STAFF PICKS: Friday Faves

Posted on June 17, 2016 by maestrobeats

Second Inversion hosts share a favorite selection from this Friday’s playlist. Tune in during the indicated hours below on Friday, June 17 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!

Frédéric Chopin (arr. Chad Lawson): Prelude No.20 in C minor, Op.28 (Hillset Records)
Judy Kang, violin; Rubin Kodheli, cello; Chad Lawson, piano
cover Sometimes, modern re-interpretations of older music yield a product that would not necessarily strike the unguarded listener as terribly modern or even slightly derivative. Chad Lawson’s release The Chopin Variations is one such project. Specifically, the Prelude No.20 in C minor, Op.28 strikes me as a highly successful example. This track is not so much a re-imagining as it is a modern re-hearing of the original. This track is a tangible manifestation of the way Chopin’s original might be internally experienced by a modern listener, filtered through fields of distraction, memories of alternative styles, and competing musical influences. Lawson infuses the Prelude with shades of minimalism, new-age music, and gentle rhapsodic fragments that seem to naturally flow from the original, organically replicating a potential internal mashup that might occur inside the head of modern listener. Maybe modern distraction isn’t an entirely bad thing, after all. – Seth Tompkins

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 9am hour today to hear this piece.

Patrick Laird: The Farewell (Break of Reality)

a3228272509_10 Cello rock! Heck yeah! You may already be familiar with Break of Reality if you’re one of the 11 million people who have viewed their “Game of Thrones Theme” cello cover on YouTube (it’s badass!), but this group was totally unknown to me until recently. If you like metal you’ll dig this. If you like tribal beats you’ll dig this. If you like classical you’ll dig this. “The Farewell” is cinematic, textural and so beautifully harmonious. – Rachele Hales

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 1pm hour today to hear this piece.

Cindy Cox: “Playing A Round” performed by Keynote+ (Albany Records)

unnamed I’ll be honest: I don’t really like harpsichord. Even when I hear really good harpsichord music, my first thought is still always “Wow, but imagine if that was played on piano instead!”

Suffice it to say, there are very few harpsichord pieces on my new music playlist. To me, most harpsichord works belong squarely in the pure and polite “early music” category.

Or at least, that’s what I thought—until I discovered a most unusual (Read: GENIUS!) multi-keyboard project called Keynote+, comprised of Jane Chapman on harpsichord and Kate Ryder on prepared piano. In this recording from a concert at UC Berkeley, the two each lend their ten fingers and tireless musical talents to a piece called “Playing a Round” by Cindy Cox.

Across five short movements, the piece blurs the line between Baroque harpsichord and 20^th century avant-garde piano idioms, at times making it difficult to tell where one instrument ends and the other begins. Together, Keynote+ envelops the listener in a gorgeously percussive and richly colored orchestra of sound—and all with just two keyboard instruments and 20 very quick fingers. One’s thing for sure: these keyboardists are not playing around. – Maggie Molloy

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 7pm hour today to hear this piece.

Second Inversion’s Top 5 Album Reviews of 2015

Posted on December 23, 2015 by maestrobeats

Every Monday, you can count on Second Inversion to post an Album Review of a brand new release. These are the top 5 most popular reviews of 2015!

#5: The Knights: the ground beneath our feet

“If the ground beneath our feet has indeed disappeared in parts of this album, that’s okay: outer space sure sounds pretty good to me.” – Jill Kimball

#4: Jodie Landau & wild Up: you of all things

“‘as I wait for the lion,’ is a simple, swelling, and poignant piece that pulls on the listener’s heart strings with each and every pluck of the sparkling harp, each and every knock of the delicately twinkling percussion behind Landau’s heartfelt voice.” – Maggie Molloy

#3: Roomful of Teeth: Render

“Classical vocal music is always nice—but if you’re looking for a contemporary vocal ensemble with a little more bite, look no further than Roomful of Teeth.” – Maggie Molloy

#2: Nordic Affect: Clockworking

“The music is dotted with the very Icelandic sounds of rushing winds, hummed folk music, and above all, the beautifully stark sounds of silence. The album is characterized by pleasant repetition and meditative simplicity, an accurate musical reflection of life in Iceland’s quiet, cold and wild towns. Listening to Clockworking made me feel like I was the only one in the world one minute, but like a tiny drop in a vast ocean the next.” – Jill Kimball

#1: Olafur Arnalds: The Chopin Project

“It’s just one glorious, delicate piece after another. From the gentle shoosh-shoosh in ‘Reminiscence’ (during which there’s a point where you can even hear a performer taking in breath) to the distant chatter and rainfall heard in “Nocturne in G Minor,” the recordings make the listener feel close to the piano – in the same room, even – and so very close to the music.” – Rachele Hales

Stay tuned for 52 more album reviews in 2016!

