Inspiration for the Apocalypse

Meredith Monk, with the Bang on a Can Allstars: Memory Game

These Meredith Monk songs, which date from 1983 to 2006, are expanded, refined, opened up, multiplied and divided in new orchestrations by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. This is authentic Meredith Monk, with her own vocal contributions, as well as those of her Vocal Ensemble: Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger, & Allison Sniffin. But there are very impressive contributions as well from the Bang on a Can All-Stars: much more than simple arrangements and instrumental accompaniment, they're closer to re-compositions. Monk's music is rich and diverse enough to play the role that Bach plays in Heitor Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras.

The highlight on the disc is Waltz in 5s, originally written in 1996. This vocalise with a quirky rhythm is a kind of hybrid of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 and Paul Desmond's Take Five. Many of the pieces, whether they're inspired by musical theatre (Memory Song) or Weimar Berlin (Totentanz), are haunting and often disturbing, no matter how light and frothy they may sound. But in spite of this, there is still an optimistic, uplifting note. As Monk says in her Composer's Notes:

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, I made a number of apocalyptic pieces that were a reflection of the fragmentation, violence and speed of the time. Soon after that, I realized that instead of stating the problem, it would be more useful and inspiring to return to the notion of offering an alternative. I wanted to create a musical world in which members of the audience could have a pure, direct and immersive experience.

In the middle of our own apocalyptic time there is much inspiration and encouragement to be found within this intriguing album.

This album will be released on March 27, 2020.

A thought-provoking, and entertaining, post-modern opera

David Lang: The Loser, an opera after the novel by Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard's The Loser is one of my favourite novels; it's the oddest combination of extremely challenging post-modernist structure and real readability. The fact that one of the three characters in Bernhard's story is (a highly fictionalized) Glenn Gould is a real feature for both the novel and the opera. There's also a streak of wry humour which runs through Bernhard's novel, and remarkably it survives in Lang's libretto, and in the outstanding performance of baritone Rod Gilfry. Everything from despair to hilarity is heard in Gilfry's voice (and seen on his face in the very good video clips from Red Poppy Music available on the web). Gilfry's very special vocal performance is ably supported by pianist Conrad Tao, who plays Lang's clever obbligato piano part, which comments on the action throughout; and by the Bang on a Can Ensemble (viola, cello, bass and percussion) led by Lesley Leighton. This is highly recommended for fans of David Lang, whose Pulitzer Prize winning Little Match Girl Passion is a highlight of 21st century opera, as well as for everyone who adores the quirky prose of Thomas Bernhard.

This album will be released on February 7, 2020.

Bearing witness to Lang's soul

David Lang: Mystery Sonatas

I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions, tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on, and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.

- Mark Rothko

David Lang has taken away the liturgical context from his model, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's Mystery Sonatas, written in 1676, but a deeply emotional and even spiritual level remains embedded in this music. The music is divided into sections denoting joy, sorrow and glory, and various gradations between, and like Biber's music, and even more so, Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, the single line of the violin bears the entire weight of his thesis. George Grella praised the work in his post at New York Classical Review: "...this music is humane and vibrantly expressive. We are essentially bearing witness to Lang’s soul."

The violinist Augustin Hadelich premiered this work at Zankel Hall in New York in April 2014, to considerable acclaim, and in May of 2016 the present recording was made. Hadelich has a warm, commanding tone, enhanced by the 1723 “ex-Kiesewetter” Stradivari he plays, which perfectly matches the open and intensely sincere music. I'm a bit surprised by the delay in this release, considering how accessible and appealing this music is, and how effective is Hadelich's advocacy. But years and decades into the future, I'm sure we'll be listening to this recording, and also performances and recordings of the Lang Mystery Sonatas by other violinists.  It's an instant classic, even if it took a while to get to the top of the queue.

This disc will be released on October 19, 2018.

The album cover includes a cropped portion of the 1905 photograph Nude boy in rocky landscape, silhouette, by F. Holland Day (1864-1933). I had assumed a black & white original had been tinted blue for the cover, but here's the original from the Library of Congress website:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g04684/

Community and nature as art form

In December 1967 CBC Radio broadcast Glenn Gould's radio documentary Idea of North, the first of three "contrapuntal pieces for radio" that made up what he referred to as his Solitude Trilogy. These works should be considered not only musical compositions in themselves, argues Friedemann Sallis in an important article, but also as important part of Gould's performance legacy.

