ALBUM REVIEW: “David Stock: Concertos” with Gil Rose and BMOP, Featuring Andrés Cárdenes, Alex Klein, and Lisa Pegher

Posted on March 14, 2016 by maestrobeats

David Stock did not hold back. That one thing about the late composer is for sure; his music was unfettered by any sort of self-consciousness or reticence. His works are an unabashed good time, and the bluntness of his titles reflect a musical personality full of good humor: Plenty of Horn, Blast!, Sax Appeal, Knockout. David was an up-front kind of guy, and was profoundly focused on creating, promoting, and nurturing the finest musical art. He left an indelible mark on the American musical landscape in long associations with some of the country’s finest orchestras. Through his creation of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and his work with other Pittsburgh institutions, he brought amazing culture and musical vitality to the Rust Belt.

Who better than Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project to do justice to his work? Rose shares Stock’s ties to Pittsburgh (both were educated at Carnegie Mellon), and his no-nonsense, quality-above-all-else attitude. In response to the often modest size of BMOP’s concert audience, Rose told the New York Times, “I don’t like to put a lot of money into marketing because I’d rather put it on the stage.” He has focused on building an orchestra of the Boston area’s finest freelancers and focusing their collective musical might into the most consummate performances of contemporary music, with a special emphasis on preserving the music of living composers in high-quality recordings with his own BMOP/Sound label.

David Stock: Concertos Rose and BMOP explore Stock’s concertos in this latest release, teaming up with soloists who were close with the composer. The Cuban-born violinist Andrés Cárdenes premiered Stock’s earlier 1995 Violin Concerto with Pittsburgh Symphony during his time as that orchestra’s concertmaster, and aside from his usual spectacular virtuosity brings a special affinity to this music. He seemingly devours every note and rhythm in the Concierto Cubano (2000), particularly in the tango-like third movement “Dancing, with fire.” That third movement is not far from the textures and harmonies of the final movement of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto (both works are scored for soloist and string orchestra), revealing some of the underpinnings of the Americana in Stock’s orchestral sound. Though BMOP’s intonation begins to fray slightly in the course of some rapid and challenging passagework, the orchestra executes this music with resolute confidence and poise under Rose.

Stock’s music is not all pyrotechnics: the lyricism that rounds out the works on this release actually makes the collection quite accessible for newcomers to his music. The second piece on the disc is especially demanding of a special seriousness in addition to the trademark Stock joviality, and oboist Alex Klein is fully committed, giving an almost operatic performance. In Oborama, Stock presents a series of five character pieces that each feature a different instrument, touring us through the oboe family from English horn to musette (piccolo oboe), oboe d’amore, and bass oboe before giving the final word to the standard oboe itself. Klein is an especially adept practitioner of the instrument to excel on all five, giving life to each instrument’s character as portrayed in the five-movement drama. If you know of another work that features five instruments of the oboe family, please tell us. It must have been a rare treat to see this work in live performance – we are super jealous.

There’s more live performance FOMO in Lisa Pegher’s recording of Stock’s Percussion Concerto, which is whoa!-inducing from the start. Stock strikes up an unbalanced dialogue between soloist and orchestra at the outset, with the soloist interjecting thunderously among soft string chords à la Ives’ The Unanswered Question (or the second movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with roles reversed). Pegher masterfully captures the underlying tension of the inward-looking second movement (marked “Introspective”), and the soft tones of the marimba never seem to wander aimlessly. She’s right at home as the fully battery is unleashed in the jubilantly syncopated finale, and BMOP is up for the mad scramble of notes as well. Stock has written another fearsome part for the orchestral timpanist in this concerto, and BMOP’s Craig McNutt trades blows with the soloist with aplomb.

