golijov, a major composer who has been MIA for too long, has resulted in a rendering of a new masterwork that is hard to imagine being equalled. As someone whose child died, I am filled with gratitude to all involved. Whatever grief or bereavement you have experienced, this work will touch you in ways art rarely does. Do not hesitate.

Counter)induction - Against Method With players like Miranda Cuckson (violin), Benjamin Fingland (clarinet), Dan Lippel (guitar), Jessica Meyer (viola), Caleb van der Swaagh (cello), and Ning Yu (piano), there is no hype in calling this ensemble a supergroup. In celebrating their 20th anniversary, they've assembled a collection that plays to all of their strengths - from an interest in instrumental interaction, as in The Hunt By Night (2020), the charming Douglas Boyce trio that opens the album, to cutting-edge practices, as in Meyer's own Forgiveness (2016) for bass clarinet and loop pedal, a deceptively quiet exploration into uncomfortable emotions. The performances are all excellent, the sound is warm yet crisp, and the whole album satisfies far beyond its commemorative purpose. Here's to another 20 years!

Scott Lee - Through The Mangrove Tunnels Somehow conjuring everything from noirish swagger to chamber jazz with a string quartet, piano, and percussion, Lee has crafted an album-length piece that is a cinematic blast from start to finish. Having it played by the ever-amazing JACK Quartet with Steven Beck (of my beloved Talea Ensemble) and Russel Harty (a drummer equally comfortable in classical and jazz) doesn't hurt in the least. Based on the history of Florida's Weedon Island (an axe murder! a failed movie studio!), I only hope that when the inevitable Netflix docu-series is made, they're smart enough to use this delightful and highly original music.

Happy Place - Tarnish Somewhere at the intersection of jazz, art rock, and contemporary chamber music, drummer/composer Will Mason has cooked up a thrill ride, aided and abetted by such luminaries as Kate Gentile (drums), Elaine Lachica and Charlotte Mundy (vocals), Andrew Smiley and Dan Lippel (guitars). You will be deliciously off-kilter throughout this brittle and brilliant album.

Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti - Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Sola This spare, haunting piece for viola and electronics is the first salvo in a new commissioning project from Lanzilotti, whose In Manus Tuas was a highlight of 2019. It's a accompanied by a long interview with the composer, which is full of insights but not something you'll want to hear each time you listen to the piece - which is likely to be often as it is very beautiful and gorgeously played.

Want more? Dive deeper into this realm in my Of Note In 2020: Classical (Archive) playlist and make sure to follow this year's to keep track of what is to come!

You may also enjoy:
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

Record Roundup: Strings And Things

Before microscopy was invented to reveal the little hooks on horsehair, generations of instrument makers and musicians knew that if you dragged a collection of the hairs across a length of dried gut, you got a wondrous sound. Or an awful one, depending on which part of the learning curve the player currently occupied. Now we have all the science we need to explain the interaction between fingers or bow, strings, wood, and acoustic chamber, but that doesn't change the ability of the sounds of stringed instruments to move us in body, mind, and spirit. Here are some of the best practitioners of the art, circa 2017. 

Melia Watras - 26 Once upon a time "classical" music was not only popular culture, it was also family culture. Mother taught you piano so you could accompany her violin; father's baritone sounded fine alongside sister's cello, especially after a few brandies; and you might meet your future husband across the spinet during a parlor duet. This is the world violist Melia Watras would call us back to, if in a thoroughly 21st Century fashion, on her latest album for Sono Luminus. The number 26 refers the total amount of strings on the instruments used by Watras's collaborators, who include her husband, Michael Jinsoo Lim and her treacher, Atal Arad. See what I mean - a family affair. Another participant is Garth Knox, who plays Viola D'Amore alongside Watras on his composition, Stranger, which ups the string count a fair bit. 