In this tradition comes Aleksandra Vrebalov's The Sea Ranch Songs with the Kronos Quartet, to be released on September 30, 2016. "The production of place in music" is Sallis's subtitle, and that's what Vrebalov has created, in collaboration with videographer Andrew Lyndon. I haven't yet had a chance to see Lyndon's video, so I've experienced only the audio portion of this project, which certainly underlines the connection with Gould. Vrebalov brings the same passion to this portrait of a community, the same overlapping voices and natural and man-made sounds, that come together with all of the sounds of a string quartet (and what a string quartet!) to etch the place in our minds as something rare and special.  And Sea Ranch, on the Pacific Coast in Sonoma County, is clearly a special place.

John Lambert Pearson - originally posted to Flickr as Sea Ranch Panoramic Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

One of my favourite tracks is Fort Ross Chorale, which combines the sound of the church bell from Fort Ross, a 19th century Russian settlement, with a beautiful and sad liturgical chorus. But all of these vignettes become works of music and works of art. Vrebalov weaves this story and many others into her music: Sea Ranch residents reminiscing; Lorin Smith, medicine man of the Pomo Kashia Indians, singing the Welcoming Song; archaeologist Mike Lane reciting numbers that represent the land and the community; architect Donlyn Lyndon, who helped design Condominium One, the design of which brought fame to the community fifty years ago; many natural sounds, from coyotes to the many inhabitants of the tidal pools. I look forward to Lyndon's video, but I feel that I've already visited Sea Ranch and know many of its secrets.

The Kronos Quartet continue their genre-busting work in yet another amazing project. They've brought the classic attributes of one of the most important artistic forms of the Enlightenment, the civilized and passionate conversation of two violins, a viola and a cello, into so many parts of a modern world that can use as much enlightenment as it can get. We're lucky to have them.

Mysterious, sad, ecstatic music

My only exposure to the music of Kate Moore before I heard this amazing album was a single track on the 2012 Bang on a Can All-Stars disc Big Beautiful Dark and Scary. The track was called Ridgeway, and it was clever, twangy. It was picaresque: you felt like you were traveling places, one of which might have been Moore's native land, Australia. It got under your skin after a while, and then the reflective moments made you sad. It hurt a bit. Listen:

Now (or soon, rather: the disc will be released May 20, 2016) comes Stories for Ocean Shells, on BOAC's Canteloupe Records. This is a collaborative project with cellist Ashley Bathgate, who I knew from the excellent Bach Unwound by the composer collective Second Inversion. Moore and Bathgate* are obviously on the same page musically; watch and listen to Bathgate navigate Moore's complex cross-rhythms in Velvet, one of the stand-out tracks on the new album:



This is wonderfully tricky music. It's often euphonious, to my ears, though I wonder if Moore and Bathgate would think that's a compliment, since they seem more inclined to celebrate the occasional harsh edges. Velvet is apparently a reference to cloth in Renaissance paintings, so perhaps that's why I felt a softer vibe. When I heard that I called up this favourite painting by Jan Van Eyck, and admired it while I admired the music. For what it's worth, as they say. They also say, It can't hurt.

The album opens with the Walt Whitman-inspired "Whoever you are, come forth."

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.
Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it. 

This is passionate music, full of questions and yearning. It's melancholy, without wallowing in it; Moore introduces pizzicato textures occasionally to shine a bit of light, if not to expose everything!

It's exciting to hear a composer discover her gift, obviously in her element and in a true collaboration with an instrumentalist equally in her element. This mysterious, sad and ecstatic music, not without a sense of humour, bodes well for future projects for both, separately, or I fervently hope, together.




*Sorry for the interruption, but I'm a Canadian, so when I hear "Moore and Bathgate" I naturally think of the hockey players, Dickie of the Habs, and Andy of the Rangers. Sorry!

Tibetan voice, Russian piano

From September 24, 2013:

Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo, who lives "in exile" in New York, has worked in the past on collaborative projects with musicians such as Annie Lennox, Peter Gabriel and Sheryl Crow. This disc pairs her with Russian pianist and post-minimalist composer Anton Batagov. I love the texture of Lhamo's voice, and Batagov's piano contributes its own interesting character, providing more than just background for Tibetan songs and chants. It may be difficult to categorize, but it's well worth a listen. Highly recommended.