Random Note

I have more Philip Glass in my music files than Mozart and Beethoven combined. This is from a collaboration with a number of South American composers, Aguas de Amazonas.

Culture Break: Arvo Pärt: The Deer's Cry

A bit of a break from the chaos that's ruling the news these days. I haven't listened to Pärt for a while, which is maybe a little odd, considering that one summer, in my (relative) youth, his Passio was my beach music (early in the morning, when there weren't many people around yet. At that point, it was the only work of his available in the U.S. (Strangely enough, there's not a whole lot of his music on YouTube. Go figure.)

Needless to say, I did review it, but that's one of the lost works from our horrendous move to a new host at GMR. Look for it in the next edition on November 29.

Culture Break: Penguin Cafe: 'Protection' for Erased Tapes

Penguin Cafe is the successor to Penguin Cafe Orchestra (reviews of their music are here and here. This piece was a new one for me, that I ran across quite by chance. I like it a lot:

I don't know if this has been released on an album, but you can find a review of their album A Matter of Life. . . at Green Man Review this coming Sunday.

They're worth checking out on YouTube, as well -- lots of nice stuff.

Culture Break: Kronos Quartet/Kimmo Pohjonen: Kalma

From their album Uniko. I have no idea where I ran across this, unless it was in the days when I was buying anything by Kronos Quartet. As I said to a friend who didn't like accordion music -- "This is not your everyday accordion music."

No, I don't know why it's in two parts on YouTube. And I think the cutie on keyboards is Samuli Kosminen, Pohjonen's collaborator in Kluster. You can find more information on the project here.

Culture Break: Michael Nyman: The Fringed Curtains of Thine Eye

From Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs, which is a work he created based on The Tempest. The interesting part is that he didn't used any of the songs, having already set the songs for Prospero's Books. This is probably my favorite piece from the work.

Performed by Catherine Bott, Hilary Summers, Ian Bostridge, Ensemble Instrumental de BasseNormandie & Dominique Debart. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a performance video on YouTube or anywhere else.

Culture Break: Toru Takemitsu: November Steps

Guess who turned up on my playlist this morning.

Takemitsu is another one of those composers, like Morton Feldman, who seems to shape space with his music. It's generally pretty low-key, but I find it compelling. This is one of my favorites by him:

Yes, that is Seiji Ozawa conducting, with Kinshi Tsuruta on biwa and Yokoyama Katsuya on shakuhachi.

It's another one of those pieces that you can just sink into.

Culture Break: Terry Riley: Lisbon Concert

This got reviewed a couple of places. This particular review originally appeared at Epinions:

Perhaps one of the most awesome things that can happen to a fan of “new music” is the chance to hear Terry Riley in concert. There is nothing like it. And, for those who cannot travel around the world to where he might be performing, the Lisbon Concert recording brings you a taste of what an experience that is. (Yes, I've heard Riley live. It was amazing.)

The Lisbon Concert was recorded in 1995 at the Teatro Sào Luís in Lisbon at the final concert in the composer’s sixtieth-birthday tour of Europe. The recording quality is excellent. It is an amazing, shimmering fabric of virtuosity that draws on Riley’s compositions spanning several decades. Although the piano was tuned in equal temperament, as opposed to Riley’s preferred just intonation tuning, he draws from it colors and shadings that are ineffably Riley.

A few general observations before I mention some of the specifics: take it as a given that Riley is a virtuoso on the piano. It has always been his favored instrument, and he certainly can put it through its paces. This album does indeed shimmer – it shimmers, it ripples, and then Riley throws in a sweetly reflective passage or a phrase of high drama. He moves effortlessly between jazz and repetitive Minimalism, while throwing in elements that are almost, but not quite, Latin, Chinese, or movie soundtrack, that might hark back to the richness of Mozart or the earthy romanticism of Vaughan Williams, and yet are truly and only Terry Riley. Throughout, there are echoes of things that have gone before, and foreshadowings of things yet to come. The whole is seamless.

