Record Roundup: Enigmas And Excitations

The composer starts with a blank page - or screen - and fills it with notes or diagrams, which are meant to enable others to issue forth sounds that previously only existed in the mind of their maker. While there may be iterations based on collaboration with the musicians, with a back and forth between writer and performers - or even an invitation to improvisation - the fact remains that it all begins one person's mind. Gain entry to some truly enigmatic and exciting thoughts below.

Spektral Quartet - Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Enigma Beethoven, Bartok, Schoenberg, and Shostakovich - just to name a few - all served to make the string quartet a proving ground for a composer. The exposed format presents both an opportunity and a challenge to translate your individuality and complexity across just 16 strings on four instruments. It's a different matter than a solo piece, which can also present difficulties, as one key element is interaction between the players. Still, the rigidity of the quartet makeup provides an excellent opportunity for the listener to compare approaches, like creating an overlay in he mind of The Beatles and Wire, who both use two guitars, bass, and drums as their essential lineup. Shostakovich also helped establish the idea of the string quartet being an especially personal expression, away from the more public space of the symphonic or operatic.

Those are some reasons I was all aquiver when I heard that Anna Thorvaldsdottir, one of the preeminent composers of our time, had written a string quartet. The work, called Enigma, premiered in Washington DC in 2019 and is finally being released on August 27th in a stunning performance by the Spektral Quartet, beautifully produced by Dan Merceruio for Sono Luminus. Right from the start of the three-movement work it's obvious that Thorvaldsdottir is operating on her own trajectory, with little reference to what's come before in the medium. Beginning with some mysterious alchemy that has the strings sounding like a distant wind, or someone's breath, Enigma is instantly arresting. Long, drawn-out chords further the piece's grip, almost physically pulling you in, as a melody emerges from the drip-drip-drip of the sequences. More breathing, the sound of insects ascending in a swarm, glassy notes interleaving, and sustained drones all assemble in a sound world that seems as visual as it is sonic. 

After listening several times, I'm not surprised to learn that there is a virtual reality component to Enigma, created in collaboration with filmmaker Sigurdur Gudjonsson. While the first release will be a conventional CD, eventually you will be able to  explore this at home with a VR headset. However, I imagine its full expression may be in future performances, each conceived to be a "360 degree full-dome theater live concert experience," premiering in Chicago and Reykjavik in spring/summer 2022. Hopefully additional dates will include New York!

The second movement is a little more active, with dramatic barks underpinning drones and occasional quick-moving passages. What starts to sink in is Thorvaldsdottir's preternatural understanding of the many varieties of sound that can be produced between wood, string, and bow. An extraterrestrial would not need much to be convinced she had conceived and built these instruments herself strictly for the purpose of making this music. Movement three is a bit eerie, as if exploring a pitch dark space, cobwebs dancing in pin-sized shafts of light. Then, ever so slowly, a melody develops, an ascending series of chords that seem to pay homage to the human need for order and narrative. An ancient song to carry you home. Listen to Enigma once and you just may believe it has always existed.

José Luis Hurtado - Parametrical Counterpoint Even as the board chair for Talea Ensemble, who play on six of eight tracks here, it took a random internet occurrence - i.e. luck - for me to learn about this album. At a recent board meeting, I learned it was a surprise to the ensemble as well, having recorded the works back in 2015 and then lost track of the project. Perhaps the delay was due to Hurtado, wanting to fill the album out a little, which he does with the two piano pieces that bookend the collection. Hurtado plays those himself, opening things up with the almost violent The Caged, The Immured (2018), which pushes the piano to some of its limits of volume and sustain. It's a thrill-ride from start to finish, with Hurtado in complete control throughout and the patented excellence of Oktaven Audio's sound on full display. Apparently there's a two-piano version, with the second instrument playing the same score, yet read upside down - must be quite an experience!

