STAFF PICKS: Friday Faves

Second Inversion hosts share a favorite selection from their playlist. Tune in during the indicated hours below on Friday, January 20 to hear these pieces. In the meantime, you’ll hear other great new and unusual music from all corners of the classical genre 24/7!

David P. Jones: Music for South Africa (Caballito Negro)

For many living in the United States, this past week has felt like a lit fuse. Today, protests & rallies will explode all over the country as marginalized groups and their allies rebuke violence, advocate for social justice, and work together from every corner of the nation to make a statement of unity. Seems like a good time for some “music of hope,” which is how David P. Jones describes Music for South Africa. In this piece, Jones took inspiration from the struggle against apartheid and drew from traditional South African music to create a percussion-heavy composition akin to the sounds of Johannesburg night-club jazz. Whether or not you participate in a mass movement, let Music for South Africa encourage thoughts of hope and expressions of your limitless potential. – Rachele Hales

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 2pm hour today to hear this piece.


Joseph Byrd: Prelude to “The Mystery Cheese Ball” American Contemporary Music Ensemble (New World)

ACME’s album exploring Joseph Byrd’s work in NYC from 1960-1963 has some interesting sounds, not least of which is the final track. This experimental work for balloon ensemble serves as the prelude to a chamber opera that was performed at Yoko Ono’s loft in the spring of 1961 (with Ono as one of the performers). There is no score, rather only a sort of oral history of the event to follow: each performer is instructed to allow air to escape their balloon, creating different pitches by stretching the neck in different ways. It results in an improvised crowd of squeaks and whines, and it goes for some time – maybe the balloons are pretty big in this recording. Some combine together to almost form a melody, but not quite. It’s a good bit nose-thumbing anti-music, with a hilariously abrupt ending as the last bit of air escapes. – Geoffrey Larson

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 2pm hour today to hear this piece.


Madeleine Cocolas: If Wisdom Fails (Futuresequence) 

A distillation of her “track-a-week-for-52-weeks” composition project, Cocolas’s album Cascadia was written after the composer relocated from Australia to Seattle.  Lately, my ever-deepening connections to the Seattle area have been an indispensable source of solace, and those feeling were brought back to the surface by If Wisdom Fails.  Seattle’s The Stranger newspaper called this album “cathartic;” I wholeheartedly agree. – Seth Tompkins

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 5pm hour today to hear this piece.


Matt Marks: The Little Death, Vol. 1 (New Amsterdam Records)

Matt Marks’ The Little Death, Vol. 1 is a classic tale of boy meets girl—except for instead of the familiar happily-ever-after ending, the boy and girl take a romantic ride through the world of Fundamentalist Evangelism, struggling to cope with their religion-prescribed repressed sexuality in the 21st century.

Performed by Marks and Mellissa Hughes, the post-Christian nihilist pop opera features 11 provocatively-titled chapters which detail the extraordinarily convoluted relationship between religion and sexuality using surprisingly modest means: Marks self-produced the album using only a couple microphones and a laptop running Ableton Live.

The ambitious two-character theatrical work draws on sampled material from Marks’ own collection of 1970s gospel, hip-hop, and soul albums, crafting surprisingly catchy tunes that fuse hypnotic pop hooks with satirical lyrics and apocalyptic Christian imagery. It’s definitely not your traditional church service—but it’s a surprisingly spiritual experience.
Maggie Molloy

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 7pm hour today to hear an excerpt from this recording.

CONCERT PREVIEW: Northwest Symphony Orchestra Premieres Flute Concerto by Sarah Bassingthwaighte

by Maggie Stapleton

“Music has always been the constant in my life,” teenage Sarah Bassingthwaighte realized when it came time to make those big life decisions about college majors.

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Sarah started piano lessons at age 4, composing when she was 5 (she still has these early works, notated in very large script), and flute at age 9. A lingering interest in composition led to formal study at Indiana University (while pursuing a flute degree) with composers like Harvey Sollberger. Hearing some of the new ideas and new sounds that these composers came up with was eye-opening for Sarah – “There’s all this other stuff you can do!” – and she felt like a door had been opened. Little did she know, there would eventually be an entire house of doors.