“Arica,” which opens the album, has an understated beginning that recalls, in mood if not actual sound, some of Debussy’s preludes. (In fact, while I am typing this, my trusty CD player has finished with Riley and moved on to Debussy, with never a blip – except that the Debussy is leaner and not quite so richly textured.) Riley builds to cascades of notes over a quiet, reflective base, that somehow moves into a high-brow honky-tonk. It fades into “Negro Hall,” which opens with another quiet passage that could be an extension of the opening of “Arica” (one knows this because one went back and forth between the beginnings of these two pieces several times, with no jar, no discontinuity, in spite of all that went on in between), then immediately takes on a jazzy air, a sort of boogy-woogie style. “15/16” has a Latin feel to it, but not quite, while “Havana Man” – well, if Schumann had done jazz, you might be getting close. And that’s an indication of the way the whole concert moves back and forth, almost reprising earlier pieces, but never quite, while building new contexts as it goes along, moving from style to style but never quite leaving the central theme. There is a unity of vision in control of this music that is quite formidable.

One wants to build analogies with Wagner, the Baroque, even Beethoven and perhaps Rachmaninoff, but why push the envelope that far? The experience is of a master at play, and it’s something. This is not drop-dead music – “high drama” for Riley has an order of subtley to it that’s hard to explain – but this is music that leaves you with a very quiet “wow!” and makes you want to go out and start piano lessons.

(New Albion Records, 2009)

Review: Michael Nyman: Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs

Another Epinions orphan, and one of my favorite works:

Michael Nyman’s Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs is a modified version of Nyman’s score for Karine Saporta’s opera-ballet, La Princesse de Milan, written during and after the period in 1990-91 when Nyman was also working on the score for Peter Greenaway’s film Prospero’s Books; both works have their source in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Saporta was also the choreographer for the film. (It is, indeed, a small world.) Nyman is one of the more independent-minded composers working today, and it’s very interesting to see what he does with one of the standbys for operatic texts, William Shakespeare, particulary working with text from one of his greatest plays.

Nyman’s music is quirky, sometimes ethereal, sometimes evoking the feel of Shakespeare’s time, sometimes very much of the late 20th century, often quite melodic. Shakespeare’s text, according to Nyman, was “heavily and idiosyncratically edited;” also, Nyman set only Shakespeare’s spoken text to music for this work, since he had already set the songs to music for Prospero’s Books. Also very idiosyncratic is the device, whether Nyman’s or Saporta’s is not clear, of treating the voices (soprano Catherine Bott, alto Hilary Summers, and tenor Ian Bostridge) not as characters, as would happen in opera, but simply as voices, so that Bott may be at one moment Miranda and shift immediately to being Prospero; any character may be a soprano, alto, tenor – or a combination.

Nyman makes full use of the dramatic tension in Shakespeare’s text, and the various sections move along quite fluently. There is a lot of action in this music, several passages where the strings take on a driving quality that suddenly releases to an almost sublime quiet. And I can’t help but suspect that Nyman was having a little fun with this – the music ranges from stark passages that recall Alban Berg (in mood, if not in actual rendering), to little touches that are almost bel canto. Nevertheless, this is very firmly a contemporary work, but one that makes use of many possibilities and avoids the kind of academicism that all too often shoots down otherwise talented composers. Add to that the “poetics” (Nyman’s word) behind the assignement of voices to various passages, and Nyman comes up with several opportunities for wonderful duets and trios, such as section 11, between Stephano and Caliban, sung by Summers and Bostridge, which is very dramatic and in parts, downright evil.

