Michael Byron, Music of Nights Without Moon or Pearl

There is music that tries to include everything. There is music that through a kind of mental erasure, eliminates things, like a stone block is chiseled away to reveal an image somehow already there inside, or like a completed drawing that is then subjected to selective erasing to create new form.

Michael Byron, composer of radical tonal music which is not minimalist because the repetition is not the point, writes subtractive music in a way. It is music that creates melody by the intersection of the parts, by making the background come to the front, by creating something not reducible to someone writing melody and harmony on a piano and then taking pieces of that result and assigning them to instruments. Or if he does compose at the keyboard (I have no idea) it is in the realization of the parts that the music comes about, that it sounds, not as much before.

That's how I am thinking of his music as I listen to the three chamber work collection Music of Nights Without Moon or Pearl (Cold Blue 0002).

The first two works interrelate and most closely adhere to the idea of foreground-subtraction as I impressionistically experience it. They do so by virtue of being performed by a mid-sized chamber group, the Calarts New Chamber Players, consisting of two violins, viola, cello, contrabass, two pianos and synthesizer, all conducted by David Rosenboom.

The title piece works in blocks of sound--the pizzicato strings working on harmonically related tonal-melody fragments with a loose pulsation. The synthesizer comes in at angular intervals with a block chord related to the harmony of the strings. The periodicity of its continual sounding and resting has a pulsation that is not in the same ratio as the strings. Finally the two pianos enter with a strummed chord that is rhythmically closer to the pulse of the strings, and as the piece progresses becomes increasingly frequent. In the on-the-surface structurally simple three-section articulations the end effect is of a continually percolating tonality fascinating to hear, with the listening ear taking it all in and at the same time hearing melody come forward as we hold our attention to one or more voices at any point. Finally the piano strums become ever more insistent, then all but disappear to return more quietly as the ear focuses more on strings and synth in the end.

The related work that follows, "Invisible 'Seeds' for James Tenney", has a sectional approach as well. The strings play a sustained arco of tonal-related elements in a progression that contains latent melody in its movement. The pianos punctuate throughout with staccato chords in a somewhat random, irregular pattern that nonetheless works as contrast to the sustained strings. It is in a way a slow movement in contrast to the end-pieces.

The two quite sustained, semi-pastoral mood works set the listener up for a considerably less locked-in chromatic-diatonicism in the final piece. "Entrances" features David Rosenboom on overdubbed multiple (4) pianos working to create an all-over, harmonically complex turbulence that at first almost sounds like something Cecil Taylor would be after in some of his mid-to-later solo works for piano. Yet in the end the music evolves so that motival kernels work off of each other to create a more collaged sweep that increasingly emphasizes more-and-more certain motives. It is a literal phantasmagoria of swirling sound.

Perhaps the idea of a subtractive method is not complete without the additive opposite. After all Maestro Byron is in each case combining x, y and z together in interactions over time. But then it's the effect of the listener mentally creating melody out of the fragments in place of the typical through-composed work that more or less hands it to the listener ready made, that's where you can think of it subtractively. No matter. The melody could also be thought of as cubistic--refracted and broken into different bits as a cubist artist might handle an image.

The point is that the disk gives us three fascinating aural montages that please without managing to fit into any of the pre-ordained structures of pre-modernism, modernism or minimalism. And of course what matters is that all three resulting works are rewarding and fascinating to hear.

Very recommended.

Morton Feldman, Patterns in a Chromatic Field, Music for Cello, Marco & Giancarlo Simonacci

In an interview made available in the later '60s, on a now long-unavailable German anthology of the New York school of composers, Morton Feldman (1926-87) remarked that in the early years composing in New York what most helped him was the "complete indifference" of the audiences. "They had no energy even to boo or hiss," he added. This he thought was the ideal environment to grow as a composer. Grow he most certainly did over the years, to become a stylistic universe of one in a scene of leaders and followers.