I first met David Stock at a Seattle Symphony rehearsal in 2007, when the orchestra was preparing for a performance of his work Blast! under Gerard Schwarz. One of my favorite memories of David comes from one of the many conversations we had at performances of the Pittsburgh Symphony (did he miss a single one?), when I reminded him of that occasion in Seattle. He exclaimed at me from behind his suspenders and massive glasses, “It’s not just Blast, you know, it’s Blast! With an EXCLAMATION POINT!” Speaking of Stock with Jerry Schwarz in Pittsburgh in 2014, Schwarz said to me: “We chose to feature David’s music in a program of the All-Star Orchestra. He always said, ‘It’s not just Blast, you know, it’s Blast! With an EXCLAMATION POINT!’”

David was an unforgettable person, and the infectious character of his music is felt both by those familiar with his work and experiencing it for the first time. Though this latest BMOP release was recorded before his passing in November 2015 and was never meant as a eulogy for the composer, it serves as a fitting tribute, wrapped in the blinding virtuosity, good humor, and friendship that these musicians do best.

Geoffrey Larson is a host on Second Inversion, and is the Music Director of Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra.

ALBUM REVIEW: “Holographic” by Daniel Wohl

Posted on March 7, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

In the realm of contemporary classical, the line between acoustic and electronic is sometimes blurred. In the realm of L.A.-based composer Daniel Wohl, that line simply does not exist.

Photo by Nathan Lee Bush

Wohl’s newest release, titled “Holographic,” bends the rules of light and sound altogether, creating a new dimension in art and music. Released on New Amsterdam Records, the album blends electronic elements with the musical talents of the Mivos Quartet, Mantra Percussion, the Bang on a Can All Stars, Iktus Percussion, Olga Bell (of Dirty Projectors), and Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw (of Roomful of Teeth). Not a bad roster for an electro-classical experiment.

The album begins with “Replicate,” a dense two-movement tapestry of sound featuring Iktus Percussion and a whole lot of electronics. Pitched percussion figures circle above a two-note drone, creating a warm, tranquil sound world that slowly builds in density as the piece progresses. The first movement is liquid, like echoes rippling across an ocean of sound—but the second movement picks up the pace, transforming into a chaotic wind tunnel of machines clinking, glass breaking, foghorns blasting, and electronics oscillating.

Mivos Quartet and Mantra Percussion team up with Wohl to perform “Formless,” a five-minute musical soundscape which oscillates from ear to ear. The string players slither and slide through cyclical harmonies amidst a web of muted electronics and softly pulsing percussion, blurring the boundaries between acoustic and electric, man and machine.

The album’s title track is more kaleidoscopic in nature. Performed with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the two part “Holographic” is a something of an aural illusion—it is filled with small clusters of musical material which distort and transform to create ever-changing colors, timbres, and musical textures. It’s no wonder the work was originally conceived as a multimedia piece (which, by the way, featured a synchronized visual component designed by artist Daniel Schwarz). And though the album doesn’t include any visuals, the piece is just as vivid without them.

In keeping with vibrant musical imagery, Wohl’s next piece on the album is perfectly titled “Pixelated.” Performed with Mantra Percussion, the piece sounds sort of like a cross between a winning slot machine and a bag full of brightly-colored bouncy balls flying off the walls. It is light, bright, colorful chaos, like spilling rainbow sprinkles all over the kitchen floor.

“Source” is slightly less frenzied, though every bit as striking. The wordless vocals of Olga Bell and Caroline Shaw flow in and out of focus in this eight-minute rumination on computer music and sampled sounds, as if ghosts in an eerie electronic landscape.

The album climaxes with the hyperactive “Progression,” a maverick mashup of unusual sonorities and even more unusual rhythms. The frantic strings of Mivos Quartet intertwine with the frenetic percussion of Mantra to create this fast-paced and fretful sound world.

The album ends with Wohl’s atmospheric “Shapes,” co-written with the L.A.-based experimental music outfit Lucky Dragons. Mivos Quartet’s transparent strings mingle with humming electronics in this ethereal meditation, immersing the listener in warm waves of sound.

