The slyly absorbing new volume from Michigan-based musician Erik Hall understands the contemplative joy in repetition. Solo Three is the culmination of what Hall describes as a loose trilogy, following his radical reinterpretation of Steve Reich's minimalist masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians, and his subsequent rendition of Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato, a winding work of Dutch minimalism. This time, Hall boldly reimagines works by four distinct contemporary classical composers: Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Laurie Spiegel, and, again, Steve Reich. It is a particular grouping that exists through Hall's singular lens for magnetic repetition and harmonic resonance. The resulting program unravels subtly but masterfully, each piece a kind of contrapuntal bliss a touch livelier than the last, all building to the Reich-ian reprise-an apt bookend to the series. Altogether, Hall has crafted a richly varied homage to four pillars of American minimalism, an elegant mix of accessibility and discovery. As ever, he performed and multitrack-recorded all the parts himself without loops, programming, or sequenced instruments, his solitary method still arguably novel to the classical canon. Meanwhile, within the context of modern production, this analog approach works as a gentle rebellion against a culture of faceless automation, instilling these recordings with a flesh-and-blood human touch. "It's just so much more interesting to actually play every note," Hall says. "You then get them directly juxtaposed, and as they repeat, all of those micro-differences between them create a sort of living, breathing magic." That living, breathing magic imbues every crevice of Solo Three, making it not just a stirring tribute to four giants of 20th-century minimalism, but a reflection of how their influence continues to reverberate today.
Christopher Tignor is a composer, violinist, lecturer, and software engineer. His emotionally charged scores and unique focus on live, performance-based electroacoustic practice has won acclaim within both the classical and experimental communities across 10 LPs on the Western Vinyl and New Albion record labels. He creates the live performance software he uses, shared freely. As a composer he has written and recorded work for ensembles including The Knights, A Far Cry string orchestra, and Brooklyn Rider string quartet, performing alongside them at premiere venues including Carnegie's Zankel Hall. As a collaborator he has worked with Rachel Grimes, Helios, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, John Congleton, This Will Destroy You and several other artists at the boundaries of popular music. Tignor holds a Ph.D in music composition from Princeton University, an M.S. in computer science from NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and a B.A. in creative writing from Bard College where he studied fiction and poetry with John Ashbery.
Sometime in 2020 I listened to Canto Ostinato for the first time, and my enthrallment with the piece had begun. I was transfixed by it's particular amalgam of harmony, repetition, and pacing. By the spring of 2023 I had constructed and released my own solo interpretation, and I assumed at that point my working relationship with the composition had run it's course. But I underestimated it's magnetism. The following year I was back in it's grips, having been invited by Metropolis Ensemble's Andrew Cyr to expand on the foundation I had laid with the piece. Soon I was in Brooklyn, on a team of six with Cyr and the members of Sandbox Percussion, humbled and thrilled to be helping architect a brand new large ensemble arrangement of Canto Ostinato for a summer solstice performance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We did so, our cohort growing to include the students of The New School's Sandbox Percussion Summer Seminar, as well as composers David Leon, Ben Wallace, and Ledah Finck and the Bergamot Quartet. It was a day we will all remember-sweeping, dreamlike, and what felt like a quintessential culmination. But even then... The piece still beckoned, and it became clear this new orchestration called for the embarkment on a studio album. A permanent document of our now collective ardor. Refined over a year and recorded in New York, 2025, this performance recasts the piece anew in a towering framework of mallet percussion, woodwinds, strings, and piano. It is our truest attempt at conveying Canto's beauty and magnitude in all it's kaleidoscopic harmony, dynamism, tension, and release. I stand once again in awe of Simeon ten Holt's monumental creation; to be a thread in it's sonic fabric is one of the great honors of my musical life. I don't assume we might be so fortunate again... but who knows.
Sometime in 2020 I listened to Canto Ostinato for the first time, and my enthrallment with the piece had begun. I was transfixed by it's particular amalgam of harmony, repetition, and pacing. By the spring of 2023 I had constructed and released my own solo interpretation, and I assumed at that point my working relationship with the composition had run it's course. But I underestimated it's magnetism. The following year I was back in it's grips, having been invited by Metropolis Ensemble's Andrew Cyr to expand on the foundation I had laid with the piece. Soon I was in Brooklyn, on a team of six with Cyr and the members of Sandbox Percussion, humbled and thrilled to be helping architect a brand new large ensemble arrangement of Canto Ostinato for a summer solstice performance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We did so, our cohort growing to include the students of The New School's Sandbox Percussion Summer Seminar, as well as composers David Leon, Ben Wallace, and Ledah Finck and the Bergamot Quartet. It was a day we will all remember-sweeping, dreamlike, and what felt like a quintessential culmination. But even then... The piece still beckoned, and it became clear this new orchestration called for the embarkment on a studio album. A permanent document of our now collective ardor. Refined over a year and recorded in New York, 2025, this performance recasts the piece anew in a towering framework of mallet percussion, woodwinds, strings, and piano. It is our truest attempt at conveying Canto's beauty and magnitude in all it's kaleidoscopic harmony, dynamism, tension, and release. I stand once again in awe of Simeon ten Holt's monumental creation; to be a thread in it's sonic fabric is one of the great honors of my musical life. I don't assume we might be so fortunate again... but who knows.
