Megumi Masaki, MUSIC4EYES+EARS

In the course of the daily rounds I get the mail, open up the packages of new CDs for review consideration, hear new ones and listen to ones in the regular listening-review rotation. Oh, and in the mornings first light and beyond, I review one or more albums while listening a final time to each. First listens determine whether I like something well enough to review and then it goes from there. So Megumi Masaki and her MUSIC4EYES+EARS  (Centrediscs CD & Bluray 24017).

Pianist Masaki and her program of contemporary sounds (and sights) made it past the first listen and in subsequent listens took ready shape before me. Like many CDs I end up reviewing a first listen gave me a basic understanding and appreciation but it was only in subsequent hearings that I understood fully what was in the offing.

Megumi Masaka's MUSIC 4EYES+EARS is as the title indicates. The accompanying press sheet spells it out: "These works are designed to explore diverse concepts, performance techniques and interactive technologies in live piano + multimedia performance. Central to this project is how the interaction of image. movement, text and sound can create new expressive potentials as a whole."

The program of compositions indeed address that. The CD contains two works by two Canadian composers, Patrick Carrabre and Keith Hamel. They are each a fascinating joining of elements in dramatic juxtaposition, soundscape-y at times and otherwise tonally adventuresome and freely combinatory. The piano has a central and notable role to play in all of this and Ms. Masaki does a beautiful job realizing the parts with a poetic pianism that brings the notes to vivid life. The visual multimedia elements of course cannot be apprehended on the CD, but the spoken, sung, electronically enhanced and instrumental parts all bring forth a very scenic, synethesially near-visual immediacy in their connotations.

So "Orpheus Drones," "Orpheus (2)." and "Touch" have a narrative quality to them as they also present a vibrant sound panorama fascinating in the sensual-aural realm alone. There is a second disc, a Blu-Ray program that includes "Touch" and three additional works. Unfortunately I do not currently have Blu-Ray capability but I imagine there are visual components to be seen and multi-channel audio? Based on the CD I can only imagine there would be much there of interest and fascination.

And the more I listen to the CD, the more I find it rather riveting. Some parts seem post-minimal, some post-Stockhausenian, some elsewhere altogether but beautiful in the piano and sound color narratives that consistently take place."Touch" for live computer processing and piano by Keith Hamel is quite something remarkable in its unfolding. Then again Carrabre's long two-part "Orpheus Drones" that includes Margaret Atwood's poetry has another take on the possible that is most definitely worthwhile and memorable.

Without knowing exactly how the Blu-Ray disk goes I nevertheless do not hesitate to recommend this album to you. The piano-not-piano interplay is not quite like anything being done out there today. The music holds its own.  It is new music with an emphasis on the NEW! So check it out if you will.