Janson, Mikalsen, Vaage, Ratkje, Variations Over Variations, Norwegian Radio Orchestra

So much to hear out there. And then, something sneaks up on you. Boom! Variations Over Variations (Aurora ACD 5096) was a kind of boom for me. I did not expect it. I was glad to hear it. The Norwegian Radio Orchestra under Miguel Harth-Bedoya give us well shaped performances of four Norwegian works previously unknown to me yet adventuresome in the New High Modern zone.

Three of the works were written in 2014, one in 2017. The liner notes point out that the composers straddle different generations and traditions. In common is that all works were commissioned or co-commissioned by the orchestra. What counts is that all works have a poignancy and thoroughly immerse the listener in orchestral color and imaginative poetics.

We get the chance to familiarize ourselves with Alfred Janson's "Variations Over Variations Over a Norwegian Folk Tune," Jan Erik Mikalsen's "Songr for Orchestra," Knut Vaage's "Mylder," and Maja S.K. Ratkje's "Paragraf 112."

Through the many twists and turns that I make no attempt to describe here one constant weaves its way through it all--the Modern project whether tonal or expanded, an acute sense of line and timbre, an epic attention to involved orchestral eloquence. Every one of these works adds something good to what already has been.

It should be a joy to you if you  treasure the new consonance, the new orchestral possibilities. There is neither an acute striving after the very borders of the possible nor a conscious attempt to hold back the sluice gates of invention. A hugely satisfying sleeper is what we have here. Take a chance and listen closely! Very recommended.

Ann Millikan, Millikan Symphony, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose

The excellent Boston Modern Music Project under Gil Rose returns for the music of a New American Composer of note, namely Ann Millikan and her full-length Millikan Symphony (Innova 981). Now I must say that dealing with a plethora of New Music most every day has its challenges, for me especially in the constant interplay of same and different. Commonly there will be stylistic traits in New Music that tend to cluster in groups and can be identified. In the end, though, what matters about a composer or a work is how those clusters reverberate in the individual sense, or on the other hand what is not to be found if it does not seem to be there, how sometimes you do not hear such a reverberation much.

In the case of Ann Millikan and her Millikan Symphony, what she does with some Modern traits is much more important than the newness or oldness of the traits themselves. Listening to Millikan Symphony it is supremely important to hear the work closely, more than once. Otherwise  the traits themselves will be the main apprehension and the special putting together might totally pass you by. A reasoned, considered judgement on New Music is a complex give and take of content and structure.

So I would venture to say that the structuring of the content of Millikan Symphony is the critical aspect that sets it apart. Sure if you look at each piece as a piece you might identify Copland pastoral tenderness, Stravinskian Neo-Classical heroic regality, maybe some of the orchestral dynamics of some of the most celebrated big orchestrators (I won't say Richard Strauss here because it is not quite that), maybe the Harrisonian delicious articulation of flute and strings, the moody mystery of Post-Tone Poetry, and more.

Yet thanks to the very gradated excellence of the BMOP performance and what the score calls for, there is a kind of inner organicism of spirit and a narrative thrust that is a story in itself.

This is a work of hommage, of Ann to her brother Robert, dead at the age of 55 in 2012, a brilliant epidemiologist, a pioneer on the incidence of breast cancer,  a dedicated veterinarian, a lover of nature and a profoundly musical soul. The five movements of the work unravel and reveal a special aspect of Robert the human. There is the "Science" movement, one for "Animals," "Rowing," and "Violin." Polyrhythmic and tonally expanded, the music is at once beholden to the legacy of High Modernism and also too to the grand narrative style of the most revered orchestral masters. The music comes out of a collaborative venture planned over the years between Robert and Ann. Some of the music was dictated by Robert to Ann; the principal"Violin" movement  theme has Robert's compositional hand upon it. Milliken Symphony is the triumphant result of the two in their musical closeness, yet also stunningly a backward view of Robert's many tiered life via the hindsight of its passing.

It is hard to imagine a more moving tribute. Even though we may know next to nothing about Robert's life, something very strong of its essence comes through throughout. 

After very many listens I come away from the work feeling like I have heard something of real significance. All those superficial traits at the first listen have become enigmatically original along with the flow and pacing and structure. It is not a work you put on first time and give a loud "wow!" to in response. The wow effect builds. Then, you know. Or I knew, anyway. Wow.