The voices are a good mix. Bott’s soprano is very clear, almost bell-like in tone, while Hilary Summers’ alto is a good rich voice, with a smoky quality that brings an essential hint of earthiness to the music. The big surprise is Bostridge, with whom I was not familiar, and whose photograph in the liner notes makes him look like a drugged-out schoolboy: his voice is a marvelous instrument, with a richness and depth that makes me think that somewhere in there is a baritone, and that supports his higher range beautifully – if he gains about fifty pounds, he would probably make a good Siegfried. He also exhibits the amazing ability to blend in completely with the orchestra, becoming another instrument in the chorus, with quite amazing effect. All of the singers are beautifully expressive, rendering the text with passion and finesse, and, like the very best opera singers, more concerned with the character than the vocal quality. (I admit to a bias: opera is essentially theater, and what actors do is build characters. I have recordings of Hans Hotter as Wotan, recorded at the end of his career: his voice was all but gone, but his acting was incomparable, leading to one of the most effective interpretations I’ve ever heard – I don’t think I’ve heard that combination of power and majesty, and in the “Lebewohl,” tenderness, since.) One caveat, however, and I do not fault the singers for this: English, for some reason, seems to be fiendishly difficult, if not impossible, to enunciate in an operatic setting; if you think you’re going to just listen and comprehend without reference to the text, guess again. (And, of course, there’s the small matter that comprehension of this work is going to involve a lot more than just understanding the words.)

Dominque Delbart leads the Ensemble Instrumental de Basse-Normandie, with aid from Daid Roach and Andrew Findon on saxophones, in a very intelligent rendering; the orchestra works beautifully with the voices, which is fortunate, since at this point, there’s no other recording.

This is a work that deserves careful listening – and it’s seductive enough that that should present little problem. For what is essentially a small work, there is more than enough dramatic impact and activity to engage the listener, who is rewarded with some very beautiful passages. And it is not so “contemporary” that it is incomprehensible.

(Polygram 1995)

Culture Break: Philip Glass: Koyaanisqatsi, Part I

This is some of my favorite Philip Glass, who is one of my favorite composers (as in about 36 albums stored in my media player). From the description at YouTube:

Koyaanisqatsi, also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way. The film is the first in the Qatsi trilogy of films: it is followed by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature, and technology. Koyaanisqatsi is the best known of the trilogy and is considered a cult film.

I have a dim memory of having seen the film many years ago, but don't ask me for any details. Although now I'm intrigued, and may look up the whole trilogy.

Culture Break: Goeyvaerts String Trio: Arvo Pärt/ from: Stabat Mater

I've remarked before on my long engagement with the music of Arvo Part. This popped up on my playlist this morning:

This is just a small selection from the beginning -- the full piece is around 28 minutes, but it's worth listening to. And the Goyvaerts String Trio does a more than ceditable job with it.

Culture Break: Arvo Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel

This piece was originally written for piano and violin, which is the version on my recording. I think I may prefer the cello. Performed by Leonhard Roczek on cello and Herbert Schuch on piano.

Culture Break: Anaïs Mitchell: Why We Build the Wall

I'm starting to think Anaïs Mitchell is an artist I've got to get to know better. This one, courtesy of commenter safari at Joe.My.God. Sort of mesmerizing:

Music Note

Just scrolling through my music and discovered I have thirty-seven albums of music by Philip Glass.

That should tell you something.

Culture Break: Hilary Hahn and Hauschka: Bounce Bounce

I'm not sure about the music, but the video is a hands-down winner. There's not a lot of information readily available; the catalogue listing for this album, Sifra, is here.

Culture Break: Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 2, "Company"

I have this on an album by the Kronos Quartet, who for my money are about the foremost interpreters of Glass' work -- at least, the smaller-scale works. This performance, by Brooklyn Rider, however, is creditable, at the very least (yes, it's another case of no video of a live performance by Kronos, which is odd, at a minimum):

And yes, I'm about as enthusiastic about Glass as I am about Riley -- at least, since he left serial minimalism behind and broadened his scope. (Way back when, I used to regularly attend Glass' concerts in Chicago. He was still pretty much serial minimalist at that point, but I soon discovered that it was a lot easier to watch the concerts than listen to the recordings. Maybe because people were moving around and such.)

Culture Break: Terry Riley: Arica

This is from the legendary Lisbon Concert, which album, of course, I've reviewed. The album was really well-done, the next best thing to actually seeing Riley live. "Arica" leads off the concert.