You can get a pretty good idea of the movement of his music over time in the newly released 2-CD anthology Patterns in a Chromatic Field, Music for Cello (Brilliant Classics 9401). The budget set features the cello of Marco Simonacci and the piano of Giancarlo Simonacci. Several sopranos and a French horn player augment the lineup for a couple of short pieces.

It's a sort of retrospective of Feldman's work from 1948 through 1981, with a disk and a quarter devoted to his later masterpiece that bears the title of the set, "Patterns in a Chromatic Field".

The way from beginning to end holds much fascination for anyone interested in Feldman's development from High Modernist to "Feldmanist". With the beginnings we have two very brief unpublished works from 1948 that show him firmly within the language of the moderns. From there we see a very gradual evolvement into the various facets of the quiet, inimitable Feldman way. "Projection 1" (1950), "Four Songs to Poems by e e cummings" (1951) "Intersection 4" (1953), "Two Instruments" (1958), "Durations 2" (1960), and "Voices and Cello" (1973) get worthy readings before we are launched into the lengthy and monumental "Patterns".

Of course concentrating on the repertoire for solo cello, and cello & piano--with the brief additions of vocals and horn--does mean that certain aspects of Feldman's middle and later music are not representable, such as the hauntingly quiet largess of "Rothko Chapel", but such things are inevitable. This is the small chamber ensemble side of his music, after all, and we cannot expect larger forced styles to be represented.

The long, later-period work "Patterns in a Chromatic Field " (1981) takes up the final 90 minutes of the set, but it is such a capstone work in Feldman's oeuvre that one does not feel its temporal weight as much as revel in the unravelling, so to say.

It is surely one his later masterpieces. Quiet, yes, uncanny like his earlier mature works, but structurally in a new Feldman zone, like his earlier works related to the high modern "mainstream" but at the same time apart from it, totally Feldmanesque. The liners to this disk mention Feldman's fascination with the oriental carpets of Anatolia. They are woven of patterns that do not follow the perfect symmetry of their more well-known Persian, etc., equivalents, but rather fill the space in a more randomly executed way. His later work has something of that. There is repetition, yes, but the cello and piano parts include variations, a-temporal and temporal correspondences and shifts in velocity that lay out in a way more intuitive than rigorously structured, at least to my ears.

It is highly distinctive, highly beautiful music. The Simonacci's do the music total justice. There have been other versions of this work available but of the ones I have heard none sound better.

And of course the mini-retrospective of works that span his career offers another reason why this one would be my choice--not to mention the budget price. To have these very engaging earlier works lead up to the "Patterns" opus gives you something, too, that the others do not, which is a temporal context for his final phase and a feeling for his development as one of America's most remarkable composers.

It's landmark music. It's a landmark release.

Ronn McFarlane & Mindy Rosenfeld, Nine Notes that Shook the World

If you love the sound of early music played by flute and lute, Ronn McFarlane & Mindy Rosenfeld's Nine Notes that Shook the World (Sono Luminus 92169 CD & Blu-Ray) will doubtless appeal greatly. Ronn McFarlane plays Renaissance and Baroque lutes, Mindy Rosenfeld Renaissance, Baroque and Celtic flutes, fifes, harp and bagpipe for a program of 16th through 18th century works by composers anonymous, folk and established composers of the age.

There is fine artistry from the duo. The original instruments and their charming sound and the broad spectrum of works on this disk set (which comes as a standard stereo mix on CD and 5:1 on a Blu-Ray) gives you a quite lovely window on the past. Music by Dowland, Bach, Handel, Boismortier and Locatelli match up with no-less intriguing folk airs from England, Scotland, Ireland and Brittany.

The sonic transitions afforded via the various flutes, fifes, harp and bagpipes by Ms. Rosenfeld alters the sonority from piece-to-piece, as does Ronn McFarland's sound on the various period lutes.

The two work together as one, turning in performances that delight my ears.

Such a journey back in time satisfies; the sound exhilarates. Get this one and revel in Euro-roots as if on a time machine.

