A new recording of world premieres addressing a topic of our national discourse: diaspora. If There Were Water, from Philadelphia’s 2017 Grammy-winning choir, The Crossing, is a testament to the expressive range of the human voice. These two strikingly diverse, yet equally compelling unaccompanied compositions were commissioned for The Crossing’s Month of Moderns festival and premiered in June 2017. Drawing from literary and historic sources, the works are highly personal reflections that speak with clarity to contemporary concerns of displacement, while weaving together past and present.
In Crossings Cycle, Greek composer Stratis Minakakis creates a visceral musical response to the experience of observing Syrian refugees on the Isle of Lesbos. An elegy on things irretrievably lost, Crossings Cycle draws on Ancient Greek literature, Eliot’s The Waste Land, and microtonal tuning practices to convey a deeply resonant expression of the human condition. Sounds emerge and disappear from the shadows, often erupting as great cries or crashing waves that disintegrate again into murmurs.
un/bodying/s by composer Gregory W. Brown explores the history of the displaced populations of Quabbin, the Swift River Valley in Western Massachusetts, including the Native Americans moved by incoming Europeans, and then those Europeans relocated by the State when creating the massive reservoir that supplies Boston with water. Gregory and librettist Todd Hearon tell these stories from a variety of perspectives, including the history of the wildlife that, like the human refugees, have fled and since returned to this troubled land. The music undulates as if at times floating on water, or hidden under it, or soaring above it, reflecting up. Suddenly a New England hymn will emerge, then be replaced with a more distant, elusive texture, as the eternal search for Atlantis continues.
The Crossing is a professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. Consistently recognized in critical reviews, the ensemble regularly collaborates with some of the nation’s most accomplished ensembles and imaginative composers. It is committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir, most often addressing social issues. The Crossing, with Donald Nally, is the American Composers Forums’ 2017 Champion of New Music.
Mark Applebaum has never been one to shy away from making connections, even odd ones. In fact, one could argue that’s what composing is all about. In his latest assemblage, Speed Dating, five smartly absurd works (three of which deal with history in some wry fashion) are presented for your kind consideration (if not downright bemusement).
The album opens with a tip of the hat to pioneering soundpoet Charles Amirkhanian, who, in 1972, famously made a rhythmic tape piece (Just) out of the words rainbow, chug, bandit and bomb (deliciously articulated by Nicholas Slonimsky). In Applebaum’s Three Unlikely Corporate Sponsorships, he uses his own voice contrapuntally, ranting ever more hilariously about the injustices of the world today. Biting socio-political commentary has rarely been more foot-tapping.
Applebaum reached into his home storage space and fired up eight classic analog synths from the 80s that had been lying there. Skeletons in the Closet uses a randomizing digital Max patch to operate on these dusty treasures, no doubt frustrating purists while delightfully mangling the past.
Speed Dating, another octet, this time for acoustic instruments (in fact the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, led by Eduardo Leandro) is based on coy pairings in strange orgiastic combinations. Unlike in Shakespeare plays, no marriages result. In addition to the odd instrumental partnerships, the players have to vocalize mating chirrups in response to custom wristwatches supplied by the composer.
The Plate of Transition Nourishes the Chameleon Appetite comes roaring back from 1992 with Belgium-based violinist Takao Hyakutome deftly navigating the various mercurial and laconic formal options laid out by the composer. The resulting violin mauling is downright virtuosic.
Finally, in Clicktrack, a dozen percussionists (Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble, led by Terry Longshore) make a quiet Cageian racket, following precise rhythms in their headphones while the audience hears scratchy noises and fragments of text (actually anagrams of Shakespeare sonnets).
The humorous and provocative album is vintage Applebaum; not for the unprepared. Especially the third track, Halliburton, that comes with a Parental Advisory warning for strong language.
Born in Sapporo, Japan in 1954, Yuko Fujiyama started playing piano at the age of four. But it wasn’t until a summer morning in 1980 standing on a sidewalk in New York’s East Village that she found her calling; someone was playing a Cecil Taylor tape and she was transfixed by the piano sounds. That someone was Taylor’s drummer, Jerome Cooper, and that moment opened a door for her to the abstract beauty of music. She has been “looking for musical structures” ever since. “Recently, I’ve been trying to be free from a feeling of linear time. This album, Night Wave, is the result of my long search.”
Joining her in this quest are three esteemed fellow travelers in the art of improvisation: percussionist Susie Ibarra, violinist Jennifer Choi, and cornet/flugelhornist Graham Haynes: “It was a joy to play with these beautiful musicians. I appreciate Susie for her earthy but sensitive sound Jennifer for her beautiful melodies, and Graham for his simple and rich expressions.”
The album weaves a delicate series of colorful musical glimpses, from aggressive and ominous stories to melancholic flashes of freedom and silence. Listen at night, on a sidewalk, or wherever you might like sounds to arrest you.