You would do well to venture upon this music and its very satisfying performance by BMOP. It is subtle in the beginning of your interaction, then the it becomes more and more clearly, identifiably special. I do recommend you spend some serious time with this. Ann Millikan is a living treasure!

Third Coast Percussion, Paddle to the Sea

We approach a season, especially where I am, that becomes ever more focused on water, particularly sea water. Enter the Third Coast Percussion's Paddle to the Sea (Cedille CDR 90000 175). As the title suggests, the music performed on this program has been put together in this form to describe  musically-virtually a journey out to sea on a small craft. The music follows on the heels of their Grammy Winning album of the music of Steve Reich.

The music is perfectly dazzling much of the time, like early light upon the waves of the sea. Lots of marimbas, vibes, metallophones, and some mbiras evoke a post-African, post-Indonesian Modernist and post-Modernist sprawl of time and tone. Head to the sand, to the waves, to the smell of coconut oil sun lotion, to the teaming marine life that boat skims over gracefully on a spring morning. That is the music to me on the eve of the end of winter.

Third Coast Percussion here triumphs where perhaps others would do so the lesser. There is a musical opening onto the water from the first, Third Coast's striking arrangement of Philip Glass's "Madeira River." It sets the scene for the "Paddle to the Sea" sequence that cycles like a space-age Javanese Gamelan. It was originally created to act as the score for the film of the same name. It has depth and dramatic breadth too.

Then there is m-bouyant mbira via Musekiwa Chingodza's vocal-mbira arrangement of the traditional Shona African "Chigwaya." It is ravishing music. From there we hear arrangements of three more movements from Philip Glass's Aguas da Amazonia and six movements of Jacob Druckman's Reflections on the Nature of Water. 

I've listened to this album a bunch of times by now. My love of it grows without fail each time I hear it. Anyone who appreciates melodic percussion and the Post-Minimal possibilities that can be heard today must simply look this one up! Anyone looking for "trends" of New Music lately will find this most absorbing as well. It is sublime!

John A. Carollo, The Transfiguration of Giovanni Baudino

In the realm of emergent composers in the US, one of my favorites, happily, is John A. Carollo. There is a brand new one coming out soon and I will no doubt cover it. Today, though, I must catch up with a very nice one that came out last year. The Transfiguration of Giovanni Baudino (Navona 6109 CD or 2-LPs) I've been listening to and liking for several months now. It is a compilation of orchestral works in World Premier Recordings. Per Vronsky conducts the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra throughout. The performances are respectable and give us a clearly articulated opening onto the works. There no doubt will be other performances to follow in time. For now we get to hear the music as Maestro Carollo intended it.

There is a great deal of excellent music to savor in this program. "The Rhetoric and Mythos of Belief" and "Move Towards the Light (Your Destiny Awaits You)" are the first and last compositions in the sequence, bookends that have some of the very ravishing Carollo largos, which are so American in thrust, with some echo and extension of the Ives mystery and perhaps even some echoes of Ornette Coleman's justly celebrated "The Skies of America." That is not to say that there is imitation involved, just a kind of Zeitgeist of belonging. These works perhaps epitomize a kind of cosmos of longing for something beyond the materiality of the American Dream.

More or less sandwiched in between are a number of rather wonderfully contrasting works of a very different sort."The Transformation of Giovanni Baudino," "Let Freedom Ring," "Do You Have an E.R. for Music?" and "Symphony No. 2 (The Circle of Fire)" give notice (again?) that John A. Carollo is a serious player in the New American Music scene today. The works have great forward rhythmic momentum without following a "Rites" model or for that matter any other in any obvious way. The music is consequential and enlivening, It exists in its own singular category as Carollo music. That is saying a great deal.

A detailed description of the music is not really necessary for these purposes. Suffice to say that there is a dynamic energy to the middle works and a ravishing mystery to the end works. Together we get a detailed earful of the full spectrum of Carollean musico-logic and poeticism.

I recommend this music to you most strongly. It is original and grows exponentially inside you the more you listen. Grab this if you want to open yourself to emergent American music today.

Ken Walicki, Cyberistan, Electro-Acoustic Music

Every day I try and turn words into music on these pages. Modern music does not become words, exactly. It has a parallel and the words point more than emulate. So there are words this morning for a new wrinkle on New Music, a Modern take on Electro-Acoustics, namely Ken Walicki and his CD Cyberistan (Ravello RR7974).