Eleni Karaindrou, Medea

Anyone familiar with the development of modern music from the '70s on knows something of the arrival of the "ECM Sound", that is of the development of a kind of jazz that had special melodic and spatial qualities that Manfred Eicher and his artists created gradually but definitively. As time went on ECM got involved in classical music as well, at first through the more classical endeavors of its jazz artists, notably Keith Jarrett and Terje Rypdal among others, then with classical music per se, ancient and modern.

It wasn't long before ECM had a stable of classical composers that were strongly associated with the label and epitomized what an "ECM sound" could be in the concert zone. Steve Reich comes to mind, of course, who was with the label during a seminal period of his development. And then there is Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou, who continues the ECM association with her latest, Medea (ECM B0019877-02).

This is music created for the Medea production put on by stage director Antonis Antypas, as performed at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus. The Medea enacted there is Giorgos Cheimonas' adaptation from the original Euripides version of the play.

Musically it has a timeless, exotic quality. Eleni Karaindrou utilizes a 15-member chorus; Eleni herself effectively contributes a solo part. Plus there is an 8-member chamber group with strong Greek and Eastern Mediterranean associations. The ensemble consists of three clarinets, ney, a player of the Constantinople lute (sounding much like an oud) and lyra, then cello, the santour, and the bendir.

With these means Ms. Karaindrou creates a music of great evocative beauty, with its ancient scales and traditional instruments providing sound color and spatial punctuation, the vocals from chorus and soloists extending the sound and all-in-all creating a through-composed modern ambient pomo sort of work that is very identifiably Karaindrou-esque. Even in the purely instrumental passages the reflective, haunting melodiousness of Karaindrou comes through. It sounds less like "authentic" ancient Greek-Eastern Mediterranean music as the idea of that as filtered by an "authentic" Eleni Karaindrou sensibility. And it is one of her very strongest works at that.

The performances are excellent, the sound all you'd expect from ECM. It is music that doesn't quite categorize easily, as is nearly always the case with Eleni's works. This is her music and it belongs in the ECM orbit for the stunning sonic qualities and melodic unforgettableness that are nearly always the case where she is concerned.

Bravo! Put yourself inside the new--inside the ancient. Hear this one, definitely. Repeatedly.

Voice of the People, Gabriela Lena Frank, Dmitri Shostakovich, Shem Guibbory, etc.

When you encounter a CD release that makes you pause, that grows majestically before your ears the more you listen, you go away from it glad to have had the chance to open up alongside the music's flowering, and look forward to hearing it many times again.

Today's album has that quality in abundance. It has been out for several years but has lost none of the sheen of the new and notable. I refer to a three-work disk, The Voice of the People (MSR Classics 1344). It features the work of two composers from widely disparate backgrounds, yet when performed together in one program, come together to create a satisfying wholeness.

Gabriela Lena Frank is represented by two works. She encompasses multiple-heritages which she brings out in her music; she was born in Berkeley, California; her mother is of Peruvian-Chinese descent; her father of Lithuanian-Jewish heritage.

"Suenos de Chambri: Snapshots for an Andean Album" (2002) joins the stunning artistry of violinist Shem Guibbory with the considerable interpretive talents of pianist Sonia Rubinsky. The music is based on photographs of a vanishing traditional Peru by Martin Chambi. It occupies a space influenced understandably by Peruvian folk-vernacular, expressively melodic, filled with personally characteristic touches and dramatic flourishes. The work is both modern and timeless, the latter in its backward glance at musical roots; the former in its transformation to very idiomatic Frank.

"Cuatro Canciones Andinas" (1999) is a four-part song cycle with text by Jose Maria Arguedas. Soprano Susanna Eyton-Jones handles the extraordinarily expressive vocal part with directness and poise. Craig Ketter brings considerable sensitivity to the piano part.