But Watras is the main focus, and she really is a remarkable musician. The sheer tone of her playing, often a honeyed ribbon of sound, is so rich that 26 never feels spare even when she is playing solo, as on a number of pieces here, including her own Sonata, 20 enthralling minutes of melody and rhythm that has the spontaneity of an improvisation. But the album opens with Tocattina A La Turk, a viola duet written by Arad that is pure charm. Yes, there's a reference to Brubeck's Blue Rondo, which is slightly ironic as Arad's own inventions reference his Turkish heritage, but it's all in good humor. The Knox piece is based on a 17th Century Irish folk song, with all the haunted melody you could imagine, amplified beautifully by the resonating strings on Knox's antique instrument. Liquid Voices, a duet for Watras and Lim, has a visual flair that allows you to picture the sounds of the violas intertwining in the room. Those are just some of the more notable tracks, but overall this is a more consistent album than her last, Ispirare, which was quite fine. 

26 is wonderfully recorded, with a full sound that feels very natural and neither too close not too distant. So, an exemplary musical experience awaits you, with additional inspiration to be found in Watras's entrepreneurial spirit. She's not waiting for new viola music - she's commissioning it, or writing it herself. Artists in any medium could learn from her energetic example. Long may she reign!

Rupert Boyd & Laura Metcalf - Boyd Meets Girl Speaking of family affairs, here we have the charming couple of Boyd and Metcalf, who have converted their happy marriage into the unusual musical pairing of cello and guitar. Either through their own arrangements (Bach, Fauré, Pärt, de Falla, Piazzola, etc.), or some applied research (works by Jaime Zenamon, Ross Edwards, and Radames Gnattáli, all composers unknown to me), the duo has managed to assemble a varied and highly satisfying collection. 

Like their recent solo albums, Boyd's Fantasias and Metcalf's First Day - both standouts of 2015 and 2016 respectively - Boyd Meets Girl doesn't so much as challenge the listener as elevate any environment in which it is played. It is not a knock at all to report that I put it on during a sun-dappled country dinner and found the experience wholeheartedly improved - and my companions curious about what I was playing and wanting to hear it again. And that was even before we heard the ingenious and sparkling arrangement of John Bettis and Steve Porcaro's Human Nature, a massive hit for Michael Jackson. It really works - but don't take my word for it; go listen to the whole album. The only doubt in my mind about Boyd Meets Girl is whether they can find enough material to come up with a sequel. They may have to take a leaf from Melia Watras's book and do some commissioning and composing themselves!

Sebastien Llinares - Erik Satie I believe that Satie's spikier, more satirical side deserves more play, so I am grateful to Llinares for looking beyond the greatest hits somewhat when choosing pieces to arrange for guitar. Yes, you get all the wonderful Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes you want, but he also takes on Parade, a six-part suite written for a ballet Satie concocted with Picasso and Cocteau, which is rather ambitious. It makes for a very satisfying, well-balanced album. It certainly helps that Llinares's technique and musical approach are flawless, with no pandering to the sentimental, and the neutral acoustic of the recording serves both well. I have A LOT of Satie records and this is a more than welcome additions to my collection. 

Cornelius Dufallo - Journaling 2 One way I track new releases in the tsunami of classical music is by following composers I love - on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. So, when Missy Mazzoli, for example, has a new piece on an album where she is not the primary artist, I'll at least know about it enough to check it out. That's how I got to this Cornelius Dufallo album, a haunting collection of music for violin and electronics. I was certainly aware of Dufallo, as a member of the string quartet Ethel and as a composer of soundtracks and other pieces. But if Journaling 2 didn't include Mazzoli's Dissolve, O My Heart, then it likely would have passed me by. I'm really glad it didn't, however, because this powerful, intense, and dazzling display by Dufallo is a high water mark for his career and one of the essential new music releases of the year. 

Journaling 2 opens with Kinan Azmeh's fiery How Many Would It Take?, which draws on Azmeh's Syrian ancestry and throws Dufallo's violin into dark waters infested not by sharks but pulsing electronics. It stirs up an amount of atmosphere that belies its brief duration, leading us neatly into Guy Barash's Talkback II, an update on post-war angularity for furiously bowed and plucked violin and interactive digital processing. Mazzoli's piece is gorgeous - full of dark lamentations and Dowland-esque yearning - and would make a nice complement to Garth Knox's piece on the Watras album. 

Lats' aadah by Raven Chacon is even more haunted, pushing Dufallo's violin into stressed harmonics and overtones reminiscent of Morricone's Harmonica theme from Once Upon A Time In The West. Tusch by Armando Bayolo starts off like another jagged overdubbed duet with echoes of Bach, but soon goes into hyperspace with drones and swooping electronic treatments. The album finishes with Dufallo's own composition, Reverie, which, although inspired by an "electronic structure" created by John King, almost has the feel of a series of variations on all that has gone before. Encompassing technology, harmonics, searing melodic passages, extended techniques, and more, it's flashy in all the right ways. In other words, a perfect ending to a mesmerizing album that finds Dufallo shining a brilliant spotlight on 21st century violin music. 

Yaron Deutsch - Pierluigi Billone: Sgorgo Y, N & Oo I've been a fan of Billone's sometimes baffling music for a while so when I noticed this playing on Eule Chris's Spotify account I got excited - a sensation that only increased once I listened. These three works for solo electric guitar give you the sensation of being the instrument. Billone exploits the resonance and sustain of the guitar to the fullest and Deutsch executes every twang and thrum with perfection. It's almost as if Billone asked himself, "If a guitar could dream, what would that sound like?" Or maybe he was an electric guitar in a former life. It's hard to fully describe what's happening in this music so I will just say that fans of Hendrix, Noveller, Luciano Berio, and Jimmy Page's Kenneth Anger soundtracks need to get up on this - STAT. There's another recent Billone release on Kairos but I confess I haven't gotten to it yet - perhaps you'll hear more later.

Del Sol String Quartet - Terry Riley: Dark Queen Mantra Color me embarrassed for continuing to think of Terry Riley as the "In C guy" for all these years. While that landmark work deserves its iconic status, based on this excellent - and addictive - new album (coming out on August 25th), I clearly have some catching up to do. But let's deal with the matter at hand. The title piece was commissioned by the Del Sol in 2015 to celebrate Riley's 80th birthday. It was also an opportunity for them to work with Riley's son Gyan, a shapeshifting and exceptionally skilled guitarist. The three movement work is stylish, substantial and deeply involving. Incorporating melodies inspired by Riley's time in Spain, the intertwining of the five instruments is consistently dazzling and really goes through the roof when Gyan cranks up the distortion in the last movement, furiously chording and playing stinging leads as the strings tag along for the ride. I hear echoes of Scott Johnson's remarkable soundtrack for Paul Schrader's Patty Hearst but this simply brilliant piece more than stands on its own. 

The middle work on the album is the five-movement Mas Lugares by the late bassist/composer Stefan Scodanibbio, a lovely fantasia on themes by Monteverdi. You can hear tendrils of the source material processed through Scodanibbio's thoroughly modern harmonic sensibility in a very effective manner. The piece is dedicated to Luciano Berio, who was also very good at this sort of thing, and the work of both composers is a reminder of a plainchant austerity that meshes so well with 20th and 21st Century music. Riley's The Wheel & Mythic Birds Waltz, an episodic movement full of variety, energy and color, caps off a truly fantastic album. Take my word and pre-order the thing!

This is just the string-driven tip of the iceberg of "classical and composed" music I've been listening to this year. Follow this playlist to find some other things that have caught my ear in 2017 -  and please tell me what I'm missing.