Retour (2013) is next, putting Talea through their paces for a dynamic, fragmented seven minutes and change. It's spicy and tart, full of agitated strings, a blatting trombone, and a flute whispering like a shy person trying desperately to get your attention among the noise. It's a delightful introduction to Hurtado's ensemble work, as are the four versions of Parametrical Counterpoint (all 2015), which pit two variable ensembles against each other to play a series of modules in an order of their choosing. Each version is a fast paced swirl of ideas, with the musicians trading melodic and rhythmic ideas with verve and commitment. Incandescent (2015) for 12 amplified instruments, is full of mechanical interactions, like a rusted engine trying to turn over. While still fragmentary, there's a greater sense of unity among the ensemble and a real sense of forward motion. Le Stelle (2015), for piano and fixed media, closes the album, a starlit and occasionally disorienting series of short, linked pieces that have the piano and electronics combining with a masterful organicity. This is the first I'm hearing of Hurtado, but thanks to this stunning collection he's firmly on my radar now.

Rarescale + Scott L. Miller - 05 IX I was eager to hear more from Miller after Tak Ensemble's marvelous recording of his Ghost Layers last year - and he delivered, putting this wild and occasionally wacky collection of telematically created pieces right in my inbox. With the pandemic pausing their usual collaborative methods, Miller and Rarescale, a flexible ensemble based in the UK, explored ways to work together online. As they normally work with graphic scores that encourage improvisation as the instrumentalist reacts to electronic sounds produced by Miller on the Kyma, they needed a platform that would allow them to interact in real time with very little latency, eventually settling on one called (yes) Netty McNetface. You can see some of how this worked in this video, which show Miller and his colleague, Pat O'Keefe (clarinet), in Minnesota jamming with Viv Corringham (voice and electronics, from Long Island) and Rarescale's Carla Rees (flutes, from London), working off of Miller's graphic score. 

OK, that's a lot of the HOW of 05 IX, but what does it sound like? Featuring Rees and her Rarescale colleague Sarah Watts on clarinets, this varies greatly from Ghost Layers in sound and style. Full of witty asides and amusing outbursts, this combo of people and instruments seems primed for play. Round 2 is a perfect example, with Miller's Kyma echoing and leading Rees' flute, like a robot trying to imitate its human companion. Picture C3PO and Luke Skywalker - but in a Marx Brothers comedy - to get some idea. However, there's more to it than that, with moments of repose and atomization, as if each player is returning to a quiet corner before leaping forth and batting sounds around some more. In just under five minutes, the piece takes you on quite a journey, which can certainly be said for the album as a whole. What other tricks does Miller have up his sleeve?

Douglas Boyce - The Hunt By Night Having delighted in The Hunt By Night when it opened Against Method, last year's brilliant album from Counter)induction, I was excited to dig into this collection. As the four other pieces here demonstrate, the man knows what he's doing, generating chamber works that are both splashy and elegant, whether interacting with the genius of the past, as on Quintet "L'homme armé," inspired by that medieval melody, or the future, as on Sails Knife-bright in a Seasonal Wind, inspired by his son as a four-year-old. Alternately playful and contemplative, that piece, like many here, features members of Counter)induction, in this case, Miranda Cuckson (violin), Dan Lippel (guitar), and Jeffrey Irving (percussion), with everyone engaging deeply with Boyce's music. But all the performances and the recording are top-notch, making this a perfect showcase for a composer deservedly gaining wider attention - give him yours.

You may also enjoy:
Record Roundup: Novelty Is Not Enough
Record Roundup: Classical Composure
Witness The Ritual: The Music Of Pierluigi Billone
Information For 16 Strings

Note: The illustration contains part of a work by François-Xavier Lalanne as seen at The Clark.

Record Roundup: Contemporary Kaleidoscope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You may also enjoy:
Record Roundup: String Theories
Concert Review: JACK In The Crypt
Record Roundup: Past Is Present
Record Roundup: Composed, Commemorated, and Beyond
Glints In The Darkness: Mario Diaz de Leon

2019 First Quarter Report: Concerts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Performers & Panel at The Flea Theater

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scenes from the BOAC PCF Concert at Merkin Hall

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

Marissa Nadler

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

Negroclash: Prince Language, Duane Harriott and DJ Lindsey

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

Duane Harriott, man at work

And what live music have you enjoyed in 2019?

