John Luther Adams, Four Thousand Holes

Velocity. For our purposes it involves the speed and concurrence of tones. They articulate together in ratios, rhythms. In a typical march piece the concurrences group in twos and threes in a pretty elemental fashion, in ratios where mathematically the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are rather straightforward. Classical music, jazz, African and Indian classical music can have much more sophisticated ratio velocities. Then of course as students of nature and the industrial worlds we hear other concurrent velocities, some really quite complex. The sound of rain dripping off the roof combined with the pulsating whirs and sometimes anarchic clunks of a room air conditioner, coupled with the confluence of bird calls and an idling truck motor outside our window, for example, can create a complex velocity grid that ever shifts as the sounds beat over and across one another, sometimes coming together in a synchronous moment, most other times not. Some modern avant composers after Cage especially have become creators of analogous sound worlds.

And so in many ways in that vein we have composer John Luther Adams and his Four Thousand Holes (Cold Blue 0035) a long, fascinating piece for piano and mallet percussion and electronically created "auras," manipulated sound envelopes of the instruments sounding tones--almost like the swell you get from playing for example a piano chord backwards, but minus the backwards initial tone and extended. Stephen Drury is the pianist, Scott Deal the percussionist. They are spelled by the Callithumpian Consort for the shorter companion piece ". . . and the bells remembered. . . ". More on that in a moment.

And in the end this is a series of piano-mallet chords and tones in a diatonic universe along with their sound envelope sustains. The various overlapping ratio congruences and dispersals sometimes sound like a multi-bell pealing you hear historically in cathedrals on special occasions, each bell with a separate velocity and the interaction of them continually fanning out and contracting in processual groupings. The rhythmic ratios are complex and fascinating. And the musical tones interact like a recurring carpet weave pattern that ultimately changes over time, both in terms of velocities and tone recurrences. It is beautiful, open-ended music that has natural processual aspects which occur in such a natural way it feels less like the dancey beated minimal pieces and more like falling to sleep under a pine tree during a rainstorm.

", , , and the bells remembered. . . " is a far more contemplative, less busy, open-spaced work for struck percussion instruments--bells, chimes, vibes, etc. It too has synchronous and non-synchronous soundings, but with longer, less space-intense periodicities. It too has diatonic weight and an expansiveness that makes you hear the consonances anew.

John Luther Adams has come through with music that gradually gets you into its world and, after repeated listens, rivets you there. Like a favorite spot you seek while repeating a particular hike again and again, the getting there fills you with pleasurable anticipations and the trip toward and back are an equal part of the entire experience. This is music that has that kind of rejuvenating quality.

Another excellent example of the worthy kind of "post-" music of the past decades and how we have come open to new ideas of form as part of the legacy of some of the sound awareness aspects of the classic avant garde years. Beautiful! A sound hammock for your musical backyard!

Griffes, Piano Music, Garrick Ohlsson

Charles Thomlinson Griffes (1884-1920) for a time was thought of as America's greatest living composer. But he was perhaps dubbed that by default. And his music fell into obscurity as an American School of composers began to be recognized by mid-century.

Griffes music, mostly the shorter works, has never quite left us. But the truth is that he doesn't get a lot of attention. His Piano Music in a new disk by Garrick Ohlsson (Hyperion CDA 67907) gives us 80 wonderful minutes with which to reconsider. Seven works or suites fill the disk and they are delightful, impressionist for the most part, and performed with a maximum of sympathy and sensitivity.

Was Griffes an original voice? Certainly not like Ives, Copland, Harris or a good number of others who came after. But he wrote what was in him and though his piano music may not always have the bold dash and liquidity of Debussy or Ravel, there are late romantic elements intertwined at times and there is strongly evocative, melodic-harmonic charm to be had in good measure.

Garrick Ohlsson does a beautiful job with the music. His definitive performances put the music in the best possible light. Truth is, after hearing this well-chosen set of gems I no longer feel that the music is in any way lacking. Not these pieces; not these performances. It's music of great beauty in the end. Who cares, after Ohlsson presents them, where Griffes belongs in some posterity? That's for others. We can revel in the sounds and get much of high interest regardless of his ultimate place.

Meira Warshauer, Living Breathing Earth

Meira Warshauer combines a modern orchestral vocabulary with a poetic vision of life on this planet and her Jewish heritage. Her Living Breathing Earth CD (Navona 5842) pairs her Symphony No 1 Living Breathing Earth with Tekeeyah (a call), the latter of which is a concerto for trombone, shofar and orchestra.

Throughout there is lyricism and a bit of the bite and tang of contemporary harmonic thinking. The scores are evocative, engaging and filled with associative imagery. This is music, I would hope, of broad appeal, yet sufficiently advanced to satisfy those who look for the music of our time to engage in the sounds of our time.

The performances are very good and the music is highly recommended.

Composer Jeremy Beck Performed By IonSound Project Ensemble

There are more and more composers today that have embraced tonality and earlier styles with a vengeance. At first it seemed that most of those were retreating to a neo-romantic zone. Then there was minimalist linear tonality. Others combined tonality with its opposite. Jeremy Beck favors lyrical excursions into music inspired by Stravinsky's neo-classical period and perhaps a taste of Hindemith. But of course that's not all, there's a little of the S. Barber of Knoxsville and a general rhapsodic approach the puts Beck in his own niche.

The CD at hand IonSound Project (Innova 797) features seven mostly rather brief compositions scored for various instrumental and vocal combinations, as played (well) by the Pittsburgh based sextet IonSound Project.

It is very finely crafted music that leaves an impression in the end. There are glimpses of originality and very sensitive scoring for the various instrumental combinations. Now I do wonder what his orchestral works sound like. As it is, this is lovely music in a chamber mode.