While searching YouTube for a Riley performance (which, strangely enough, don't seem to exist on YouTube, except for one or two concerts with lousy sound quality), I ran across a reference to "minimalist composer Terry Riley." Maybe once upon a time, about the time of In C, but he left that mode behind long ago. As far as I'm concerned, he's another American original in the mold of Ives, Copland, Bernstein, etc. Which is to say, unclassifiable.

Review: Amoeba: Watchful

A day later than I usually post these, but yesterday was sort of bleh. Another from that now-defunct site formerly known as Epinions. From my New Age days.

Amoeba is a collaboration between Robert Rich and Rick Davies. Rich considers it his “rock band,” by all accounts. Although I’ve been interested in Rich’s music for a number of years, Watchful is my first exposure to their combined talents. This is also the first CD I’ve reviewed that I simply cannot interpret as one extended work: the selections are, indubitably, separate songs.

Many of the concerns I recognize from Rich’s solo work are apparent in Watchful. Perhaps the best summation is that the album is somewhere between “easy listening” and “hard-core esoteric.” Robert Rich began his musical career early, building his own synthesizers by the time he was thirteen, and producing “sleep concerts” (for which the audience brought sleeping bags and prepared to spend the night) in Golden Gate Park while he was a psychology student at Stanford. His music then was based heavily on psychoacoustics and made use of natural body cycles (including the 24-hour diurnal cycle to which we are all subject). He also investigated drones (and put out an album titled Drones and Trances) and gradually, by the time of Rainforest, moved into more recognizable sound patterns, many of which inhabit Watchful, which was released in 1997. Rick Davies is a guitarist, bassist, and composer who was a founding member of Psycho Hamster, described as a “psychedelic brain-damage band,” and Killer Donuts. He has worked with Rich sporadically since 1979.

The songs have an ethereal quality, as much due to Rich’s vocals as to the sometimes insubstantial quality of the instruments. His voice, a light, throaty tenor, is ideal for this music: provided with a slight resonance, it works not so much to provide information as to reinforce the mood and stroke our curiosity – it really doesn’t matter that most of the time, you can’t understand the words. Pauses are as important as sounds, and quite often there are elements that are felt rather than actually heard. The shape of each song, the dialogues between elements, the barely heard passages that somehow grab our attention and compel listening, are what finally engage the listener. This is music that offers nods in many directions, and becomes quite absorbing in its own right as an organic synthesis of Rich’s many explorations.

“Inside” begins with a strong “world beat” rhythm, a syncopated, tropical-sounding substrate that provides a solid base for the simple but elegant guitars and Rich’s habitually murky vocals. “Skin” provides a strong contrast, with a long, spare cello line that displays a great deal of subtlety. “Origami” opens with a somewhat Pinteresque guitar solo (in which the pauses are at least as important as the notes) and a cryptic woodwind that could be a flute or oboe making deft appearances. The whole piece is rather elliptical and quite fascinating. “Footless” is the first piece on the album for which I immediately thought “song.” It delivers some superb cello work by Hans Christian, as well as subtle, understated drums from Don Swanson, and Rich’s somewhat opaque vocals (read “unintelligible,” which is not to be taken as a criticism). “Ignoring Gravity” is a relaxed, low-key piece featuring intricate rhythms and the introduction of sounds (one is almost impelled to identify them as “nature sounds” as in much New Age music, but they are not) as accents that work to define what might otherwise be a completely formless song. “Water Vapor” is indeed quite vaporous and quite brief.

“Desolation” offers a new pattern, opening with a sequence that perhaps offers a nod to Edgar Varèse, perhaps to the soundtrack from Forbidden Planet, real science-fiction music with the requisite blurps and beeps that segues into an acoustic guitar solo that is again spare and quite evocative. “Big Clouds” makes use of some of Rich’s lessons from “Drones” as an almost subliminal continuo to a synthesized almost-melody. “Saragossa” breaks that mood with a heavily syncopated percussion overlaid with a long continuo line that offers spaces for a lively little flute to wander through. The key word for “Any Other Sky” is mellow, in spite of the energetic rhythms, a function of Rich’s understated vocals. “Watchful Eyes” once again uses a continuo that is more inferred than heard under a dialogue between guitar and piano that recalls in pacing and shape some of Harold Budd’s more exciting improvisations.