0702 Siegel-Laufer 5-28-09House of Doors is a concerto for flute and orchestra which will be premiered by Merrie Siegel and the Northwest Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Anthony Spain on Saturday, April 30 at 8pm.
It was composed in the last 6 months, and it’s the first piece she’s written for flute that she is not premiering, which presented some challenges. “I had to see if my notation, my ability to communicate my ideas, worked. When I premiere my own piece, I just play what was in my head in the first place and I’m not even looking at the page. But now I have to see if it works!”

photo credit: Mark Manning

The inspiration for this concerto came from a Buddhist meditation exercise created by Anna Wise of the same name, House of Doors, and it was simultaneously “the most fun” and a “profound experience” for Sarah. Here’s how it works, in a nutshell: You’re in a house that you’ve invented and there’s a hallway with many doors. All the doors look different and you get to go and open any door you want, walk inside the room, look at it in as much detail as you can, walk around, see what’s there, change what you want. Then you leave, close the door, and you can go in another one. The idea is not just to hone your observation and imagination but also to get in touch with your ability to change things in your life.

To hear a sneak peek of House of Doors (the flute and piano reduction) click here!

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In Sarah’s first experience, she visited three rooms.

First, she walked into a room that initially looked like a normal bedroom, but on deeper examination she saw little plants and tendrils and deeper in, a dark jungle that went for miles and miles full of orchids and vines.

The next door was a dark, hot, uncomfortable red cave with an empty chair under a spotlight. It was a very scary place.

Through the last door, there was no floor, no ceiling, just sky. She stepped into the room and moved about how she wished. Flying, free, and fun.

Those images were powerful to Sarah and became the launching points for the piece. It was first notated graphically with just textures and a few descriptive words – it wasn’t until months after she started composing that notes and rhythms came about. “One thing I’ve loved about composing is connecting with the other arts. In this case, a feeling of motion, maybe dance, of visual arts and finding the place where they all meet and eventually ending up in my field, music, and creating the piece. Even within the field of music, Sarah’s had some variety and departures.

After her time at IU, Sarah took a break from classical music to play bass in punk rock bands. That seemingly “left turn” wasn’t totally unrelated to her classical training and she’s been able to find a link between all types of music. The directness and even some of the experimentalism in classical music transferred to the bands she was playing with and she found that a sense of attitude and sense of humor is present in both.

“I went into music and never looked back. I love it and I’ll never get bored of it.”

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The House of Doors Concerto for Flute and Orchestra will be performed on Saturday, April 30 at 8 p.m. at the Highline Performing Arts Center in Burien. For tickets and additional information, please visit this link.

ALBUM REVIEW: Traffic Quintet Plays Alexandre Desplat

by Maggie Molloy
desplat_alexandre_v2_c_brigitte_lacombe_hi_res
Most music and film fans are familiar with the music of Alexandre Desplat. After all, eight Oscar nominations (including one win), two BAFTA awards, a Golden Globe, and two Grammys tend to put you on the map.

But even if you’ve never heard of Alexandre Desplat, you’ve almost certainly heard his music. Do movies like The Queen, The Golden Compass, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ring a bell? How about The Danish Girl, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Godzilla, and The Grand Budapest Hotel? Desplat composed the music for all of them, and for many more.

But you don’t have to be a movie buff to appreciate the music of Desplat—in fact, you don’t even have to watch the movies.
TrafficQuintet-Desplat-Planes
The Traffic Quintet recently released an album titled “Traffic Quintet Plays Alexandre Desplat,” which reimagines 13 of Desplat’s famous film scores for piano quintet, with occasional interventions from the composer himself on flute, glockenspiel, and celesta.

