A new recording of world premieres addressing a topic of our national discourse: diaspora. If There Were Water, from Philadelphia’s 2017 Grammy-nominated 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. ‘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. 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 group is the American Composers’ Forums’ 2017 Champion of New Music.

This set contains Stereo and Mono recordings.
Selections recorded in the 1940s and 1950s. This set contains both stereo and monaural recordings. It also includes a lecture on just intonation by Harry Partch and some conversations with the composer.

Includes work(s) by Henry Brant.

Acclaimed as America's premier post-classical string quartet, Ethel presents a power-packed, sonic snapshot of the group's life in New York City in it's latest album Heavy. It's only fitting that after 14 years of performing, commissioning, composing, collaborating and living in New York City, Ethel celebrates the composers from NYC's music community. Recorded over an 18 month period by Cornelius Dufallo (violin), Dorothy Lawson (cello), Mary Rowell (violin), and Ralph Farris (viola), Heavy features works by eight celebrated contemporary composers: Don Byron, John Halle, Julia Wolfe, John King, Raz Mesinai, David Lang, Kenji Bunch, and Marcelo Zarvos. The album follows an organic progression from Don Byron's intense, jazz-influenced "String Quartet No. 2: Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye" tracks to the engaging "Rounds" by Brazilian film composer Marcelo Zarvos. "Ethel has been playing most of these composers' works ever since the group's inception 14 years ago," says Ralph Farris, co-founder of Ethel. "These composers - this city - are so much a part of who we are as a group. This album serves as an homage to New York City, it's people, and it's music." "indefatigable and eclectic". - New York Times "vital and brilliant". - The New Yorker "fearless... pioneering" - Time Out New York.

At the Center of All Things brings together the expressive, early-music influenced string quartets of Stanley Grill with the intense, visceral sound of the Diderot Quartet’s gut-stringed instruments. A composer for whom the string quartet is the perfect medium to express, in a modern idiom, his passion for the contemplative aspects of Renaissance vocal music, the album includes three of Stanley Grill’s many string quartets: American landscapes, Lonely Voices and the title track, At the Center of All Things. Raised in New York City, Stanley Grill has spent a lifetime composing music as an act of translation, trying to understand the world and convey that understanding in musical terms. Two main themes carry through in his work- music composed as a reflection of the physical world and music composed to inspire and promote world peace. These themes are at the heart of all three works included on At the Center of All Things. The unique sound that emerges from the Diderot Quartet’s period instruments is ideal for these three introspective and intensely personal works. On this album, the Diderot gives a brilliant, evocative performance that perfectly captures the nature of the composer’s work- music that is completely contemporary while simultaneously looking back in time to the beauty and harmony of early vocal music.

This varied anthology of contemporary pieces is a typical Innova product - tangy, oxygen rich and kaleidoscopic.

Saxophonist Timothy McAllister has put together this chamber collection in collaboration with fellow musicians.

The flickering and tapping mechnical action of McAllister's instrument is something you must acclimatise yourself to. It's part of the music. It in fact seems to have been notated into the start of the third movement of the Wanamaker scherzo in the Duo Sonata.

Caleb Burhans's solo alto sax Escape Wisconsin is Reich-like in its minimalist iterative cell repetition. It began life as a piece for two vibraphones.

Kristin Kuster's Jellyfish is for sax and Lucia Unrau's piano. In three quirkily titled sections (Medusa; Blob; Thimbles) but one track. This piece is dissonant, variously hectic and deeply and darkly dreamy.

Kati Agocs' As Biddeth Thy Tongue returns us to the solo sax. Agocs' rhapsodic dissonant, harsh and sometimes horrifying progress takes us flutteringly through fear.

Duo Sonata for sax and, its brother, the clarinet (Robert Spring) is by Gregory Wanamaker. The two instruments are Icarus twins. They fill in each others notes, fly in aerobatic formation, encourage contemplation and indulge in jazz-jamming and minimalist caprice in the Blues finale.

The symphonist Daniel Asia is for me the only big name in this group. His The Alex Set for solo sax is the second oldest piece here. Of the five movements three entitled Alex I etc are interspersed with two entitled Interlude I etc. The music is angular and rhapsodic with a dusting of minimalist manners among the Orientalisms.

GLINT by Roshanne Etezady is for clarinet and sax again. It's a vertiginous and possessed flight into an everglades of bumping and groaning noises. Then follows an ascent succeeded by helter-skelter diving and rocketing upwards.

Philippe Hurel's OPCIT (1984) is for solo sax. It is the most dissonant piece here: rippling, groaning and writhing across its four extended sections seemingly with every avant-garde effect deployed.

Lastly we have Peter Terry's RISE for sax and Lucia Unrau’s synthesised piano. The piece has a nervy and jazzy stride, a touch of pianola torque, the occasional infusion of 1920s expressionism and grand guignol.

Good liner notes. Sensible design. Will suit the broad-minded sax repertoire enthusiast.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

FELDMAN Clarinet and String Quartet. BABBITT Clarinet Quintet • Mark Lieb (cl); Phoenix Ensemble • INNOVA 746 (62:35)


By reputation, such ideologically distinct composers would seem to be an awkward pairing as discmates—Morton Feldman’s abstract expressionist-influenced, intuitive, repetitively detailed formal design versus Milton Babbitt’s mathematically abstracted, reason-induced, labyrinthine methodology—and yet the individual virtues of each seem to emphasize and illuminate the dramatic character of the other. The contrast between these two works is both revealing and satisfying.


Feldman’s Clarinet and String Quartet (1983) is constructed around repeated, subtly altered, and juxtaposed melodic and textural patterns; the music’s progress is like a stationary view of a single shape (the combined colors and often divided attacks of the clarinet and strings) until it is replaced by a new shape, so there is continual forward motion, but not conventional rhythmic momentum. The effect is not passive, but intently active—the melodic outline expands and contracts, as natural as breathing—circumscribing an emotional voice that is muted, but nevertheless capable of suggesting moments of sadness, inquisitiveness, mystery, and fascination.


Though linked together seamlessly, the patterns of Feldman’s compositional design are on display continuously, so the structure is transparently audible. On the other hand, Babbitt’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet (1996) is swept along on an animated elaboration of melody, and the internal complexity of its form is of no concern. Details drive the music forward—twisting clarinet contours, contrapuntal string maneuvers, an unexpected sequence of pizzicato, sudden dynamic displacements, impulsive bursts of energy. The quintet’s extended linear development is in some ways reminiscent of Babbitt’s teacher, Roger Sessions, and what Sessions derived from Schoenberg, but given added oomph by the verve and scintillation of Babbitt’s wit.


Clarinetist Mark Lieb and his cohorts do a brilliant job in capturing the specific character of such radically different pieces of music. The Babbitt, by the way, receives its premiere recording—one wonders why such an exhilarating piece was neglected for so long. Highly recommended.


FANFARE: Art Lange


Those familiar with Morton Feldman’s music will know what to expect from his Clarinet Quintet: austere minimalist textures, rigorous logical structuring, detached but sonorous consonant chords, repeating but continually set off-kilter by asymmetric time signatures. They might be more surprised by the fact that there is room on the CD for another work, and that the work in question is by Milton Babbitt, a composer at the maximalist end of the American new music spectrum.
 
In fact, the pairing works very well. The Feldman work is far from ambient and requires the same kind of focused attention that listeners would expect to pay to Babbitt. The Feldman is process music to a degree, yet the processes are regularly subjected to human intervention. Motifs are introduced by, for example, scoring a bar of 5/4 as an accumulating chord, one instrument starting the bar, the next entering on the second beat, and so on until the final note is a chord made up of the motif. It’s a neat way of marrying harmony and melody, and it is far from the only textural device in the work, but all the others are of a similar level of simplicity. The clarinet stands out from the strings although less than you might expect: more of a guiding voice through the textures than a true soloist. Mark Lieb stresses the simplicity of the line in his clarinet playing. His stamina and evenness of tone are remarkable assets here. The work is currently available on two other commercial recordings, one in the Feldman Edition on the Mode label (Mode 119) with clarinettist Carol Robinson, the other on Metier with Roger Heaton (MSV 92082). This recording has the edge over both, thanks to the performance and the sound. Much of the music is at a very low dynamic, and the precision of the recording allows each of the detached, attenuated sounds to appear with the utmost clarity, and from a crystalline silence. Similarly, the disciplined precision of the string quartet is fully attuned to Feldman’s stern aesthetic. The few articulations that he indicates are never exaggerated to the point of disturbing his uneasy, but ultimately unbroken, continuum.
 
Milton Babbitt’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet is another extended single span of music: a paradoxical combination of expansive form and minutely detailed construction. But much about Milton Babbitt is paradoxical, not least the fact that his career at the cutting edge of serialist Modernism grew out of jazzy and folky roots. According to the liner-notes - and this was news to me - jazz and popular song have always been a part of the composer’s musical psyche. In his early days, he even wrote a Broadway musical entitled Fabulous Voyage. Less surprisingly, Broadway wasn’t interested. The Quintet dates from 1995-6, the far end of the composer’s career, but the jazzy rhythms on the clarinet are an important part of its musical identity. Alex Ross wrote of the work when he heard its premiere that it was ‘a delight to the senses, a fast flow of lovely chords and spry rhythms, a thing of sweetness and light.’ I’m not prepared to go quite that far, but the combination of lively rhythms and widely-spaced chordal textures gives the work a feeling of openness that is often absent from the composer’s more mathematical constructions. The counterpoint is very much in the serialist mould, with spaces in the texture appearing through the seemingly arbitrary and coincidental absences of notes in the individual parts.
 
If I were to describe the work as an indicator of the composer mellowing with age, it would be with the proviso that even Babbitt’s take on mellowness will seem violently aggressive to most listeners. But it is a rewarding listen, the composer’s ear for timbral and harmonic - or at least vertical - detail shines through in every bar. And there are surprises along the way, continually nudging the listener out of any sense of complacency at having fully digested a texture or contrapuntal construction. As with the Feldman, the formidable difficulties are expertly handled by the ensemble, which is fully attuned to Babbitt’s musical methods, and whose performance here is apparently endorsed by the composer. This is the first commercial recording of the work, and should serve as an excellent benchmark for future performers.
 
-- Gavin Dixon, MusicWeb International
 

Harry Partch (like his friend Anais Nin) considered his life’s work to be a letter to the world. His last act was going to be to add the enclosures. He never got around to it. After 20 years of working on the Partch archives, Philip Blackburn has now completed the seven-part Enclosures series as it were on his behalf.

Enclosure 7, the culminating DVD of this multimedia series, is a monumental tribute to the most significant works of this American original and iconoclast. It includes new versions of his late masterworks and never-before-seen footage that bring us closer to the real Harry behind the myth.

The Dreamer That Remains is a documentary produced by Betty Freeman and directed by Stephen Pouliot in 1972. Here is the director’s original cut along with his commentary. If you’ve never seen Partch or his instruments before, this is the place to start.

Delusion of the Fury was his magnum opus; a lifetime of instrument-invention and ideas of ritual theater were poured into this giant work. The 1971 film has been resynched and the soundtrack remastered in 5.1 surround sound.

The CBS LPs of this work came with a Bonus Album of Harry introducing his instruments. Unavailable for years, this DVD features this talk along with a slideshow of the instruments.

Revelation in the Courthouse Park was Harry’s fusion of current pop idolatry with parallel (only a little more sinister) scenes of Ancient Greece. Now you can see excerpts of the original 1960 Illinois production, replete with gymnasts, fireworks, and transvestites.

And finally, if you ever wondered how a simple recipe for rose petal jam could turn into a hobo dance and a diatribe about music critics, you are in for a treat.

In short, with the reprinting of Blackburn’s award-winning bio-scrapbook, Enclosure 3, this series “is about as close to one man’s life as we are ever likely to get.”

R E V I E W S

"Anyone who believed, as many did, that Harry Partch’s hypnotic but daffy music would fade from the scene after his death in 1974, and after the weird but fragile instruments he had fashioned for realizing his stratospheric creative visions had gone under lock and key, had reckoned without the innate magic of his work, and the zeal of his believers... The best of Partch lies in its power to evoke visual counterparts, and a DVD just out on Innova includes the dance-drama Delusion of the Fury, as staged at UCLA in 1969, which really does match sight to sound." -- Alan Rich, LA Weekly

Includes work(s) by David Del Tredici. Ensemble: Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Conductor: David Del Tredici. Soloists: David Del Tredici, Hila Plitmann.

Classical Music

Oregon's Orchestra Next, in collaboration with the Eugene Ballet Company, has released its debut album featuring the world-premiere recording of Kenji Bunch's ''The Snow Queen''. This ballet score is a substantial addition to the repertoire. Unlike Disney's movie ''Frozen'', this retelling follows the Hans Christian Anderson tale somewhat closely. At its heart, ''The Snow Queen'' is the classic tale of a hero's quest. In this particular version, though, the hero is actually a heroine and she goes off on adventures to rescue a boy from the forces of evil. In the story, childhood friends Gerda, a girl, and Kay, a boy, are separated when Kay is blinded to the good of the world by shards of a frozen mirror made by Satan. Kay ends up being taken to the Ice Palace of teh Snow Queen; with help from various other characters, Gerda rescues him there. In was this reversal of the classic gender roles that drew Eugene choreographer Toni Pimble to the story. ''It's the heroine who saves the hero in this stoyr,'' she says. ''And, the two main characters are women. That's very different.'' The story works equally for children and adult audiences alike. As composer Kenji Bunch writes, ''Helping to tell this hauntingly beautiful but entirely wordless story for close to two hours was, simply put, the largest undertaking of my career to date, by a longshot.''

This groundbreaking new release is the result of twelve years of work from composer Joseph Bertolozzi. The nine compositions on Tower Music use only sounds of the Eiffel tower, without the aid of instruments or other effects. A bonus track, Audio Tour of Eiffel Tower, is also included on this release. This release follows Bertolozzi’s 2008 album, Bridge Music, which was composed using New York’s Mid Hudson Bridge.

“Tower Music is a tour de force of postmodern culture. It is both specific in its creation and general in its references… It works on the imagination, fully encompassing a history and tradition redolent of France, Paris, and the Eiffel Tower.” - Andrew Tomasello

Classical Music

This disc contains both ADD and DDD recordings.

Magic, process, intuition, and community intersect in this offering of works for saxophone, an exhibition of musical architecture, sculpture, and story. Composed, premiered, and recorded over a ten-year span, the works on Alchemy are the result of a decade-long collaboration between Doug O’Connor and Baljinder Sekhon. These compositions present the saxophone in a variety of settings, from saxophone quartet with real-time electronics to saxophone ensemble to featuring the saxophonist as a soloist with orchestra (The Offering) and percussion ensemble (Gradient 2.0+). This collection of works explores the intersections of musical elements, ranging from the sounds created by the various instruments involved to the structural parameters of the composition. These works seek to connect pitch and time in various ways while melding sounds together through the employment of alternate and traditional techniques. Sometimes driven by shape and sometimes shaped by narrative, these pieces offer the listener space to explore magical and methodological musical worlds. The music of Baljinder Sekhon has been presented in over 500 concerts in twenty-six countries. From works for large ensemble to solo works to electronic music, Sekhon’s music demonstrates a wide range of genres and styles. His works have been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Seoul Arts Center (Korea), and National Recital Hall (Taiwan). Thirteen commercial recordings of his work have been released, with his most recognized output being his contributions to the percussion and saxophone genres. Alchemy is the second full album of Sekhon’s work released on Innova Records, with the first album entitled Places & Times featuring works for percussion