You may also enjoy:
MATA's Bad Romance At The Kitchen
Bon Iver's Dance Music
Moment Of Palm
Bang-Up World Premieres

Focus On: Contemporary Classical

I often get the question, “How do you keep up with new music?” My answer is usually a detailed description of the various playlists I maintain, the different newsletters, websites, Facebook pages and magazines I monitor, the emails I get from publicists and labels, the Friend Feed on Spotify, etc. But the real answer should be brief: Barely. So, with the year-end looming, here’s a quick rundown of some recent albums and an extraordinary concert in the realm of contemporary classical. I've also included information on three concerts I strongly recommend finding time to attend.

Dan Lippel - "...through which the past shines...": Works by Nils Vigeland and Reiko Füting A truism in the nonprofit world is that "people give to people," meaning that donors are more likely to support an organization when they are asked personally, usually by someone to whom they have a connection. But people also listen to people and I think one of the reasons it's taken me so long to write about this excellent album is that it has a bit of an identity crisis. WHO will we be hearing from and WHAT will they be playing? The title is a mouthful, for one thing. If I were marketing the album, I might have titled it Recent Guitar Masterpieces (admittedly cheesy!) so curious listeners might have at least some idea of the wonders that lie within. I also would have reserved the largest font on the cover for the name Dan Lippel, for it is his virtuosic and deeply musical guitar playing that defines the experience of listening to the album. Fortunately, you have me to explain it all to you.

What we have here are seven pieces, five of them world-premiere recordings, of exquisite solo and chamber music focusing on the acoustic guitar. If you are a fan of the instrument, you need read no more than that before laying cold hard cash down for this record. Four of the pieces are by Nils Vigeland, an American composer, performer and teacher who seems to have a true sensitivity for the guitar. His La Folia Variants from 1996 was recorded over a decade ago by Lippel and included on his album Resonances. Its three lovely, Renaissance-inspired movements should be standard practice at guitar recitals worldwide. Vigeland's Two Variations, from 1990, bookends the album, instilling a sense of absolute peace as you begin and end your journey. The title track, from 2017 and the most recent work here, is also the longest. On it, Lippel is joined by Vigeland on piano and John Popham, of Either/Or and Longleash, on cello, and its sparkling interactions make a stunning case for these forces working together. The final work by Vigeland on the album is Quodlibet from 2011, three movements for guitar and cello based on The Beatles' Hey Jude and Good Day Sunshine, which avoids feeling like a pastiche thanks to the composer's structural skills and depth of invention.

Reiko Füting is a German-born composer and educator who studied around the world, including with Vigeland. His wand-uhr: infinite shadows (2013/16) takes inspiration from a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff but my ears picked out sonorities and techniques that reminded me of Davy Graham's jazz-inspired folk guitar solos. It's even easy to imagine Jimmy Page interpolating some of this into his Black Mountain Side, were he to grace a stage with his presence ever again. Füting's Red Wall (2006), uses dissonance and a broad dynamic range in tribute to the natural beauty of The Alps. Füting's arrangement of the traditional Jewish song Hine ma Tov is also included, using an almost Cubist approach to deconstruct the familiar melody. A digital-only bonus track contains three further variations by Vigeland, a young Icelandic composer named Halidór Smárason, and Lippel himself, a fine dessert after the sonic feast of the album proper. Along with Duo Noire's Night Triptych, this is the best classical guitar album of 2018. Maybe that should have been the title!

Nordic Affect - He(a)r My love for this Icelandic chamber ensemble is well documented (here and here, for starters!) so it pains me slightly to have even a minor quibble about their new album. But the fact is that, no matter how many times I tried, I could not accommodate the title piece by Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir. Made up of spoken word soundscapes, its seven parts interspersed throughout the album, I found it only interrupted the mood rather than added to it. So I made a playlist with the other six works, an easy fix that revealed yet another classic album from the quartet.

Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir bookends my version of the album with Spirals and Loom, the latter of which I saw performed live last year with a beautiful abstract video component by Dodda Maggy. Even without the visuals, it is a meditative piece, its long, interweaving notes inviting your breathing to...slow...down. Spirals is a wonderfully sleek and brooding affair that grows lusher as it continues, with electronic elements seemingly designed to unsettle. The way Mirjam Tally's Warm life at the foot of the iceberg opens with a hammered chord on Gudrún Ôskarsdóttir's harpsichord will certainly give you a start and leads to what feels like a competition for sonic resources among the three strings and the keyboard - thrilling.