Five works grace the program. Each concentrates on an acoustic instrument or set of instruments. Each centers the instrumental sound in a carpet of electro-acoustic sounds directly related to the instrumental situation or in complement to it.

So we hear Tom Peters' double bass as a foundational launching pad on "Light," Virginia Costa Figueiredo's clarinet and Fureya Unal's piano on "Black Water," Rachel Mellis's flute on "Sabah," Fureya Unal's piano on "Cyberistan," and the Eclipse Quartet on "nada Brahma."

The title Cyberistan is telling. Walicki makes a kind of transformed World Music with elements of Jazz, New Music and an acute sense of purposefulness. There may be no tighter a bond of live instruments and electro-acoustics than what we hear here. All exists seemingly by design and direction more so than chance. That saying it is nonetheless often spontaneous sounding

Walecki is another exemplar of the Modern as tonal, spacious and vaguely non-Western. There is lift, expressive drift, parts working together as an organic whole. Yet one does not want to leave the "another" hanging. Because there is nothing merely sequential, no simple "this follows the before" patness.

The send-off of "nada Brahma" leaves us with a certainty that such sounds are rare and affirming. What is the Modern today? This is one excellent answer. Hear it.

Grant Cutler, Self Portrait

Grant Cutler comes our way with Self Portrait (Innova 961), an eight-part ambient soundscape for a chamber ensemble of synth, organ, piano, two cellos, violin, saxophone and vocalist. The production by Grant Cutler and Chris Campbell is spacious and dreamy, so much so that you have to listen for a while to fully grasp the instrumental combinations. This is not electro-acoustic music per se yet the music has an enhanced feel that puts it into soundscape territory. Grant Cutler and Chris Campbell made another memorable soundscapery a while back with their Schooldays Over, which I liked quite a bit and posted about on these pages when it was first released. Type their names in the search box above to see that review.

Self Portrait brings to us a sustained atmosphere of floating aetherial tonality. The mood is both introspective and elated. It reminds me slightly of Terry Riley's mid-later work, but not the Minimalist strain so much as some of his movie music. Floating choral-color sound blocks drift by like gossamer clouds on a moderately brisk breeze.

This is music that can best be heard rather than described. And so I post this as a place marker, to recommend that you hear the sounds and sequences so nicely mapped out and executed by Grant Cutler and colleagues.

Steve Rouse, Morphic Resonance, Chamber Music

The music of Steve Rouse has a kind of natural fluency born of a convincing inventiveness. We can hear this to excellent advantage on his recent album Morphic Resonance, Chamber Music (Ravello 7973).

Steve Rouse has a voice, a presence, an original take on the Modern Contemporary project. Five compositions grace this volume. Each one reveals special aspects of the Rouse approach. Each is sure of its goals and realizes them with distinction.

"Sonata for Violin and Piano" has a Neo-Classical Stravinsky-esque flavor. There is a joyous rhythmic drive and an infectious melodic-harmonic fingerprint of Rouse-ness nicely to be heard throughout.

"Form Fades" for six chamber instrumentalists has motor propulsion and repetition outside of a typically orthodox minimalist range--the repetitive elements occur more in developmental blocks than post-African line movement. It is not-so-much "through" rhythmically as it is a matter of cubistically conjoined sectional blocks that whirl for a certain time, then give way to a new sonic event. I would say that this favorably reminds me of Luc Ferrari's "Interrupteur" and "Tautologos 3." Yet I say that not because it sounds like either. Rather there are surface plane divisions like a cracked earth mantle. The divisions have related yet distinctive differences to them, so that a traversal is not a repetition overall so much as movement along various fault lines. That is, if that makes any sense. Like the Ferrari works I have loved for so long, you do not feel a suspension of time. You feel strongly a movement forward. It is beautiful, original music!

"Nevolution" brings together a primal ahead-directed piano part with expressive scaling-searching trumpet (actually corno da caccia) often with a natural resonance. It is a memorable and idiosyncratic work.

"Ten Little Things" pits clarinet with percussion for some very rousing and expressive miniatures. The variable coloration of a battery of percussion instruments feeds the clarinet part with contrasts. A series of open explorations results, ear opening and ever-shifting in its trajectories.

"King Tango" is the short yet eventful closer. Flute and double bass send us off in style in a nicely jagged, futuristic manner. There is much to savor in this compressed moment of farewell.

So we have an end to a worthy and original program. Steve Rouse has it, a voice for our times. Any fan of New Music will no doubt find this as essential as I did. Get it!