ALBUM REVIEW REVUE: A Look Back at the Year

Posted on June 1, 2015 by maestrobeats

Last June, we began reviewing albums on a weekly basis and we’re thrilled to celebrate a year’s worth of awesome content at Second Inversion! We’re celebrating by announcing the top 5 reviews. Let the countdown begin!

5. A Far Cry: Dreams and Prayers

“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.”

4. The Knights: the ground beneath our feet

“If the ground beneath our feet has indeed disappeared in parts of this album, that’s okay: outer space sure sounds pretty good to me.”

3. Christopher Bono: BARDO

“When I had this album playing at home, several friends commented on how “epic” it felt. And that’s true. If you didn’t read the liner notes or have any frame of reference for Bono’s inspiration, it could totally sound like the soundtrack for an amazing RPG or fantasy film. Played straight through it is like a saga told in sound and the fact that you may not know the details doesn’t stop you from connecting to, understanding, and enjoying it.”

2. John Luther Adams: Become Ocean

“As for the recording? The ideal scenario for the listener in a performance of this piece is to be surrounded by the orchestra and furthermore have the opportunity to move around within the physical space, if desired. Listening to this recording in surround sound is the next best thing! Adams told me, ‘In making this recording we took special care to mix in stereo much of the time, so that the experience of hearing this music in stereo is as vivid as possible and gives you a sense of being immersed.'”

1. Ólafur Arnalds: The Chopin Project

“…It’s just one glorious, delicate piece after another. From the gentle shoosh-shoosh in “Reminiscence” (during which there’s a point where you can even hear a performer taking in breath) to the distant chatter and rainfall heard in “Nocturne in G Minor,” the recordings make the listener feel close to the piano – in the same room, even – and so very close to the music. Several tracks use Chopin as a jumping off point, which turns the album as a whole into a dreamlike story arc you wish would never end.”

Huge thanks go out to our staff and interns for their writing: Maggie Molloy, Jill Kimball, Rachele Hales, Seth Tompkins, and Maggie Stapleton.

ALBUM REVIEW: Ólafur Arnalds’ “The Chopin Project”

Posted on March 23, 2015 by maestrobeats

by Rachele Hales

Ólafur Arnalds popped up on my radar in 2009 when he started a project of writing a new composition every day for a week and immediately made each one available online. The compositions were later officially released in the collection “Found Songs.” He did not undertake the same experiment for his latest release, The Chopin Project, instead teasing his fans with mysterious updates via Twitter along with his coconspirator/barefoot pianist extraordinaire, Alice Sara Ott. For Arnalds fans the waiting was agony, but all good things…

As a youngster playing in hardcore/metal bands, Arnalds frequently visited his grandmother and was exposed to classical music in her home. “She would always make me listen to Chopin,” he writes in the liner notes, “if it had been my parents forcing classical music down my throat at that time in my life I probably would have puked on their face. But, I guess out of respect for my grandmother, I always listened with her and slowly it started to grow on me.” After his grandmother passed away the Chopin-shaped fragment of his heart was aching to be expressed.

All Chopin recordings sounded the same to him. With nearly all classical recordings focused on capturing a perfect performance and using technology to process that performance into something so polished it no longer feels authentic, Arnalds questioned why technology itself was never used as part of the interpretation. “Why can’t the microphones, the room – the sound – also be a performer? Why would all of these factors need to stay invisible? And why would a ‘good’ classical piano sound naturally have to be the silvery, brilliant concert grand sound that we have on classical recordings today [when] we know that pianos of the 19th century sounded so very different?” Armed with a pocketful of excellent questions and a mission to break the norm, he partnered with Ott and together they explored Reykjavik searching for vintage recording equipment, unusual pianos, and venues that would act as performers themselves in Arnalds & Ott’s interpretations. Then came the recording.

“Verses” is our introduction to the album. It’s a new composition by Arnalds that borrows from Chopin’s “Piano Sonata No. 3 (Largo),” which immediately follows as track 2. You know how when you were in junior high sometimes you bought a new album that you loved so much you didn’t even want to tell anyone about it? You just locked your door and stayed in your bedroom all night, lying in your bed, reading the liner notes, listening to the album over and over? “Verses” is exactly like that. It is intimate and sad with the trademark Arnalds atmosphere and makes you just want to stay inside journaling for hours and hours.

The entire album has that quality – it’s just one glorious, delicate piece after another. From the gentle shoosh-shoosh in “Reminiscence” (during which there’s a point where you can even hear a performer taking in breath) to the distant chatter and rainfall heard in “Nocturne in G Minor,” the recordings make the listener feel close to the piano – in the same room, even – and so very close to the music. Several tracks use Chopin as a jumping off point, which turns the album as a whole into a dreamlike story arc you wish would never end.

Be sure to purchase this album if you like what you hear!