I like Robert Rich’s music. I have always like Robert Rich’s music, since I first ran across him in a collaboration with Steve Roach. He has investigated many ideas and incorporated many influences in an intelligent and intellectually challenging synthesis that is at the same time very seductive and rewarding. Part of the reward is that this is music for active listening or for just zoning out – either way, you get something out of it.

(Lektronic Soundscapes, 1997)

Review: Depeche Mode: Playing the Angel

Another one that no longer appears at Epinions, which itself no longer appears.

Somewhere along the line, I rediscovered Depeche Mode. I pretty much had everything available up through Depeche Mode 101 (which I didn't think much of -- it's one of the worst live albums I've heard), but on a whim I picked up a copy of Songs of Faith and Devotion and finally got around to listening to it. The die was cast. I then got a copy of Playing the Angel.

The thing about Depeche Mode is that they continually reinvent themselves. I once said of Violator "That's the one where they really became Depeche Mode." Then I had to keep moving the timeline back. Y'know, they really started as Depeche Mode, and have always been Depeche Mode, but each album showed a new facet, moved into new territory.

On first listening, the unfortunate introduction to the first track, "A Pain That I'm Used To," turned me off. They do that sort of thing every once in a while, a passage that just hovers on the edge of white noise, and this is possibly their most extreme example. When I finally sat down and actually listened, however, I was blown away.

One thing about the band is that they've always been musically adventurous. Not in the way of some groups, who will very daringly quote a passage from Tchaikovsky to show their bona fides as musicians, but in a fundamentally creative way. They are always doing something on the edge and as often as not, it's simply breathtaking. And at the same time they will take modes that you would swear were worn out by 1963 and make them live again. This album's no exception. One of my prime candidates on both scores is "Precious." It sounds so much like a standard pop ballad with a little bit of momentum to it, and then you start to hear the richness of the textures and the naked aggression underlying the lyrics, which themselves are remarkable -- no syrup allowed, folks. This is tough music.

Depeche Mode has always been an "electro" band, even when going back to "standard" instruments, and as far as the accompaniment is concerned, this one's right in the tradition, but this collection is really about the vocals. Both David Gahan and Martin Gore have distinctive voices, but this is the first album I've heard on which the vocals are the real focus, and in a lot of ways the adventurousness of their earlier work makes the transition from playing with instruments to playing with their voices. They trade off on the lead, sort of -- Gahan sings all tracks except "Macro" and "Damaged People" which are done by Gore. This is stylistic tour of late-twentieth century pop music, from "Suffer Well," which could have been done by any crooner from the '50s or '60s, to the pop/rock/gospel sound of "John the Revelator" with its driving, syncopated momentum (and vocally, which also harks back to earlier DM), to the world-weary, sinuous, almost moaning vocals in "Lilian" and "The Darkest Star," straight out of the goth/punk tradition where they first made their mark. (One thing about Depeche Mode's vocals: I've said in other contexts that part of their appeal for me is the voices have always been men's voices, not boys' voices, no matter what range or approach the singers were taking. It's a matter of weight and maturity, and both Gahan and Gore have it and always did have it.)

This is Depeche Mode becoming Depeche Mode -- again. If you can make it past the first thirty seconds, you're in for a real, meaty treat.

(Sire Records/Reprise Records, 2005)

Culture Break: Arvo Part: Fratres

Performed by Endymion. I'm not familiar with the group, but it's a good rendering:

Fratres is a piece that suddenly I was hearing all over the place when I was studying modern dance. It's not really that easy to dance to. Maybe that's why.

Culture Break: Kimmo Pohjonen: Särmä

This tune is included on the CD Pohjonen did with Kronos Quartet, in a rather different version.