ZOFO, ZOFORBIT: A Space Odyssey, Sisask, Holst, Crumb, Lang

Concept albums can do interesting things and be lots of fun if the idea is right. The piano duo ZOFO, who we have covered before here, had a great idea and made it work. The album is called ZOFORBIT: A Space Odyssey (Sono Luminus 92178). It is a logical grouping of four compositions for piano, four hands, with the theme of space, the universe, the cosmos.

They've come up with four compositions that all address such themes, some well-known, some lesser-known, but all near-perfect for the duo. Holst's "The Planets" sounds wonderful in a duo arrangement, then there is George Crumb's "Celestial Mechanics" from "Makrokosmos IV". David Lang gets a say with the brief "Gravity" and finally the least known of the four works/composers but a good addition nonetheless, Urmas Sisask (b. 1960) and "The Milky Way".

ZOFO is Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi. They combine a very together simpatico duo dynamic with a real sense of fun. The album as is usually the case on Sono Luminus comes in a set as a standard stereo CD and a Blu-Ray DVD with a 5:1 surround mix.

"The Planets" in a four-hand piano version has a kind of revelatory quality. All the notes are there (all the necessary ones) and it sounds so idiomatic and modern in an all-piano zone that it's like hearing it anew all over again. The rendition forms a definite high-water mark that will please just about anybody.

The Crumb work is given all the cosmic spatiality it deserves. The Lang has a pleasing contemplative quality. And then the surprise of the set is Sisask's "The Milky Way" subtitled "Piano Sonata op. 24 for Four Hands". It has ritual rhythmic movement in an exotic minor mode, greatly abetted by the passages where the strings are dampened or strummed. It almost sounds like gamelan music, only more cosmic.

So here we have what is a real treat. . . . something in the outer zone, eminently suited for those evenings when you don the silver space outfit, get out the Tang and head for realms unknown and far away. If there is hope for the younger generation taking to modern classical, ZOFO has found a way--making it fun! Give it to your teenager or budding toddler, even. A delight!

The Crossing, I Want To Live, Contemporary Works for Women's Choir

Contemporary music has come some distance in the new century and the few decades preceding it. One trend is centered around tonal musics to be had nowadays that aren't doctrinaire neo-romanticism or typically minimalist in a mesmerizing sense, though repetition may be a factor. You can hear some of it in a somewhat unusual release by the women's choir known as The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally. It's a collection of works entitled I Want to Live (Innova 856).

The choir is very good, the soloists quite adequate but the overall ensemble the strongest element. They come forward appealingly in a program of short works, some grouped in multi-part sets, by David Lang (of Bang-on-a-Can fame), William Brooks, Paul Fowler, and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen. "I Want to Live" is one of five interrelated Lang works, Brooks is represented by "Six Medieval Echoes," Fowler is represented by two short works, and Gudmundsen-Holmgreen by the eight short segments that make up "Statements". The music was written between 1970 and 2010, with the bulk from the present century.

There are at times hints of an early music influence (especially the Brooks suite) and a minimalism where recurrence is not as pulse-periodic as it is stanza-like in a more song-like conceptual framework, or gradually unfolding in short bursts of melody.

It is music of high interest performed with a gently spirited or more stirring presence as called for. It is a very good example of the "new tonality" to be heard today, helping reserve a rightful place of the style alongside other stylistic currents in new music right now. It is a very good listen in any event, atmospheric and evocative, sometimes overtly emotive but consistently introspective-atmospheric.

Recommended.