And in these liquid musical moments, it’s difficult to tell exactly where one instrument ends and another begins. The beauty of this album is that with each piece, Wohl artfully erases the line between acoustic and electronic, creating three-dimensional, holographic sound worlds which engulf the listener in their textures, timbres, shapes, sounds, and of course, their shimmering colors.

HOLOGRAPHIC Cover

ALBUM REVIEW: Drumkit Quartets by Glenn Kotche featuring So Percussion

Posted on February 29, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

Glenn Kotche. Photo by Zoltan Orlic

Every rock ‘n’ roll fan loves a good drum solo—but for some percussionists, one drumkit simply isn’t enough. Enter Glenn Kotche, composer, percussionist, and rock drummer extraordinaire.

Best known as the drummer in the alt-rock band Wilco, Kotche is a Grammy award-winning artist with a colorful palette of collaborators. Over the past 20 years, he’s worked with artists as diverse as Andrew Bird, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Phil Selway (of Radiohead), the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, and John Luther Adams. His latest collaborators, though, take contemporary percussion to the next level.

Sō Percussion is an experimental percussion quartet dedicated to creating and performing collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and unapologetically contemporary musical works. Comprised of percussionists Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting, Sō Percussion can make music out of just about anything.

So Percussion. Photo by LiveWellPhoto.

Whether they’re playing quijadas and conch shells for a John Cage piece, crotales and timbales for a Paul Lansky commission, or even just blocks of wood with strings for a Bryce Dessner work, Sō Percussion’s wide-ranging repertoire stretches from the “classics” of the 20^th century up through most innovative new works drummed up just last week.

So it should come as no surprise that Sō Percussion wanted to get their hands on some Kotche originals. Thus, “The Drumkit Quartets” were born.

“I originally conceived of writing a suite of drumkit quartets after finishing a string of commissions and projects for mixed instrumentation,” Kotche said. “I wanted to write without any concern for tonality and really just explore new possibilities for my primary instrument—the drumkit—in an ensemble setting.”

“The Drumkit Quartets” came about while Kotche was touring with his band—he decided to write a quartet in each city he visited, inspired by the sounds and spirits of that specific place.

“These ideas ranged from conceptual blueprints to fully realized and notated pieces,” Kotche said. “Many were conceived but not finished, and when Sō Percussion approached me, I thought these would be a nice addition to their repertoire and would be a perfect fit for their personalities.”

But Kotche didn’t just limit himself to the drumkit—or even four drumkits, for that matter; the quartets actually include percussion instruments as varied as marimbas, triangles, hi-hats, and hand-crank sirens.

“Since I’ve learned to trust the music when it deviates from a preconceived plan, I didn’t resist leaving drumkits out of some of ‘The Drumkit Quartets,’” Kotche said.

The album begins with “Drumkit Quartet No. 51,” inspired by Kotche’s travels in Toyko, Brisbane, and Berlin. Minimalist melodies drip like raindrops through the static tonalities, directing the focus toward the uncoiling rhythmic cycles. Across the 10-minute work, the musical texture slowly shifts and expands to include backing sound collages comprised of field recordings from Kotche’s travels. An accompanying haiku recited by Yuka Honda adds a stark contrast to the immersive musical textures.

The group then backtracks to “Drumkit Quartet No. 1,” a short work with more of the traditional, aggressive arena rock feel. The three-movement “Drumkit Quartet No. 3,” by contrast, is orchestrated entirely on metallic instruments, exploring a number of diverse melodic timbres ranging from dry cymbal work to more resonant pitched percussion.

“Drumkit Quartet No. 6” is another exploratory piece in which Kotche breaks down the drum kit to focus on the individual voices (such as the bass drum, tom-toms, cymbals, and snare). The result is a 5-minute work which showcases the personalities and expressive qualities of each part of the kit and highlights how the individual voices converse and interact to create a unified sound.

“The four members of the group serve as a model of how four limbs operate both independently yet in concert when playing the drumkit,” Kotche said of his inspiration for the piece.