Led by director and violinist Dominique Lemonnier (better known as Solrey), the Traffic Quintet is committed to revisiting iconic soundtracks which have entered into the musical canon. The ensemble, which features violinists Solrey and Constantin Bobesco, violist Estelle Villotte, cellist Raphaël Perraud, and bassist Philippe Noharet, made their debut in cinema in 1997 when they performed Desplat’s music for Jacques Audiard’s film Un héros très discret. After their first encounter with the silver screen, they kept their film-inspired name, a tribute to filmmaker Jacques Tati, and began to explore the world of film music. For this latest project, the quintet is joined by the pianist Alain Planes.

Traffic Quintet Alexandre DesplatAfter working on Un héros très discret,
Solrey became Desplat’s favorite soloist, concertmaster, artistic director, and eventually, his wife.

“Solrey’s influence on my music is crucial,” Desplat said. “When I heard her sound for the first time, the rich palette of her bow technique, the energy or tenderness she could convey with her instrument, I was under her charm, I was hooked: I had to inject this special and modern conception of violin playing into my compositions.”

Solrey supervised all the transcriptions on “Traffic Quintet Plays Alexandre Desplat,” and was also the one who persuaded Desplat to perform on the album. But with such a vast library of musical scores to choose from, how could they possibly pick which to perform?

“Closely,” Desplat said, “Solrey and I would spend hours listening to my collection of soundtracks to decide which piece had the potential required: a strong musicality and an original orchestration, which offered many transcription options, a technical challenge for the five musicians.”

Solrey also came up with the musical program for the album. Given the ensemble’s strong ties to cinema, the Traffic Quintet’s performances feature original video projections which tie into the colors and themes of the music in order to create an immersive experience for the audience. For this album, Solrey uses Desplat’s native city Paris as the storyline, musically portraying a leisurely stroll along the banks of the River Seine, capturing the changing light and the mysterious secrets of the river.

“Alexandre’s music invites you on a walk, wraps you up and lulls you gently into contemplation,” Solrey said. “The beauty of the banks and the ever-flowing streams of the Seine become a source of inspiration. I have been steeped in his music for so many years that when I came to go through the many scores I had recorded as a solo violinist, creating a sequence that would trace Alexandre’s musical evolution came quite naturally to me.”

The stroll begins with a twinkling piano theme from The King’s Speech. Soft strings accent the sweetly circling piano melody in this charming rendition of the movie’s warm, minimalist soundtrack.

Then, as if walking past the open window of a riverside apartment, the listener is suddenly transported into a daydream. A gorgeous, haunting flute and violin theme takes the listener into the mid-17th century world of Girl with a Pearl Earring. The two instruments intertwine over a bed of strings, balancing passionate lyricism with restraint, evoking musical images of the the young maid and her painter.

Yearning strings then travel through tales of love, death, and heartbreak in the music from Love Etc. and Le plus bel âge. The Traffic Quintet amps up the drama for the syncopated melodies and the textured pizzicato and col legno harmonies of Un héro très discret, a movie about a French man who sets out to Paris to find adventure and make himself a hero.

But like any slow stroll along the water, the listener soon encounters the shadows and hidden secrets of the flowing river. Aggressive, bold bowings and relentless rhythmic drive build suspense in the music of the political thriller, The Ghost Writer, before the listener returns to the calm, contemplative piano melodies of the existential, experimental drama film The Tree of Life.

Cello and double bass ground the foreboding music of Un prophète, a film about an imprisoned Algerian criminal who rises in the inmate hierarchy. Subtle glockenspiel flourishes and persistent col legno bowings create texture beneath the dramatic violin melodies. Tragedy, mystery, and discovery shine through in the pensive melodies and arresting climaxes of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, with introspective melodies shifting through flute, violin, piano, and cello.

The walk along the river eventually takes the listener through tales of forbidden love, transitioning through the ominous and slow-moving crescendos of the espionage erotic thriller Lust, Caution followed by the soaring, palpably passionate (and sometimes mischievous) violin and cello melodies of Chéri.

