by Brendan Howe
Photo by Kim Winslow.
Growing up in Homer, Alaska, Conrad Winslow watched his parents build their log cabin in the woods from scratch—little did he know, those building blocks would shape and inspire his future as a composer.
As with building a log cabin that is to become a home, the world Winslow creates in his debut album The Perfect Nothing Catalog is significantly more emotionally involved than rendering walls of sound from various materials. The technical choices made in orchestrating the album are perhaps less relevant than the sensitivity with which the Cadillac Moon Ensemble and producer Aaron Roche execute them. Foot stomps and sawtooth waves interspersed with cello and flute are all well and good, but Winslow and Roche’s attention to detail—along with the ensemble’s agility—give them gravity, fire, adrenaline, and airy bliss.
Winslow originally composed The Perfect Nothing Catalog as an acoustic score in 2014, but says that he “always imagined it like an abstract radio play.” He recorded an acoustic version and asked Roche to “riff on these aural objects, process them in myriad ways.” Roche did just that with distortions and elements of musique concrète, lending the piece a subtle sense of narrative.
The title work is made up of 50 miniatures, each less than a minute long and cataloged by compositional approach: “tunes” are melodic lines, modulating and harmonizing themselves, “materials” are simply musical textures, “devices” are rhythmic vignettes, “controls” explore variations on a single parameter, and “code” layers the movements together in new ways.
Though a piece as meticulously organized as this may be expected to sound clinical, the end result is full of surprises. It is music of simultaneous—rather than reflective or whimsical—experience.
The other pieces on the album, Abiding Shapes, Ellipsis Rules, and Benediction, reveal the composer’s consistency in his craft. The entire album may be enjoyed either while sitting back in an armchair with a glass of wine or while painting a giant canvas on the living room floor.
The Perfect Nothing Catalog is available for pre-order through Innova.mu. It will be released on November 17, 2017.
Rachel Grimes:
Shara Nova: 
Sarah Kirkland Snider: 
Angélica Negrón: 
SI: What does this piece sound like?
Grad not only composed the music and the poetry, but also conceptualized and built the electric theorbo that will take center stage at Saturday’s concert
In fact, Grad first met Lenti when he was working to on designing his new instrument—up until then, he had never actually played a real theorbo. Lenti, a theorbist specializing in Renaissance and Baroque music, was able to give him some guidance.
It just wouldn’t be a Halloween marathon without a spooky clown—and Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire is nothing if not haunting. A masterpiece of melodrama, the 35-minute work tells the chilling tale of a moonstruck clown and his descent into madness (a powerful metaphor for the modern alienated artist). The spooky story comes alive through three groups of seven poems (a result of Schoenberg’s peculiar obsession with numerology), each one recited using Sprechstimme: an expressionist vocal technique that hovers eerily between song and speech. Combine this with Schoenberg’s free atonality and macabre storytelling, and it’s enough to transport you to into an intoxicating moonlight. –
The “ghosts” in the title refer to the 100-year-old cylinder recordings that Adrian Lane hacked to bits, reordered, sutured together, and reanimated as “Playing With Ghosts.” The result is a grainy musical creature accompanied by Lane’s own ethereal piano, which was built around the same time the cylinders were originally produced. The deterioration of the recordings leave a haunting, nostalgic impression. –
Have you ever wondered why people are obsessed with celebrities? How some folks can see faces in toast? Then you must be mystified by the phenomenon of Elvis Presley’s inimitable immortality.
Cruel Sister by Julia Wolfe is a musical rendering of an eponymous Old English ballad. The ballad tells the tale of two sisters—one magnificently bright as the sun, the other cold and dark. One day a man comes courting and the dark sister becomes infatuated with him. Jealous and covetous, she pushes her bright sister into the sea. Two minstrels find the dead sister washed up on the shore and shape her breastbone into a macabre harp, strung with her yellow hair. They come to play at the cold dark sister’s wedding. 
This work by Robert Honstein may not have been intended to be creepy, but whatever the goal, the result is unmistakable. From the slow scraping and scratching of strings at the very beginning to the long, stretched out melodies and despondent harpsichord, this piece has major spook factor. It’s also just a great piece of music; I love the way tension is slowly increased throughout each interlude, guiding the ear to always expect ever-higher sounds and some new string effect.