ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Octet Ensemble’s “Scatter My Ashes”

Posted on December 8, 2014 by maestrobeats

I have always considered poetry to be the distant cousin of music. After all, both combine elements of rhythm, sound, lyricism, and storytelling. However, after listening through the OCTET Ensemble’s performance of “Scatter My Ashes,” I thought perhaps these two artistic mediums may be even closer than cousins; perhaps they could even be brother and sister.

“Scatter My Ashes” is a series of five poems written by Sue Susman about life, death, and darkness. Her brother, composer and keyboardist William Susman, then transformed the poems into a five-movement composition for OCTET, his New York-based contemporary music ensemble.

OCTET is essentially a jazzy big-band-turned-a-little-smaller: their sound features one of each instrument in the brass section plus rhythm. The ensemble is composed of soprano vocalist Mellissa Hughes, saxophonist Demetrius Spaneas, trumpeter Mike Gurfield, trombonist Alan Ferber, composer and keyboardist William Susman, pianist Elaine Kwon, double bassist Eleonore Oppenheim, and drummer and percussionist Greg Zuber.

“Scatter My Ashes” is the title track on OCTET’s debut album, where it is brilliantly framed by three other works which combine a neoclassical sound with jazz and pop elements. Hughes’ dazzling vocals soar above each piece, transitioning flawlessly from singing lyrical poetry to percussive wordless vocals depending on the composition.

The title track lays Hughes’ crystal clear voice over a relatively sparse, brass-dominated musical texture. The result is a harmonious mixture of minimalism and jazz, filled with swirling brass melodies and tender, lyrical vocals. Hughes’ voice amplifies the sorrow, hope, and drama of the poetry, making each word glow with very minimal vibrato.

The album’s opening track, the three-movement “Camille,” plays on the intermingling of vocal and instrumental timbres, using wordless vocals as a melodic and, at times, percussive element. The circling, minimalist melodies and vocal rhythms of the first movement give way to the piece’s somber, slower, jazzier middle movement before picking up the pace for the triumphant final section, a repetitive, rhythmic return to the minimal music aesthetic.

Another highlight is the ensemble’s “Piano Concerto” which, of course, is no ordinary piano concerto. Rather than showcasing a flashy soloistic piano part, the piece carefully blends subdued piano melodies with wordless vocals and brassy highlights to create a dreamlike atmosphere. The result is a beautiful and texturally fascinating sonic landscape which fully encompasses the listener in its sinuous melodies and jazz-infused rhythms.

The album finishes with “Moving in to an Empty Space,” a series of three more poems written by Sue Susman which her brother set to music for OCTET. The poignant poems explore themes of loneliness and isolation in the everyday human experience, the expressive lyrics further complimented by the softly sparkling background melodies. The pieces showcase Hughes’ impressive vocal range over a brass-dominated backdrop.

Though the entire album runs just under 45 minutes, each note is perfectly crafted and expertly executed. The precision and accuracy of each instrument’s part is a true testament to the musicianship OCTET’s members.

Without a single moment wasted, the album stands as a timeless combination of contemporary classical music, minimalism, and jazz into a profound and dynamic multidisciplinary work.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: yMusic’s Balance Problems

Posted on November 24, 2014 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

New York has long been one of the U.S.’s leading centers for new and experimental classical music, and who better to spearhead the city’s lively and eccentric music scene than innovative young musicians?

yMusic is quickly making a name for themselves as one of New York’s most imaginative young music ensembles. The sextet, which formed in 2008, is named for the stylish Millennial Generation from which its musicians hail. Each of its members has their own distinct personal style and musical flair, and together their music toes the line between the classical and pop music worlds.

The ensemble is composed of a string trio carefully balanced with flute, clarinet, and trumpet. yMusic features Rob Moose on violin, Nadia Sirota on viola, Clarice Jensen on cello, Hideaki Aomori on clarinet, Alex Sopp on flute, and CJ Camerieri on trumpet.

Though the group is full of virtuosic, classically-trained musicians, yMusic strives to make classical chamber music accessible to a wider range of audiences outside of the traditional concert hall.

In their new album, “Balance Problems,” the group takes on dazzling new compositions by Nico Muhly, Marcos Balter, Andrew Norman, Jeremy Turner, Timo Andres, Mark Dancigers, and Sufjan Stevens. The result is a series of carefully crafted sonic landscapes which blend imaginative musical textures of enormous depth and detail.