All the excitement is the perfect introduction for two pieces by the great Anna Thorvaldsdottir, one of the most significant composers of our time. Reflections (2016) conjures up some of the loneliness of the buzzsaw whine of a small aircraft flying over a forest and gradually accumulates drama, pulling you surely along its narrative thread. Impressions was written for Ôskarsdóttir and works both as an haunting exploration of light and shade and showcase for how her technique pushes the harpsichord into new areas. Finally we have Point of Departure by Hildur Guônadóttir, Nordic Affect's cellist, another piece they played in concert. This grave and hymnal work has the musicians singing long notes to accompany their instruments, a reminder of both music's origins in the human body and the symbiotic relationship between artists and their tools of expression.

By all means listen first to He(a)r as Nordic Affect intended; it's possible that you will find the dialogues an enhancement. There's no doubt that some of the thoughts, including quotes from the composer, Roni Horn, Pauline Oliveros and others, are fascinating: "Each totemic ancestor, while traveling through the country, was thought to have scattered a trail of words and musical notes along the lines of his footprints." But if you feel the way I do, don't turn away from the rest of the album, which is truly exquisite.

Du Yun's Stories

Any concert that begins with flute superstar Claire Chase barely visible and summoning the spirits with a bass flute and her voice is already a success. And what followed at Du Yun’s Composer Portrait (with the International Contemporary Ensemble) at the Miller Theater more than lived up to that auspicious start. Chase was playing the finale from An Empty Garlic (2014), an incantatory piece exploring bereavement with compassion and depth (see the complete premiere here), but she was not alone on stage. In a stunning reinvention of the retrospective concert, all 12 players for the first five pieces were placed just so on the darkened stage, ready to perform their piece at their own individual spots, what Du Yun called LEGOs. 

The richly immersive lighting by Nicholas Houfek only increased the sense of seamlessness as the pieces went by with no applause in between. The second LEGO was occupied by Rebekah Heller (bassoon) and Ryan Muncy (saxophones) playing a mashup of Ixtab, 10 PM (2013) and Dinosaur Scar (1999), the pieces combining to seem even more like a free jazz freakout than they do when played on their own. Heller, whose technique is jaw-dropping, had some electronics going as well and vocalized a little along with her instrument. Her and Muncy's grasp of extended techniques made all the clicking and breathy sounds an organic part of their instruments.  

Just as my mind was about to lose the thread, David Bowlin picked it up, playing the ancient-to-modern Under a tree, an udātta (2016) on his violin. It seemed as if the bending, keening notes were coming directly from his soul. Du Yun, whose soul created it, was slowly revealed to be sitting on her own LEGO, in a posture of careful listening. When Bowlin finished, the audience remained in stunned silence as Du Yun stood, her fantastic costume now fully visible, and began Zinc Oxide (2010), a duo with cellist Katinka Kleijn. This had the two of them reciting a brief surreal narrative that sounded like a memoir or a nightmare while ramping up the intensity with Kleijn's cello and Du Yun's "tree trunk," what looked like a small log with strings and a guitar pickup that she played with a bow. 

Between the poses she struck and the delectable distortions of the sounds she made it occurred to me that Du Yun is a post-punk rebel masquerading as Pulitzer-Prize-winning classical composer. That impression wasn't dissipated in the least by the following performance of Air Glow (2006/2018), the newest piece on Du Yun's instant classic Dinosaur Scar, with the five brass players stepping up to their LEGOs from their seats, and Dan Lippel (yes, him again!) sitting alongside them to play the moody guitar and bass parts. It was no less impressive than it is on the record. When the first half was over all I could think was: this show should go on the road!