Dmitri Shostakovich's later masterpiece, the "Sonata for Violin and Piano, op. 134" (1968), gets a extraordinarily focused and intensive interpretation by Shem Guibbory and Elizaveta Kopelman. This is music of the kind of sublimity that is in every sense the product of a master after long years successfully finding a voice, reaching a titan-height peak and achieving considerably inimitable profundity, communing directly with his muse with nothing standing in the way.

The album is a triumph surely for Shem Guibbory, whose performances glow magnificently, for Susanna Eyton-Jones, who combines drama with a very nuanced delivery, and for the three pianists, who each in his own way achieves artistic completeness.

Finally this is Gabriela Lena Frank and Dmitri Shostakovich performed with deeply committed artistry. I don't believe I've ever heard a more intensely realized op. 134. And Ms. Frank comes through with clarity and brilliance.

Highly recommended!

Marcus Blunt, Aspirations, Piano Music, Murray McLachlan

Today's CD of piano music seems like a new age item if you look at the cover. It isn't. It is a collection of selected piano works of one Marcus Blunt, as played by Murray McLachlan (Diversions ddv 24148). There are 9 compositions/sets of compositions written between 1967 and 2006.

Blunt writes pieces that often have an introspective quality. The music is not quite romantic; the mode is often chromatic with definite tonality but in the stretched, early modern sense. You can hear the influence of Scriabin, but not directly. It's somehow beyond that into today. Blunt works within an expanded palette that doesn't show the mystical agitation of the Russian composer, but instead goes its own way in a rhapsodic, mostly quietly reflective manner.

Murray McLachlan brings out the nuances and mood of the pieces nicely. It is recommended for those who want something refreshed yet familiar somehow. Good music!

Chris Wild, Ensemble Dal Niente, Abhanden

There are recordings that affirm. One of them is Abhanden (Navona 5940), a compendium of six contemporary modern compositions played by Chris Wild on the cello with the Ensemble Dal Niente. It affirms a number of things. One is the centrality of the virtuoso solo cello in contemporary works; the other is the continued viability of more-or-less high modernism today.

Each work has its own character. The constant is Chris Wild as a cellist committed to new music with the talent to pull together sound-oriented passages with surety, and a singing, expressive way as needed.

As one expects on Navona releases, the composers are mostly new names not known to the majority of modern-leaning listeners out there. Yet the music convinces on many levels, each depending on the piece at hand.

My favorite probably is the opening "Spiral" by Chinary Ung, who hails from Cambodia. On this one Chris is joined by piano and percussion for music that has a distinct Southeast Asian tonality but spatially-rhythmically takes more of a modern, fanfare-ish approach that I find extraordinarily effective.

Claude Vivier's "Piece Pour Violincelle et Piano" has an expressive way with dynamic contrasts, extended cello techniques, and a quasi-impressionist refraction of sound put into an extended modern tonality.

Daniel Dehaan's "If it Encounters the Animal, it Becomes Animalized" and Marcos Balter's "Memoria" are both for unaccompanied cello. The former makes use of extended contemporary sound generation in a sort of ping-pong-for-one jagged abstraction; the latter relies more on sustained rapidly bowed harmonics and multiple stops for a more kinetically mobile sound sculpture.

Andrew Greenwald's "Jeku (II)" brings the cello together with the violin (J. Austin Wulliman) for a slowly pointillistic exchange of exotic sound techniques that are at times strident but always adventurist, too, so that you cannot predict what will happen when and the subsequent sound-event moments are filled with continual, pleasing surprises.

The concluding "Ich Bin Der Welt Abhanden Gekommen" by Eliza Brown brings in soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett for a lyrical but expressively strident mood. Bartlett sings quite evocatively as more or less the straight melodist while Chris's cello sounds unusually articulated multiple stops that provide a fascinating harmonic backdrop in contrast with the punctuated spice of dissonance he is called upon to articulate periodically.

It is very moving and, as it and the rest of the album confirms, shows the pervasive excellence of Chris Wild and ensemble members along with a nicely contrasting set of well-conceived compositions.

This one is a winner! Calling all modernists.