“Drumkit Quartet No. 50” takes another decisive turn: it is actually completely free of physical drumming, instead focusing on the wide-ranging timbral and textural aspects of the instrument. Kotche heavily features his own customized implements and preparations for drumkit, including hand-crank sirens and jingly, jangly metallic elements. Written in collaboration with Sō Percussion, the piece is a malleable music collage exploring the relationship between the performer, the performance space, and the audience.

The group gets into a somewhat more traditional percussive groove with “Drumkit Quartet No. 54,” a work inspired by field recordings Kotche made in Vienna. The piece examines the traditional rock beat in a very propulsive, powerful, and surprisingly danceable 4-minute rhythmic mashup.

The album ends with another rendition of “Drum Quartet No. 51”: this one a Chicago realization of the original. Denser background recordings and more daring musical textures highlight the delicate marimba melodies, and the entire work echoes with an ethereal shimmer.

But whether performing dry and precise percussive melodies or richly textured marimba motives, throughout the album Sō Percussion doesn’t miss a beat. The group brings power, precision, personality, and innovation to whatever they set their drumsticks to.

The album is over too soon, but hopefully this won’t be the last collaboration between Kotche and Sō Percussion—because these five guys are on a roll.

EXTRA BONUS FEATURES!

So Percussion was in Seattle for a residency with the UW World Series and the UW School of music last month. We presented their performance at Meany Hall as a live broadcast and welcomed them into our studios for a video session. Here are the fruits of those endeavors!

Want more videos? Hop over to our video page! Want more live concert recordings? Go to our live concerts page!

ALBUM REVIEW: Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee by Matana Roberts

Posted on February 22, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

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In the world of music, the saxophone represents many things. It is classical and jazz, it is woodwinds and brass, it is melody and military—it is sexuality and it is soul. And given its multifaceted role in American musical traditions, it is also a fascinating lens through which to explore America’s complex political history.

Composer, saxophonist, and sound experimentalist Matana Roberts does just this in chapter three of her massive, 12-part “Coin Coin” series. Gigantic in scope, the series is a visceral musical exploration into the sounds, the stories, the history, and the legacy of the American slave trade—a panoramic sound quilt piecing together the diverse trajectories of the African diaspora.

Each album in the series features a different configuration of instruments and sound textures—the first featured a 16-piece ensemble, the second a sextet, and the third? Just a single performer: Roberts herself.

“Coin Coin Chapter Three: river run thee” weaves a rich musical tapestry of saxophones, songs, field recordings, loop and effects pedals, and spoken word recitations—all composed, performed, and carefully layered by Roberts.

So what does it sound like? Well, it’s sort of like a surreal sonic dream—a musical merging of ritual and spectacle. Roberts’ influences are a melting pot of jazz, improvisation, classical, and the avant-garde, and her album is a vivid wash of colors and sounds, wailing saxophones and spoken word, field recordings and folk music.

But aside from the idiosyncratic sax solos, one of the most striking elements musically is Roberts’ voice. She flows just as easily from mournful singing to spoken texts, folk song fragments to vocal improvisations. If “river run thee” is a one-woman opera, then Roberts is the star, viscerally experiencing each twist, turn, and tragedy.

Her voice brims with a gritty, earthy, urgent soulfulness, echoed by saxophone moans and static swells. Oscillating tones, ghostly whispers, and eerie electronics providing a foreboding accompaniment—and each track bleeds into the next as she paints a vivid and unflinching narrative, a tragic history of civil rights issues in the U.S.

“I have a particular fascination with history as narrative and how narrative constantly gets cut up and changed and completely taken out of context, or put in context and taken out again,” Roberts said in an interview with Bomb Magazine. “To me history is not linear; it’s on this constant, cyclical repeat.”

Roberts recorded the album in the same Montreal studio she used to mix the first two albums in the “Coin Coin” series. For this third installment, she played the “river run thee” tape back over and over again, responding to what she’d already recorded and adding new musical layers in real-time from start to finish—thus injecting the energy and spontaneity of improvisation directly into the album.

But for all the intensity and intimacy of this one-woman album, “river run thee” is actually an entire symphony of sounds and stories. Roberts took her source material from across generations and geographies, amassing historical and documentary information through interviews, site visits, field recordings, and travels—and for that reason, the album is so much more than just a personal reflection on the state of race relations in America. It is critical musical analysis of our nation’s art and politics: past, present, and future.

“One thing I love about history in the making is that it has shown time and time again that there is resolution,” she said. “It won’t be a permanent resolution, because this country still hasn’t fully acknowledged that it is built on denial. I sense that this is not going to change soon; therefore it’s important for American artists to make work that reminds us of our responsibility for progression. The choices that I make as an artist have a lot to do with that.”

ALBUM REVIEW: Third Coast Percussion | Steve Reich

Posted on February 15, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

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Minimalist composer Steve Reich is best known for his experiments into “phase music”—that is, music which features two (or more) musicians playing identical lines of music, synchronously at first, but gradually shifting out of unison with one another. As the cycle slowly unfolds, new melodies are created by the ever-changing aural interactions of the two identical lines of music.

But just like his phase music, Reich never repeated the same thing exactly twice—in fact, over the past five decades he has built an extraordinary compositional career by maximizing very minimal melodic content. That’s because his compositions are music of process, and his melodies are created through use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm and canons, perpetual cycles, and, of course, unwavering originality.

With his explorations into rhythm and articulation, Reich redefined the melodic possibilities of percussion instruments in particular—which is why Third Coast Percussion decided to pay tribute to the minimalist mastermind in their latest album, titled “Steve Reich.”

Third Coast Percussion

Comprised of percussionists David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors, Third Coast Percussion is committed to exploring and expanding the vast sonic possibilities of the percussion repertoire—and there is plenty to explore in Reich’s work alone.

In their new album, the quartet surveys the composer’s works for percussion over a four-decade span, beginning with the most recent: his three-movement Mallet Quartet. Composed in 2009, the work is scored for two vibraphones and two five-octave marimbas. Third Coast Percussion twirls effortlessly through the circling motives and interlocking canons of the two outer movements, transitioning seamlessly both in and out of the central slow movement. A stark musical contrast between the thinly textured, almost transparent middle movement against the persistent pulse of the outer two brings color and narrative to the piece.

What follows is a performance of Reich’s 1985 Sextet featuring pianists David Friend and Oliver Hagen. Scored for three marimbas, two vibraphones, two bass drums, crotales, sticks, tam-tam, two pianos, and two synthesizers, it’s safe to say it’s not your average percussion lineup. And yet, Third Coast and company succeed in creating a sonically cohesive narrative, each instrument carefully balanced against the rest of the group. Over the course the piece’s five continuous movements, repeating melodic motives and chord cycles form expansive, gradually evolving musical textures—and the musicians glide through these timbral changes with the utmost sensitivity and precision.

Peter Martin and Sean Connors perform the next duet on the album: the virtuosic “Nagoya Marimbas.” Composed in 1994, the piece harkens back to some of Reich’s earlier explorations into phase music, though in this work the repeating patterns are more melodically developed and change more frequently. Martin and Connors delicately shape and shade each pattern with artistry and finesse—making this deceptively buoyant piece sound deceptively easy.

The album comes to a close with a performance of Reich’s 1973 composition “Music for Pieces of Wood” featuring percussionist Matthew Duvall. Scored for just five pieces of wood tuned to specific pitches, the work reminds us of the primeval nature of percussion—and the vast possibilities for music with even the simplest of instruments. Of course, it also allows Third Coast an opportunity to showcase their incredible rhythmic precision and skill without timbral or textural distractions. The piece is an entire kaleidoscope of sound, a pointillist painting of constantly shifting musical patterns.

Because if there’s one thing Reich has taught us, it’s that a little musical material can take you a very, very long way. And if there’s one thing Third Coast Percussion has taught us with this album, it’s that Reich’s music is so much more than just a phase.

Steve_Reich_photo_credit_Jeffrey_Herman