<a href="http://ymusicensemble.bandcamp.com/album/balance-problems">Balance Problems by yMusic</a>

The album’s sound is heavily influenced by Son Lux (Ryan Lott), a fellow genre-bending New York-based musician who served as the producer and mixing engineer for “Balance Problems.” His extensive background in electronic and experimental music informed the mixing process, helping to expand yMusic’s sound while still preserving the integrity of their acoustic instruments.

“Balance Problems” starts off with the title track, a delicate but densely colorful piece composed by modernist Nico Muhly. The piece’s overlapping wind and brass motifs are carefully balanced against the constantly shifting, often pizzicato string backdrop.

Marcos Balter’s “Bladed Stance,” toys with various tempos on different instruments, creating depth through swelling woodwind melodies which whisper like wind, gradually rising and falling with each breath.

Of all the pieces, Andrew Norman’s two-part “Music in Circles” is perhaps the most familiar in structure. True to its title, the piece begins and ends with the same airy, ambient backdrop. If you listen closely, you can even hear someone breathing on the recording. The stark, simple atmosphere gradually gives way to growing depth and drama. The middle of the piece is rounded out with vibrant and colorful timbres, each instrument’s part swirling around each other to produce a brilliant, sparkling musical texture.

The more chaotic tracks on the album are balanced out by softer, gentler compositions such as Jeremy Turner’s “The Bear and the Squirrel.” The piece begins with a rich cello tone, embracing a bass-heavy sound with smooth, sweet strings and a muted trumpet melody. The lovely, dreamlike melodies give the piece a tranquil, lulling quality.

Sufjan Stevens ends the album with “The Human Plague,” a more heavily produced track which experiments with delayed and gated effects. All of the instruments play in sync for the first time on the album, dizzily repeating one rhythm until each voice gradually slows down and fades away into silence. The result is a modern, minimalist finale which seamlessly drives home the album’s theme of blending pop and classical.

As an album, “Balance Problems” is truly brought to life by yMusic’s youthful, imaginative energy and fearless commitment to creating innovative and expressive new music. The group’s extraordinary musicianship and unique ear for pop and avant-garde musical elements allows them to flawlessly tie together two very different musical worlds into one intricate but accessible classical music album.

ALBUM REVIEW: “Dreams and Prayers” by A Far Cry

Posted on November 17, 2014 by maestrobeats

by Jill Kimball

A Far Cry.

When really, really good musicians get together to play music, something magical happens. Some of the best performances in history have been called divine or heavenly. No matter their faith (or lack thereof), those who appreciate music can agree there’s something otherworldly about an amazing performance or recording.

“We’re kind of scrubbing on our instruments, and what somehow comes out of that physical act is something spiritual or transcendent, ” says Miki-Sophia Cloud, a violinist with the self-conducted chamber orchestra A Far Cry. “The history of spiritual mysticism [is] about connecting the physical and the spiritual, which is such a theme in music as well.”

In observing the connection between mysticism and music, the members of A Far Cry had a great idea. They decided to make an album called Dreams & Prayers, a unique collection of music that explores the relationship of spirituality and sound. It begins with Hildegard of Bingen, fast-forwards to the present day, backtracks to 1994, and then concludes at the bedside of a newly-healed Ludwig van Beethoven. Four works, three faith traditions, and 1,000 years comprise this stunning, exhilarating, and (dare I say it?) transcendent album.

The disc gets is name from its focal work, Osvaldo Golijov‘s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Golijov originally composed the piece for klezmer clarinet and string quartet–more specifically, for the Kronos Quartet–and has now written an arrangement specifically for A Far Cry to premiere. What’s especially exciting about this recording is that the klezmer clarinetist is David Krakauer, the very same musician who played the premiere with Kronos.

The whole piece is inspired by the writings and teachings of Isaac the Blind, a Jewish mystic who lived in 12th and 13th century Provence. Its three movements are inspired by the three historical Jewish languages: Aramaic, Yiddish and Hebrew. The kind of transcendence explored here is more ecstatic and lively than it is dreamy or serene: you get the sense that Krakauer and the Criers just let go and played with abandon, reveling in the piece’s driving dance rhythms, lush orchestration and utter chaos.