Layered strings shift slowly through colorful harmonies in the music of Sur mes lèvres, and the Parisian stroll comes to a close with the whimsical lyricism and silvery shimmer of Coco avant Chanel, a tribute to French film, fashion, and music.

And although Desplat and the Traffic Quintet traverse the music of 13 wildly different films in just over an hour, all the individual stories blend together in the beautiful wash of the River Seine.

NEW CONCERT AUDIO: New Works for Flute & Ensemble

by Jill Kimball (original post November 18, 2015 with edits by Maggie Stapleton)

For most classically-trained musicians, performing a world premiere is the exception. But for flutist Paul Taub, it’s the rule.

Taub, a Cornish College of the Arts professor and well-known Seattle-area performer, has been a proponent of new music for decades. Over the years, he’s performed and commissioned countless premieres. But last November, he took it a step further.

Taub organized a concert of made up exclusively of world premieres by five area composers–Tom Baker, Andy Clausen, David Dossett, Jessika Kenney and Angelique Poteat–and featured a handful of world-class local performers, including Taub himself. The concert was part of the Wayward Music Series at the Good Shepherd Center’s chapel performance space. Second Inversion was there to record the concert and we’re pleased to present the audio!

I asked Taub a few questions about the pieces he commissioned, and his answers are below.

paultaub
What inspired you to do a whole concert of world premieres?

My musical life—as a student, an educator, member of ensembles, professional organizations, circles of colleagues and friends—has often centered on new works and their creators and interpreters. And my relationships and interactions with composers have been highlights of my career. In my thirty-six years in Seattle, I have participated in hundreds of commissions of new music. This project gave me a chance to create opportunities for five unique composers to write works for me, in a chamber setting. The works you will hear on this program will contribute significantly to the general repertoire for the flute in chamber music. They are also gifts to the Seattle music-loving community, brought together through its interest and support and enjoy­ment of these engaging and inspiring composers. For me, the final gift is to be able to prepare and perform these new works with some of my favorite colleagues – Laura DeLuca, clarinet; Walter Gray, cello; Joe Kaufman, contrabass; Cristina Valdes, piano; and Matthew Kocmieroski, percussion!

You’ve heard and performed lots of new music. What do you think makes a new piece really good?

That’s a tough question! People have such contrasts in taste, stylistic preference… What one person considers a masterpiece someone else will find trivial, or boring. I consider myself a musical omnivore in terms of style so I can only answer the question more “generally” by saying that what I really, really like is music that grips me both emotionally and intellectually. Somehow the perfect balance between those two elements makes for a great piece.

Why did you choose these five composers?

[These composers] have been invited to participate in this project because of the high artistic quality of their work, the diversity of their styles, the varied stages of their career trajectories, and above all, because their music truly speaks to me and to the public.

The variety of musical styles is a key element of the project. Baker and Kenney are well-established “mid-career” composers, with impressive resumes and works that have been played internationally. Poteat, in her late 20s, is emerging as a significant voice in the Seattle and national music world, with recent pieces commissioned by the Seattle Symphony. Emerging composers Dossett and Clausen (whose band The Westerlies has taken the jazz world by storm), are recent college graduates (Cornish College of the Arts and the Juilliard Jazz Program). The composers’ musical styles are varied and contrasting, with influences as diverse as jazz, electronics, Persian modes, classical music and improvisation.

What does the rest of this concert season have in store for you?

I’m especially looking forward to a few events. I’ll be playing a solo by Estonian composer Helena Tulve with the Seattle Modern Orchestra on February 20; touring the Northwest with a program of Brazilian flute and piano music with pianist/composer Jovino Santos Neto (Portland, Methow Valley, Seattle and Bellevue) in late February/early March; and taking the lead in a concert of music by Janice Giteck on April 12 at Cornish.

ALBUM REVIEW: Preamble by Qasim Naqvi

by Maggie Molloy

Standard Western music notation is made up of five lines, four spaces, and a whole lot of dots and symbols. But contemporary composer and drummer Qasim Naqvi was looking to make classical music that was a little less traditional.