After a brief intermission, we were treated to a warm and wise discussion between Du Yun and Heller, almost like eavesdropping on old friends, and two pieces for larger ensembles presented in a more conventional, if completely excellent, fashion. Vicissitudes No. 1 (2002) almost felt like  a series of simultaneous solos, with Joshua Rubin seeming to levitate as he unfurled his clarinet part and percussionist Nathan Davis throwing down like John Bonham with head-nodding authority. Then Lippel entered stage right and burned the place down with the steel string guitar solo featured on Dinosaur Scar. He really can do it all! Impeccable Quake (2014) closed the show with the entire ensemble giving it everything they had. I would have put Lippel's guitar higher in the mix so that it cut through the way it does on Dinosaur Scar, but it was still a great performance. Like the entire evening it served to solidify Du Yun's strengths and forced the imagination to consider all the places she can go from here.

Choral Cascade: I can't remember a year when we've had such an embarrassment of vocal riches as we've had in 2018. Impermanence, from Boston's all-female Lorelei Ensemble, spans 800 years of music, including the Codex Calixtinus from the 12th Century and Peter Gilbert's Tsukimi from 2013. In between we have some 15th Century music by DuFay and from the anonymous Turin Codex - three of those pieces are recorded here for the first time - and excerpts from Toru Takemitsu's Windhorse from the 60's. The end result is sublime, as is the recording from Sono Luminus. Notus, a 40-year-old student ensemble from Bloomington, IL, has finally released its first album, Of Radiance And Refraction. Well worth the wait, it is a fascinating assemblage of five world premiere choral works by composers with whom I was completely unfamiliar, including Dominic Diorio, whose Stravinsky Refracted (2015) riffs on Amy Lowell's poem about Stravinsky's Trois pièces pour quatuor á cordes in phantasmagoric fashion. The Zora String Quartet is here to play the original string quartet piece so you know to what Lowell was responding - a wise choice. Diorio also leads Notus and should be commended for bringing polish and passion to the student performances. All the works are of more than passing interest, with John Gibson's In Flight (2015) for chorus and electronics especially substantial. Finally, we have Zealot Canticles by The Crossing, which includes only the title piece by Lansing McLoskey - another name new to me - which is subtitled "An oratorio for tolerance." Written for clarinet, string quartet, and 24-voice choir, the libretto is drawn from 12 Canticles for Zealots, which uses poetry to investigate the minds of fanatics, and other writings by Nobel-Prize-winning Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. It's dark stuff, but McLoskey's melodic expansiveness and the always extraordinary work of The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, make for a highly absorbing listen.

Chamber Catch-Up: I hesitate to call Peter Garland's The Landscape Scrolls "chamber music," but in this context it will have to do. It could also be filed under "ambient" or "new age" but it doesn't quite fit there either. The album-length work, played to a fare-thee-well by percussionist John Lane, who also commissioned the work, takes us through the cycle of a day by exploring the possibilities of instrumental groupings that are "timbrally monochromatic." My favorite is Part 3: After Dark, which is played on three triangles and creates extraordinary resonances. Sample the piece in this artful trailer for the album. Ken Thomson, the composer and reed player for Bang On A Can and other groups, gave us a modern classic in Restless for cello and piano in 2016. This year, we have something entirely different in Sextet, written for a small ensemble that looks a hell of a lot like a jazz band. The music within is fully composed, however, and harks back to some of the west coast sounds of Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, etc. The album begins with a Ligeti piece which harmonically informs the rest of the album the way Thelonious Monk took off from the spiritual Abide With Me on his classic album Monk's Music. This is bright, busy and brainy stuff, played with intensity and swing, and you can't help but be carried along by the sound of one of our most brilliant musical minds following his muse. If you find yourself smiling too broadly after Thomson's cacophony has died down, I give you Michael Hersch's Images From A Closed Ward, played with phenomenal concentration by the FLUX Quartet. Bleak, slow, inexorable and breathtaking, this hour-long piece is a major new contribution to the string quartet repertoire and should put Hersch firmly on your radar.

Upcoming Concerts: 
Tuesday, November 20th, 6:00 PM - Isabel Lepanto Gleicher: Pop Up Concert, in which the flutist will perform a world premiere by Barry Sharp, music by 12th Century mystic Hildegard von Bingen, and everything in between (Miller Theater, 2960 Broadway at 116th St., NYC) Free

Friday, November 30th, 8:00 PM - Talea Ensemble: Soper + Adamcyk, featuring Kate Soper's Voices from the Killing Jar (2012), sung by Lucy Dhegrae, and a world premiere from David Adamcyk (America's Society, 680 Park Ave. at 68th St., NYC) Free with RSVP

Saturday, December 1st, 8:00 PM - Hotel Elefant: Letters That You Will Not Get, featuring a world premiere by Kirsten Volness and special guests Opera Cowgirls (Church of the Intercession, 550 W 155th St., NYC) $20 at the door

Full disclosure: I'm on the board of both Talea Ensemble and Hotel Elefant, but I would be ride-or-die for both groups either way!