With this 33-minute tornado at the center of Dreams & Prayers, it’s easy to forget there’s another world premiere on the CD: Mehmet Ali Sanlikol‘s Vecd, commissioned by the ensemble. Vecd, in Arabic, “refers to a state of rapture or ecstasy,” according to the composer; the piece is a musical evocation of the kind of spiritual ecstasy Sufi whirling dervishes try to achieve in formal religious ceremonies. Almost everyone will find this piece aesthetically appealing, even if they don’t make the religious connection. It begins with just a few musicians playing soft, meditative sustained notes. Then, a dramatic melody swoops in. Over the course of a few minutes, it gains in speed and volume until the piece reaches its whirling climax. The sound gradually slows and fades until, as in the beginning, only a few musicians remain.

My absolute favorite part about Dreams & Prayers is its opening track, an original arrangement of the chant O ignis spiritus paracliti by the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard isn’t famous just because she was one of history’s first female composers. She’s famous because she was a composer, writer, philosopher, theologian, scientist, mystic, and Benedictine abbess…simultaneously. And her music was like nothing anyone had heard before: her chants were more expressive, complex and artistic than any of those composed before and even during her lifetime. It’s such a pleasure to hear her haunting chant arranged so simply on this disc: no extraneous notes or harmonies, just one pure melodic line played in perfectly-imperfect unison by the violinists of A Far Cry. Despite its simplicity, it’s not background music: this track deserves your undivided attention.

A close second favorite is the album’s heart-wrenching conclusion, the third movement from Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15. At first it seemed strange for A Far Cry to include something so comparatively conventional, but then I read T.S. Eliot’s thoughts on the piece:

“I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaiety about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.”

History tells us T.S. Eliot was on the nose about this piece: Beethoven likely wrote it following his recovery from an abdominal illness. In the original manuscript, he describes the third movement as a “Holy song of Thanksgiving to a convalescent of the Deity.” It’s an ode to the emotional healing power of music, further proof that we turn to music for a respite from all forms of pain. One last time, A Far Cry connects the physical with the spiritual in their impeccable yet sensitive performance of this movement.

Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, Dreams & Prayers is available to buy through the ensemble’s own label, Crier Records, here.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Life is Endless Like Our Field of Vision (Huck Hodge)

Posted on November 10, 2014 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Stapleton

Here at Second Inversion we aim to “Rethink Classical,” but the array of sounds on Huck Hodge’s new album, “Life is Endless Like Our Field of Vision,” steps beyond that mantra. “Rethink Sound,” perhaps? The four pieces offer a varied textural output and alternation of pieces without and with electronics – chamber ensemble (Talea Ensemble under Jim Baker), piano with computer-realized sound, chamber ensemble (ditto Talea/Baker), string quartet (JACK Quartet) with live processed melodica, performed by Hodge.

Alêtheia (roughly translated as “truth”), composed in 2011, opens the disc. Alêtheia is based on Hodge’s reconciliation of two opposing philosophies of truth, particularly as noted by Parmenides, who sees truth as a fixed and unchanging reality, and Heraclitus, offering the notion that reality is in constant flux. The music reflects this juxtaposition of truth in the musical form of time – many sections of the piece have simultaneously still, static, fixed ideas (e.g. a single harmony lasting 30 seconds) but with rapidly changing timbres. Melody also portrays this opposing force of truth; the piece is strongly rooted in melody, represented as a fixed element. Fragmented and textural moments with a style marking of “Disjunctly lyrical” counteract the fixed nature of the melody. The US Premiere of this piece is this Saturday, November 15 at 8pm, performed by the Seattle Modern Orchestra!

Moving along, Pools of shadow from an older sky is in five movements for live-processed bent piano, computer-realized sound and video projection. While we don’t get the visual stimulation in this recording, there is no lack of richness for the sense of sound, performed here entirely by Huck Hodge. The piece was commissioned by the American Academy in Rome in 2011 (while Hodge was in Rome celebrating his receipt of the Rome Prize) in commemoration of Galileo’s first telescope demonstration. The premiere was on April 11, 2014, exactly four hundred years afterward. While Alêtheia dealt with juxtaposition of truth interpretations, Pools of shadow from an older sky displays a past vs. present negotiation. Hodge weaves church bells and hymns of Roman cathedrals with present sounds from Rome (sirens and street noise), all the while with a clear homage to Galileo. Piano twinkling stars and intergalactic radio wave sounds create a soundscape that is truly otherworldly. Close your eyes as you listen – I hope you’ll feel as transported as I do!