You may also enjoy:
Space, Time, Guitar: Rupert Boyd
The Inspired Viola Of Melia Watras
Cello For All, Part 1: Laura Metcalf
Missy Mazzoli: Lush Rigor
Witness The Ritual: Music of Pierluigi Billone
Record Roundup: Classical Composure
Record Roundup: Composed, Commemorated and Beyond
Best Of 2016: Classical

Witness The Ritual: Music of Pierluigi Billone

Alex Lipowski, percussionist for Talea Ensemble, entered the ornate room at The Italian Academy on Amsterdam Avenue dressed all in black with a small Chinese gong strapped to his chest. This is a trademark of composer Pierluigi Billone, whose work the group was playing last Wednesday night. It's a brilliant move, that gong, serving to turn the musician's body into an instrument and lending a ritual flair to the performance. There is also a puckish wit to it, and a reminder of the composer's ultimate control over the work.

Lipowski was opening the show with Mani.Matta (2008), one of a series of solo percussion works Billone has composed. Mani means "hands" in Italian and Lipowski did sometimes use his hands directly on the gong, as well as on the woodblock, log drums and marimba that made up the rest of his kit. More often he used a variety of mallets, sometimes two to a hand, displaying extraordinary technique as he flawlessly executed the difficult patterns. Most remarkable was how Lipowski found the pulse that Billone laced through the work, a kind of connective tissue that was more felt than heard. While there were a lot of hard, sharp sounds in the piece, there was a spellbinding section when Lipowski employed these huge, soft mallets to caress clouds of sound out of the wood. It created an atmosphere in the room that I could have existed within for a very long time.

Mani.Matta is a fairly long work at about 20 minutes and Lipowski threw himself into it, for a splashy, engaging performance. I'm looking forward to listening to it again in the recording by Adam Weisman, a Billone collaborator. You can also see an excerpt of Lipowski's world-premiere performance of Billone's Mani.Mono for springdrum here - fantastic stuff.

The second piece we heard was Ini (2003) for solo bassoon, the third section of Legno.Edre, a five-part work that lasts over an hour. However, Ini had never been performed before and we had the privilege of hearing it come to life more than a decade after Billone completed it. Adrian Morejon was the soloist and he had complete command of the extended techniques used by Billone. There were honking sounds and high, whispery effects, and an overall sense of tumult. Legno means "wood" in Italian and it is a long tradition to impart anthropomorphic qualities to trees, which is where I found my mind drifting as I listened. "Would it be nuts to say Billone's Legno.Edre is an elegy for the wood that created the bassoon?" I tweeted when the work ended. Not nuts, I say. Listen for yourself to another section of Legno.Edre performed by Chris Watford.

The final work was a U.S. premiere of Ebe and Anders (2014) for seven instruments, including two percussionists wearing gongs. They mirrored each other on either side of the stage with similar but not identical arrays that included a lot of metal, including large sheets of steel or iron. While Billone considers the trumpet and trombone the soloists in Ebe and Anders, it was impossible for the incisive clanks of the large metal sheets not to dominate. Occasionally, they traded sounds like dueling swordsmen, lending an air of gladiatorial combat to the music. The brass, along with electric guitar, piano and cello, sometimes provided relief from the hard textures of the percussion and sometimes exacerbated the industrial textures with brief explosions.

Lipowski's partner in crime was Matthew Gold, and joining them was Jeffrey Missal (trumpet and flugelhorn), Mike Lormand (trombone), Stephen Gosling (piano), Oren Fader (guitar), and Chris Gross (cello). All the players were excellent and navigated Billone's twists and turns with aplomb, ably conducted by Eduardo Leandro. The writing for piano, cello, and guitar was so advanced that they often sounded as one, although there was a moment when Gross dealt out a nasty riff that probably made Fader (and any guitarists in the audience) completely jealous.

The sense of ritual moment defined by Mani.Matta continued throughout Ebe and Anders, making the audience something more than just listeners. We were witnesses, actively engaged in bringing Billone's extraordinary music into the open. I felt lucky to be a part of it.

You can hear Klangforum Wien perform Ebe and Anders here.

The background to the image above is by the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark, the dedicatee of Mani.Matta.