Tracks from the albums mentioned above and so many more from this amazing year can be found in this playlist. As always, tell me what's grabbing YOU. Also, if you like the anthology format of this post, let me know.

You may also enjoy:
Three Portraits: Cheung-Trapani-Du Yun
Record Roundup: Avant Chamber And Orchestral
Record Roundup: Electro-Acoustic Explorations
Best Of 2017: Classical
Record Roundup: On The Cutting Edge
A Nordic Night At National Sawdust
Collapsing Into Nordic Affect's Raindamage
Best Of 2016: Classical
Record Roundup: Composed, Commemorated And Beyond
Record Roundup: Classical Composure

Three Portraits: Cheung-Trapani-Du Yun

Albums by ensembles featuring multiple composers are a great way to focus on a group’s skills, both as curators and players. But the “portrait album” is another thing, giving listeners a valuable opportunity to focus on a range of works by one artist. Here are three of the best from recent months. 

Anthony Cheung - Cycles and Arrows One common criticism of post-modernism when it first became widely known in the 80’s was that it was a movement based on superficialities. For example, when an architect used some vestige of a Greek column in their work it was just there because it looked good or called up certain associations. There was seemingly no reference or understanding about why the ancients might have developed such a form or what mathematical principles lay behind its visual perfection. 

The music of Anthony Cheung is a firm rebuttal to that line of thinking. When you read his program notes for this, his third portrait album, you quickly realize that any echo of past forms or other compositions comes from a place of deep scholarship and musical understanding. Combined with a sureness of orchestration that feels natural and intuitive but is surely the product of much study and experimentation, the result is a delightful array of compositions from the last five years. Take the opening work, written for flute and string quartet and cheekily entitled The Real Book Of Fake Tunes. Over five short movements, the dialogue between the players unfurls with such wit and elegance you almost forget there are five people working together to produce the sounds. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the players are the genius flautist Claire Chase and the excellent Spektral Quartet, who also appear on the angular Bagatelles with pianist Winston Choi. 

So it goes throughout the album, whether combining Chinese instruments with Western ones in More Marginalia (played by the astonishing Atlas Ensemble) or composing for solo oboe in Après Une Lecture, which is cleverly based on notated speech patterns Cheung saw in the notebooks of Leos Janacek and played to perfection by Ernest Rombaut. The International Contemporary Ensemble appears on two pieces, the swaggering Assumed Roles with violist Maiya Papach, and Times Vestiges, which ends the album with a sense of unresolved mystery, like a flashlight’s beam being swallowed by tunnel. Cycles And Arrows is, like Dystemporal from 2016, further proof that Cheung is one of the finest composers of our time. 

Christopher Trapani - Waterlines While it’s usually terrible when visa problems derail a concert, it was actually to my benefit when Talea Ensemble had to shift gears for their slot at last month’s Resonant Bodies festival. Instead of playing a world premiere by a European composer, the group decided to revisit Trapani’s Waterlines. As a board member of Talea, I saw this happening in real time but still had no idea what to expect as I had missed a previous performance of the piece. 

“Home is the pull of a tonic chord,” Trapani writes in his liner notes for Waterlines, “Home is the warm glow of consonance, radiating through a hissing layer of noise.” He then goes on to describe the gestation of the piece, from being in Paris and watching Katrina hit his home city, to seeking solace in the old country and Delta blues records that animate this five-song cycle, especially ones about the great flood of 1927, to finding parallels between those old shellacs and the spectral music of Gerard Grisey and others.

I felt that pull and warmth right from the first strummed dulcimer chords that open the first song, Can’t Feel At Home, a feeling that only increased when Lucy Dhegrae began singing with the perfect combination of real feeling, theatricality and classical control. Waterlines brought me back to the first time I heard Barstow by Harry Partch, to that feeling like it had been with me all my life. All five songs in Waterlines were riveting and I marveled at the fractured vernacular, the lean orchestration, which has a few unusual instruments (fretless Turkish banjo) but no gimmicks, the quotes from Mahler and others that somehow fit just right...before it was over I knew I was in the presence of an instant classic. Dhegrae was fantastic throughout and Talea's playing, led by conductor James Baker, was intricate, powerful, and immaculately balanced. And now we have this recording featuring the same forces and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

There are four other excellent works here as well. Passing Through, Staying Put is a tart piano trio stylishly played by Longleash, who put such a stamp of greatness on Scott Wollschleger's Soft Aberration last year. The JACK Quartet takes on Visions And Revisions, elucidating its harmonic and melodic ties to Dylan's Visions Of Johanna with what sounds like great affinity for the music. There's further magic in the way Marilyn Nonken's sparkling piano in The Silence Falling Star Lights Up A Purple Sky segues into the final work, Cognitive Consonance.

The longest piece on the album, it consists of two long movements for stringed instruments bookending a brief electronic interlude. Talea Ensemble also contributes here and the electronics were crafted at IRCAM, the electronic music incubator founded by Pierre Boulez. The first part, Disorientation, uses a specially modified qanun (a kind of zither), played with extraordinary facility by Didem Basar, to explore a tactile landscape of immersive microtonality. I hung on every pluck and sweep of the strings, taking great pleasure from the way they interacted with the electronic textures. The second part, Westering, is played by Trapani himself on a hexaphonic electric guitar, which has transposition controls for each string, each of which is amplified by its own pickup, allowing for great control of pitch, timbre, etc. But you won't need to think about any of that as you listen - just enjoy the journey, which has no shortage of mystery.

While Trapani's music has been played by many distinguished performers over the years, and included on some fine albums, Waterlines is the first album devoted solely to his work and its display of his scholarship, emotional depth and originality could not be more successful or musically satisfying. I can only imagine what he will do next.

Du Yun - Dinosaur Scar I'm one of those slightly clueless types who actually needed Du Yun to win the Pulitzer Prize (as she did last year for Angel's Bone, her second opera) for me to become fully aware of her music. Seeing her furious concentration as a performer at the MATA Festival last spring was only a reiteration of her talents. Now we have this album, which is probably the most complete overview of her shorter works to date. I could be churlish and point out that six of the ten tracks have been in the can since 2009 - almost a decade, which is far too long for an artist as protean as Du Yun. 

But there are many wonders within Dinosaur Scar, such as Air Glow, which combines five brass players with electric guitar and bass for a sinuous, atmospheric experience that goes on for nearly 11 glorious minutes. The performers are all from the International Contemporary Ensemble, a testament to their 20-year working relationship with Du Yun and an assurance that they are all at the top of their field. Special note must by paid to guitarist Dan Lippel, whose does stunning work all over the record. Claire Chase is also here and in full effect on Run in a Graveyard, which she first included on her debut solo album in 2011. Pitting her alto flute against Du Yun's gnarly electronics creates a unique blend indeed, its strong narrative drive keeping you in suspense throughout.

The title track is the oldest piece, written for solo saxophone in 1999 when Du Yun was a sophomore in college, and played like it was hot off the sheet music by Ryan Muncy. This well-rounded collection also includes two scintillating improvisations, one which features Du Yun on kazoo, toy harmonica and phone, showing her humor. The electrifying and episodic by, of...Lethean ends the album, effectively soundtracking a movie I made up in my mind as I listened. What stories will Du Yun tell you? 

P.S. A number of the works on Dinosaur Scar will be performed as part of Du Yun's Composer Portrait at the Miller Theater on November 15th. Perhaps I will see you there!

Find tracks from all of these albums and other notable classical releases from 2018 in this playlist - and, as always, tell me what I'm missing.

You may also enjoy:
Record Roundup: Electronic Excursions
Record Roundup: Avant Chamber And Orchestral
MATA's Bad Romance At The Kitchen
Record Roundup: Electro-Acoustic Explorations
Record Roundup: On The Cutting Edge
Best Of 2017: Classical