Qasim Naqvi PicPerhaps best known as the drummer for the Brooklyn-based modern acoustic trio Dawn of Midi, Naqvi is also an accomplished composer in his own right. In his new album, titled “Preamble,” he combines graphic notation and traditional notational forms to inject a little aleatory into his compositions. Expanding upon the musical innovations of composers like Ligeti and Xenakis, these aleatoric components allow for the musicians to make spontaneous choices within a structured framework.

“Some of the graphic components deal with dynamics and expression, while others deal with duration and rhythm or ranges that are unique to the particular instruments in the ensemble,” Naqvi said. “This symbolic language is fused into a more conventional style of notation.”

“Preamble” is comprised of a series of short works for mixed acoustic instruments. Released this fall on NNA Tapes, the album features the Contemporary Music Ensemble of NYU and Naqvi himself as the conductor. The work was originally commissioned by the media artist Mariam Ghani, the choreographer Erin Ellen Kelly, and the St. Louis Art Museum as a score to a film installation loosely based on China Miéville’s sci-fi noir novel “The City & the City.”

“One aspect of the book involves two cities that essentially inhabit the same space, but because of the mindset of the citizenry and the threat of a Big Brother-type power known as the Breach, they are perceived as two separate geographic spaces,” Naqvi said. “Even though both cities are intertwined, in a sense, the citizens must unsee the people, buildings, and events of the other city. This, among many other plot elements from Miéville’s book, was used as a conceptual framework that was then mapped onto the real places and histories of St. Louis.”

The result is a suite of seven short pieces weaving in and out of time to explore the principles of chance and intention—in both music and history. Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, the scope of Naqvi’s album is nothing if not ambitious. But without a minute wasted, Naqvi manages to explore the power of music in all of its complexity, with special concern taken to St. Louis’s cultural, geographical, and political histories.

“It’s very much about the city’s history and as well the tragic and fracturing events of Ferguson, sort of raising the question of what a city chooses to see and unsee in times of tragedy,” he said.

The first piece on the album is the title track, which immediately introduces Naqvi’s unusual timbral palette: flute, clarinet, strings, vibraphone and piano. Metallic dissonances and abstracted harmonies ebb and flow in a fascinating textural landscape that seems to exist outside of time and space altogether.

It’s followed by the resonant plucking, sparse harmonies, and hollow textures of “Meg Erase Meta,” a piece inspired by St. Louis’s complex network of underground caves—a city beneath a city, so to speak. With modest forces of strings and piano, Naqvi explores these hidden places and the musical magic to be found within them.

But Naqvi also explores the city’s more somber mysteries. The duality and disjointed melodic fragments of “Children of the Drawer” give way to the sharp and, at times, jarring woodwinds of “Imagined Garages,” wherein long pauses punctuate metallic clamor and fragmented melodic flutters.

“Beyond Stars” takes on a more meditative atmosphere, with sliding strings in the lower registers swaying fluidly back and forth across a softly shimmering harmonic backdrop. A more frantic and unsettling “Aero” builds into the drama of the closing piece: “Esc.” Flute, clarinet, and strings swell into different colors and shapes, transforming and shifting across the soundscape until we are left with an unexpected silence.

Throughout “Preamble,” Naqvi colors outside the lines—he takes his bold textural and timbral palette and smears the rules of time, space, and traditional composition. He explores the notion of chance and intention throughout music and throughout history—and ultimately, by leaving some of the musical elements up to the performers, he ensures that this tale of two cities is never told the same way twice.

“What happens as a result is that you have these moments of the music being in control, and then you have moments where the music starts to fall over onto itself,” Naqvi said. “Those types of moments really interest me because they’re inexplicable. You can’t transcribe or write those moments down or recreate them. And there’s something kind of amazing about that.”

PS – for a special bonus, here’s a recent installment of The Takeover, hosted by Qasim Naqvi, introducing all of the tracks on Preamble: