On the surface, Footnotes is a guitar album that cuts across stylistic and aesthetic boundaries throughout the 20th Century in the U.S.A. But what is this music? Or more importantly, who are the protagonists in this release? William Brooks is a composer; Stefan Östersjö is a guitarist; Jez Wells is a creative sound engineer. So this would seem to be a composition by Brooks played by Östersjö and produced by Wells. Alas, the sleeve notes say otherwise: “We choose to call this album Footnotes because it presents the artefactual results—or, perhaps more properly, the counterfactual results—of a lengthy research process that has led us into various historic documents, recordings, and technologies. It will be evident that a prime motivator for our interest was that each track involves mysteries of some sort, many of which have not been resolved.” Six tracks, in vastly different styles (it seems), using vastly different instruments (it seems), recorded in vastly different environments (it seems). Track 1 is for prepared guitar, and the notes tell us the recording dates from 1959. Track 2 is for folk guitar, a ragtime piece with bizarre interruptions and transpositions; allegedly it was a field recording from the 1950s. Track 3, —well, it might be a blues recorded by Big Mama Orton in the 1960s, but who on earth was Big Mama, and what did she do to the blues? Track 4 claims to be by a Polish composer and recorded in 1974—possibly true: it certainly sounds appropriately cerebral. Track 5 “strains credulity,” say the notes. You bet it does, with a performance allegedly broadcast by a Spanish guitarist and recorded off-air in England. And track 6? It’s a mishmash, some parts recalling earlier tracks, some seemingly snatched from sources ranging from churches to radio to free-jazz outtakes.

Electrocosmia is a daring exploration of electroacoustic music for solo piano that finds pianist Peng-Chian Chen diving head first into musical worlds that are at times explosive and at others mercurial and enigmatic. Much of this album finds Chen striking a balance between acoustic and electronic sound. Whether that be using an electronic keyboard and an acoustic piano simultaneously, interweaving fixed media and live performance, or using signal processing to experiment with sound being created in the moment. Featuring works by Cindy Cox, Pierre Chavet, Elanie Lillios, and Peter Van Zandt Lane, Electrocosmia brings new energy to keyboard music being written and performed today. Each piece contributes to a growing landscape of electroacoustic concert works that defy listeners expectations and expand what concert music can mean.

Emily Koh draws interest out of the things many of us may not even notice, and these overlooked minutiae and intricacies lead to new horizons in her work. Her new album [word]plays is full of frenetic and sonorous beauty, and represents her interest and exploration of the sounds, meanings, and interpretations of words, as a multi-linguist artist whose native tongue is an English-based creole language (Singlish). [word]plays is an album of microtonal works for saxophone(s) inspired by the similarly named literary technique in which witty word-use becomes the subject of the work. The central works in [word]plays are three saxophone quartets - homonym (2013), heteronym/ (2016) and cryptonym: (2018) - composed for the Amigo Saxophone Quartet, PRISM Quartet, and New Thread Quartet respectively. These quartets take their inspiration from the meanings of the compound words formed when the -onym suffix is attached after a root word. Homonyms are words that are spelled identically and sound the same, but have different meanings. Heteronyms are words that are spelled identically, but are pronounced differently, and have different meaning. Scryptonyms are code names or secret words. Flanking the quartets are medi+aTion (2016) and b(locked.orders) (2019). These solo works are named with neologisms which include special symbols, giving these titles a polysemic quality. medi+aTion (2016) can be read as ‘meditation’ or ‘mediation’, and looks within for inner meanings and unfoldings. b(locked.orders) (2019) can be read as ‘blocked borders’ or ‘blocked orders’, and sonifies the stifled voices of immigrants in their adoptive countries, as well as silenced minorities within their home countries. The version of b(locked.orders), with video art by Michiko Saiki can be viewed at emilykoh.net

Orison is a sound prayer and meditation in seven parts. Composer Chris Campbell originally conceived Orison as a spatial piece within a sacred space. He envisioned presenting it in a church or a Zen center with performers, visual media, and planes of sound inhabiting different zones or rooms throughout the space. This album is the linear, concert version of that original conception, recorded with a large ensemble. The music is phantasmagoric, moving and shifting fluidly from one part to the next. Its timbres and lines dovetail and transform, moving through time into new forms, but always retaining some essence of their previous identity as they blossom into the next textural idea or sonic image. For Campbell, creating this music has been a way to process the world around him, things rising up and falling away. Its been a way to bear witness to cycles and events, both macro and intimate. Chris Campbell is a collaborator, composer, producer, and the Director of Recordings at innova recordings\/ACF. Praised as heady, possessing elements of post\-Minimalism, avant\-garde rock, jazz and global fusion styles that mingle and merge with dreamlike mutability...(The New York Times) and a surreal (or super\-real?) vortex...(Gramophone), Campbells music is focused on ritual and sonic texture, and how sound can transform space. In addition to his own music, Campbell has either produced or worked directly on the promotion and distribution of over 300 projects and albums (2 of them Grammy winners).

Ten works of electronic music from a ten-year period: an ode to synthesis. Dekagon is a journey into Anıl Çamcı’s sonic worldmaking with each piece leveraging a different synthesis tool or technique from custom designs to timeless classics. As spectrum, dynamics, space, and time become continuous dimensions of musical articulation, Dekagon moves the listener between the physical reality of their listening environment and an implied universe grounded in sound. This movement between sonic spaces is shaped by Çamcı’s meticulous exploration of audio processing and synthesis. The opening piece, A Now Unknown is the outcome of forty performances with a Eurorack modular synthesizer carried out over the course of two years. The following piece, Yonder in Bedlam, was composed in its entirety using a Moog synthesizer. Temas is the result of live improvisations with a stochastic synthesizer designed by Çamcı. Then, the use of granular synthesis in Diegese is an homage to Çamcı’s former teacher Curtis Roads’ homage to his former teacher Morton Subotnick. With each piece, the listener can either be immersed as part of the unfolding narrative or be situated as an onlooker that observes the implied universe of the piece. Either way, the listening experience is highly associated with visual imagery and imagination. This album is also at the center of Çamcı’s book “The Cognitive Continuum of Electronic Music,” which was published by Bloomsbury in 2022 as part of their Music and Sound Studies series. The book chronicles a listening study conducted with four of the tracks in this album with eighty participants from around the world. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective towards auditory perception, it details the intricate relationship between electronic music and listeners.

Critical Mass represents people coming together in celebration, a sense of victory, and achievement arising from realizing that there is strength in numbers. This is grounded in our being attentive to and attuned to what makes us whole: the rights we claim for ourselves and the rituals by which we resonate with our deepest beliefs. Through collaboration with a range of artists, Lewis Jordan has cultivated a community and a coalition devoted to bringing seemingly disparate pieces into a collective. Since its founding, Music at Large has been a vehicle for producing performances of Jordan’s music, plays, and panels. Music at Large is dedicated to interdisciplinary and multicultural productions, with presentations incorporating music, theater, dance, poetry and visual art. On Critical Mass, Jordan (alto, baritone and poetry), Sandi Poindexter (violin), Bruce Ackley (soprano and tenor), Ollen Erich Hunt (bass), and Jimmy Biala (drums/percussion) use improvisation and poetry to access a space of sincerity, engagement, and free expression. They are joined by Genny Lim on the title track and by Tureeda Mikell on a bonus track. Lewis Jordan is a saxophonist and poet who has performed and recorded internationally. His commitment is to bring people together by bridging arbitrary distinctions that have only served to divide us from ourselves, as well as serving to divide us from others. He works with artists from a range of disciplines, striving for modes of expression that honor our traditions while speaking to the urgency of the present.

Pianist and composer Mike Garson is perhaps best known for his longstanding musical relationship with David Bowie, which began in 1972. He made his mark on numerous Bowie albums and traveled thousands of miles on tours spanning more than four decades, including Bowie’s first and last performances in the U.S. When classical pianist Danny Holt first heard Mike Garson’s music, it was as if it reached out of his stereo speakers and grabbed him. Holt and Garson first crossed paths in 2004 when Holt was a graduate student at CalArts. The two hit it off, and Garson even helped produce Danny’s Fast Jump album, also released through innova. Garson and Holt developed a musical kinship, and that relationship led them to this album, Piano Music of Mike Garson. Mike Garson and Danny Holt share a voracious appetite for new music and monster piano technique. Garson developed a compositional process that favored first-take improvisational works composed in real-time with the help of a Yamaha Disklavier. Holt’s playing and Garson’s music both have a sense of immediacy, aliveness, and being ‘on the edge.’ All of this comes together to form a perfect pairing in this first-ever album of Mike Garson’s solo piano works, a project that survived both Garson’s home burning to the ground in a 2018 wildfire, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Danny Holt has been called “the classical music equivalent of an extreme sports athlete” (The Record) and Gramophone called his Fast Jump album (innova Recordings, 2009) “a compelling showcase for Holt’s innate virtuosity and gregarious temperament.” Known as a champion of adventurous new music, Holt has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Blue Man Group, Bang on a Can All-Stars, California EAR Unit, and the Calder Quartet, among others.

REVIEW:

Mike Garson may be best known for his extensive collaborations with David Bowie on disc and in concert, yet his credentials as pianist, composer, and arranger embrace a wide stylistic scope. You can’t really pinpoint his virtuosity within any genre, because he interweaves classical, jazz, and pop traditions organically and fluidly. What is more, he evolved a technique blurring improvisation and composition, where he would improvise fully-formed works, recording directly onto a Yamaha Disklavier, bypassing the notation process. He’d usually record at slightly slower tempos, and then use the Disklavier’s technology to play the pieces back faster. Over a period of about 10 years, Garson amassed around 3200 piano pieces this way, of which roughly one out of ten was a “keeper”.

Garson often takes his cue from preexisting pieces. The nearly eight-and-a-half-minute 3X18 uses Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit as a jumping off point, although some of the compound two-handed arpeggios border on Sorabji-like atonality. Homage to Chopin and Godowsky is a brilliant, freewheeling fantasia inspired by Godowsky’s transcription of Chopin’s C major Op. 10 No. 1 Etude, and may be more dazzlingly difficult to play.

Imagine a David Bowie ballad effortlessly merged with a Fauré Nocturne, and you’ve got Garson’s Nocturne in D-flat. Although the Hommage to Ligeti mirrors that composer’s restless rhythmic asymmetry and use of registers, the music’s rhapsodic lyrical qualities are pure Mike Garson. Actually, Garson’s Tribute to Keith Emerson sounds more authentically “Ligeti-like”, even though it’s superficially rooted in the opening of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Tarkus.

The point is that Garson’s magpie temperament and eclectic outreach never yields formulaic or clichéd results. There’s a consistent freshness to his inventiveness, and he rarely repeats himself. You can’t say that about many contemporary composers who write a lot for the piano.

Along with his brilliant technique, Danny Holt is able to imbue each composition with a distinct character. He gets exactly the right rhythmic feeling for jazz and pop oriented works, yet brings a wide dynamic range and sophisticated voicing to more complex selections. It would be interesting to hear Garson’s original Disklavier renditions of the 17 pieces selected for this release, yet one would miss the imprint of Holt’s own musicality and multi-leveled, even transcendent virtuosity. Holt provides detailed notes about the process of learning, assimilating, and recording this music under the composer’s supervision. A major and, needless to say, unique piano release, not to be missed.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

Saxophonist and composer Nick Zoulek presents his debut album, Rushing Past Willow. For this release, Zoulek refines the saxophone sound and brings his intense dedicated research to the wider world. His works for solo alto, tenor and bass saxophones were originally improvised movements which were refined over ten years of performances. Zoulek utilizes repetition, vocal techniques, unconventional articulation, and circular breathing to break past the traditional sounds of the saxophone. These recordings were made with an array of carefully placed microphones at live performances.

Red Rain, a collection of solo instrumental works by Huang Ruo, offers an in-depth portrait of a composer who has made significant marks across all genres of art music. These pieces display a creative and inventive variety of colors, timbres, and musical poetry for single instruments that echo his chamber, orchestral and operatic works. These pieces explore vast, echoing musical spaces: spiky driving rhythmic drama, singing and nostalgic melodies, and everything in between. The solo cello work “Four Fragments” moves through memory, time and space, and Soo Bae makes full use of the cello’s expressive range. The title piece “Red Rain,” is inspired by the painting on the cover by Jaune Quick-to-see Smith, and Emanuele Arciuli captures the transforming dreaming metamorphosing mood with sensitivity and beauty. Recently awarded First Prize by the prestigious Luxembourg International Composition Prize, Huang Ruo has been cited by the New Yorker as “one of the most intriguing of the new crop of Asian-American composers.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese folk, Western avant-garde, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “dimensionalism.”

These Wicked Things is the fourth release from the determinedly eclectic Boston-based band Beat Circus and the final installment in singer/multi-instrumentalist/composer Brian Carpenter’s “Weird American Gothic” trilogy. The record bridges a number of disparate genres including experimental music, cowpunk, post-punk, Mexican folk music, mariachi music, and “spaghetti western” and giallo film scores. These Wicked Things began after Carpenter was commissioned by the Berkeley Repertory Theater in Berkeley, California to compose music and lyrics for Dominic Orlando’s play The Barbary Coast in 2014. Based on the true crime book by Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast detailed the violent rise of San Francisco in the late 1800s. The play centers around Joaquin Murieta, a Mexican who went on a revenge spree after his wife was killed by miners. Two versions of “Rosita” and some incidental music from the play are included. After recording These Wicked Things with Beat Circus at the legendary Q Division Studios in Boston, Carpenter flew out to Tucson, Arizona to mix the record with esteemed producer Craig Schumacher. Carpenter worked with Schumacher previously on his singer/songwriter outing The Far End of the World. Special guests on These Wicked Things include trumpeter Jacob Valenzuela of Calexico, bass saxophonist Dana Colley of Morphine, and guitarist Stephen Ulrich of the NYC guitar noir trio Big Lazy.

The “King of Instruments,” the pipe organ, has a long and storied history. Its long association with the church has been a source of strength but also, in recent times, led to its seeming neglect by contemporary concert composers. Organon Novus is a monumental effort to bring together this hidden slice of American music. Clocking in at over three hours of music, and running the gamut from Adler to Zorn, it includes 25 works from the past 25 years by 25 celebrated composers – composers not often associated with their organ oeuvre. With 8,565 pipes in 132 ranks available to them, the 1928 E.M. Skinner symphonic organ in Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago is no modest resource for a composer’s imagination (not to mention a player’s active limbs). Randall Harlow, in this marathon tour de force, reaches them all. Compositional approaches range from the sonic tapestries of Thomas and Zorn, to the linear complexity of Adler and Mamlok; from the full-bodied symphonic approaches of Ran and Tower, to the eclectic and unique voices of Lang, Johnson, Lucier and Wolff. The album concludes with the premiere of Aaron Travers’ monumental Barlow Prize work, Exodus. Exploring the extremes of what is possible on the organ, the work offers a way forward for the instrument in contemporary art music, an exit from the common modern associations of the organ with churches and staid liturgical Gebrauchsmusik. Organon, “the device”: the original Greek word for the pipe organ from the third century BCE. Novus, “the new.” From its beginnings as a noise maker to its apotheosis as a contrapuntal keyboard-controlled orchestra, all coupled with the acoustic and architecture of its location, the organ can be many things. This musical snapshot is both a chronicle and a revelation.

Nong is an ancient Korean term meaning “to play,” in this case, the joy of discovering new ways of playing with the intersection of different cultures. In this Innova release, gamin and her collaborators place instruments and concepts from traditional Korean music alongside a variety of American musical elements. It is the place where two classical traditions meet — Korean and Western — at the playground of the American experience. On the program, Theodore Wiprud’s Mudang (featuring ETHEL String Quartet with gamin on piri, a reed instrument) incorporates a shamanic energy that ranges from meditation to ecstasy. Ukrainian-Canadian composer, Anna Pidgorna invokes the courtship displays of birds of paradise in her work for saenghwang (a bamboo mouth organ similar to the Chinese sheng) and accordion. Works by William David Cooper and Eun Young Leeweave Western string instruments with Korean winds, incorporating folk tunes and different tuning systems. gamin’s joint improvisation with Ned Rothenberg and Satoshi Takeishi in Jungmori Blues matches Sanjo (scattered melody) percussion rhythms with similar features in the African-American blues tradition. With Nong, gamin and her collaborators hope to diversify American audiences’ aesthetic understanding of East Asia, which is all too often painted in broad strokes. They also intend to inspire new generations of American composers and musicians to embrace the inherent multiculturalism of American music, inform their crafts with rich traditions from around the world, and approach music-making with the distinct goal of bridging cultural divides. Taken together, this play of ideas serves to imagine one possible, pancultural, future music.

Lansing McLoskey’s Zealot Canticles is based on Wole Soyinka’s Twelve Canticles for the Zealot (2002)- a strangely beautiful and terrifying look into the minds of fanatics. Seven of these poems form the bulk of the libretto, interwoven with excerpts from Soyinka’s plays, interviews, lectures and speeches; they reflect his upbringing in an environment of tolerance and condemn the current climate of intolerance, bigotry, and violence. The result is a concert-length choral ‘oratorio’ for clarinet, string quartet, and 24-voice choir, commissioned and performed by The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally and winner of the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. Soyinka’s texts and McLoskey’s responses are universal pleas for peace and tolerance, yet they force us to look into the mirror and recognize the thin line between devotion and intolerance, zealotry and radicalism- themes that dominate our public discourse every day. Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, the first African American recipient of the award. Throughout the set of canticles, Soyinka makes universal pleas for peace from multiple languages and religious cultures. Seven of these poems form the core of the libretto of Zealot Canticles. Interwoven with these poems are excerpts from Soyinka’s book The Man Died, his play Madmen and Specialists, and interviews, lectures, and speeches reflecting on his upbringing in an environment of tolerance, and condemning the current climate of intolerance, bigotry and violence.

Why is it that people still like the story of Tristan und Isolde? “The greatest love story ever!” But why? Of course, there is excitement, drama, love, lust, shame, death, dragons. I think the real reason why is because the love of Tristan und Isolde begins by accident - they drink a love potion. It is almost a laboratory experiment into what love might be like without any of the complications of how real love begins or works - without the excitement, embarrassment, frustration, guilt, or competition present in the courtships of ordinary people. So writes David Lang on why he wove together love fail (2012), into a tapestry of many versions of the 800-year old story. His libretto (with some help from Google Translate) draws from sources such as Lydia Davis, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Béroul, Thomas of Britain and Richard Wagner. “I compiled the oddest incidents from these versions of their romance, took out all the names or technological information that would make the texts seem ancient, and put them next to stories by the contemporary author Lydia Davis. These stories are oddly similar to the Tristan stories - they are also about love, honor, and respect between two people, but they are much more recognizable to us. “The resulting 15 movements over 50 minutes for four female voices and sporadic instruments feel more like an elegant contemplation of the timeless subject than an over-the-top Romantic bombast; more Bay Ridge than Bayreuth. Perfect, in fact, for the debonair, post-austere voices of Quince Ensemble. Comprised of vocalists Amanda DeBoer Bartlett (soprano), Kayleigh Butcher (mezzo soprano), Liz Pearse (soprano), and Carrie Henneman Shaw (soprano), Quince thrives on unique musical challenges and genre-bending contemporary repertoire.

Rustling Flights of Wings introduces the vocal music of Stanley Grill. His work springs out of the centuries long tradition of classical art songs and epitomizes the composer’s life-long fascination with the intersection between words and music. About his many settings of poetry to music, Grill writes that “dating back into pre-history, poets and musicians have always been the ones to lift humanity up from the mundane and connect us with the deepest part of ourselves. I have always found the connection between words that go beyond words and music to be an inspiration. My favorite poets write words that seem to sing off the page and so setting their words to music is a necessary and natural response.” In this album, the words and notes on the page spring into life with the commanding artistry of soprano Nancy Allen Lundy, pianist Stephen Gosling, and violinist Ralph Farris. 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. Translating the words of his favorite poets into music has always been an integral part of that effort.