Continuing with the theme of “this or that,” re[(f)use] can be interpreted in many ways. First, there’s the world “refuse”:

ref·use /rəˈfyo͞oz/ v. indicate or show that one is not willing to do something

ref·use /refˌyo͞os/ n. matter thrown away or rejected as worthless; trash

…but also within the word there are many other words: fuse (noun & verb), use, reuse. Each shade of meaning has something to do with the piece. re[(f)use] uses a lot of “junk” sounds – cell phone noise, speaker hums, cell phone ringtones. The aesthetic here is an attempt to reverse the hierarchy of “beauty” to which many composers and musicians often strive. Rather than taking something that’s already beautiful, like a violin melody, and transforming it into something less beautiful (perhaps in attempt to question its beauty), re[(f)use] takes sounds which are inherently ugly and transform them into something beautiful. Hodge performs on live processed melodica along with the (amplified) JACK Quartet.

It’s always a pleasure to feature Seattle-based artists here on Second Inversion. Huck Hodge has received more accolades before the age of 40 than many of the world’s greatest composers have achieved in their entire life, including the Rome Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, Gaudeamus Prize, and the Aaron Copland Award.. Alêtheia and another one of Hodge’s works, Zeremonie, will be featured on the upcoming Saturday, November 15 Seattle Modern Orchestra concert. PS, Tune in to The Takeover on Wednesday, November 12 at 3pm to hear SMO Co-Artistic Director Jeremy Jolley share some of the music from the upcoming season.

You can purchase the disc from New World Records here. Enjoy!

ALBUM REVIEW: Mamoru Fujieda’s “Patterns of Plants”

Posted on November 4, 2014 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

We experience plant life through a variety of senses: sight, taste, touch, smell. In fact, flowers and other plants have long been featured in visual arts, culinary arts, medicines, fragrances, and more. Despite all of the many ways in which we encounter vegetation, though, we have never actually been able to experience plants through sound—until now.

Japanese post-minimalist composer Mamoru Fujieda has spent 15 years of his career creating music based on the electrical activity in living plants. The result is his magnum opus, an ongoing series of compositions appropriately titled “Patterns of Plants.” The pieces have been arranged for a variety of instruments and ensembles.

This past September, Fujieda released a two-disc album featuring a large selection of these works performed by renowned pianist Sarah Cahill. The album, titled “Mamoru Fujieda: Patterns of Plants,” is the first solo piano recording of this music to be sold outside of Japan.

Hop over to Pinna Records to purchase the album!

The compositions, created between 1996 and 2011, were made possible with the help of the “Plantron,” a device created by botanist and artist Yūji Dōgane. The “Plantron” measures electrical fluctuations on the surface of plant leaves and converts that data into sound using Max, a visual programming language for music.

“I understood these data to constitute the ‘voices’ of plants, and tried to make those voices audible as melodic patterns,” Fujieda said.

Fujieda sifted through the sounds in search of pleasing musical patterns, which he then used as the basis for composing a number of short pieces. He then grouped these pieces into collections, sort of like little bouquets full of Baroque dance suites.

The pieces reflect the subtle beauty and uniqueness of each plant, often drawing from a number of vibrant musical influences while still maintaining a consistently calming, gentle theme throughout.

“[The pieces] resonate with Baroque music, but also with the folk music of Ainu and Celtic cultures; with the lyricism of Lou Harrison; with medieval chant; and with a modal language that hints at alternative tunings, even when played in equal temperament, as they are on this recording (with Mamoru’s blessing),” said Cahill, who has been playing many of these works since 1997.

The rich but subtle diversity of each piece makes them quietly captivating both as individual compositions but also as a whole. Part of the album’s charm is the way it flows gently from Pattern to Pattern, immersing the listener in a lush forest full of ornamented melodies and delicate details.

“They embrace the repetitive structures of post-minimalism; but just as the leaves of a tree appear uniform from a distance, and only on closer inspection reveal surprising diversity, so the attentive listener discovers a multitude of variations and transformations within each Pattern,” Cahill said.

The pieces are poignant, sweet, and sincere. It is as though each Pattern is its own gentle flower, one small but infinitely nuanced part of the larger landscape. Just as flowers may be arranged in any combination, the Patterns may be listened to in any order. Cahill chose the order of the pieces in the album, with Fujieda’s approval.

“Sarah’s performance, with its refined phrasings and delicately controlled sonorities, imparts an individual character to each of the pieces,” Fujieda said. “The patterns together create an impression of being interwoven endlessly like a tapestry. It is as if the lives of plants are revived in her piano through this continuous chain of interrelated variations.”

Fujieda may have planted the seed with his first Pattern in 1996, but this album proves that his music has since grown into a beautiful garden full of delicate, charming melodies.