Seattle Symphony / Ludovic Morlot JOHN LUTHER ADAMS The Become Trilogy

THE BECOME TRILOGY

 

Seattle Symphony Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot JOHN LUTHER ADAMS Become Desert

Become Desert is the much-anticipated sequel to Adams’ Pulitzer-winning Become Ocean, and a major milestone in the creative partnership between the composer and the Seattle Symphony with Ludovic Morlot.

For Adams, who has been called “one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century” by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, the 40-minute work completes a trilogy he hadn’t intended to write, and yet it emerges as one of his most expansive and consciousness-raising musical statements to date.

In 2010, Adams created musical streams both aurally and visually with Become River. He followed with Become Ocean, which divides the orchestra into three parts to create a vast sense of undulating space and rhythm. The 2014 recording by Morlot and the Seattle Symphony debuted atop the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart, and won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

With Become Desert, space is once again a fundamental compositional element, but on a larger scale, with five different ensembles moving at five different tempos. The work features a large orchestra and choir that are deployed as five ensembles that surround the audience.

Seattle Symphony Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot JOHN LUTHER ADAMS Become Ocean

Awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music, Become Ocean is set to finally extricate John Luther Adams from the shadow of his near-namesake. In fact the two lie at polar ends of the post-minimal spectrum. JLA composes slowly evolving, monumental sound creations that seem somehow to emerge from the essence of the earth. His lifelong engagement with elemental forces and the power of nature stems from years living in the Alaskan wilderness, where he has evolved a ‘music of place’ grounded in its physical, cultural and spiritual attributes.

Surprising, therefore, that Adams’s recent composition is inspired by the sea rather than the earth. Become Ocean takes the sense of scale and space that captured the composer’s imagination when he first visited Alaska in the 1970s and applies it to the deep, dark and hidden depths of the oceans surrounding the Pacific Northwest.

This is not ersatz programmatic music, however. Adams’s ‘sonic geography’ is a by-product of what can only be described as a keenly felt musical osmosis. If ever an orchestra sounded like an immense sonic object, slowly floating across a vast area, then this must be it. Become Ocean is divided into six seven-minute segments, with each one forming a kind of slow-motion wave. Some of these waves swell up into enormous, thunderous crashes, as heard around the 21' and 35' marks, causing changes in the music’s environment – like shifting glaciers in a frozen sea. As if to demonstrate the connection, there’s also a DVD consisting of six oceanic images looped in sequence to the music.

Of course, a strong cautionary message lies behind Become Ocean. To quote the composer himself: ‘As the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean.’ (Gramophone)

Kronos Quartet MICHAEL GORDON Clouded Yellow

Over the course of a decade, Bang on a Can founding composer Michael Gordon has collaborated with the world-renowned Kronos Quartet on a series of provocative works that have sought to stretch, bend and otherwise reshape the boundaries of modern classical music. Clouded Yellow assembles these works for the first time, perfectly encapsulating the breadth and complexity of this long-standing creative partnership. For the past thirty years, Michael Gordon has produced a strikingly diverse body of work, ranging from large-scale pieces for high-energy ensembles to major orchestral commissions to works conceived specifically for the recording studio. Transcending categorization, the music represents the collision of mysterious introspection and brutal directness. Gordon’s music merges subtle rhythmic invention with incredible power embodying, in the words of The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism.”

Ars Nova Copenhagen / Paul Hillier FIRST DROP

Conducted by Paul Hillier since 2003, Denmark’s Ars Nova Copenhagen has built an immovable reputation as one of the world’s most versatile and inventive vocal ensembles. First Drop is testament to that spirit; it’s a wide-ranging and ambitious project that interprets the choral work of some of the giants of contemporary classical music, including Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Louis Andriessen, Michael Gordon, David Lang and more. 

 “Almost all the works on this CD are first recordings,” Hillier explains, referring to one source of inspiration behind the title. “Ideally we wanted the idea of First Drop to remain ambiguous, but the diligent listener will sooner or later notice that it originates with Ralph Waldo Emerson.” 

Recorded over a stretch of nearly ten years, in different locations and with different configurations of singers, the performances documented here still come across as parts of a seamless whole. From the haunting strains of Michael Gordon’s “He Saw A Skull” (composed specifically for the 12 voices of Ars Nova) to Hillier’s vocal arrangement of Steve Reich’s classic “Clapping Music,” First Drop channels a vernal energy that’s unparalleled in new vocal music.

DAVID LANG Child

According to the composer, the five works on David Lang's 2003 recording Child constitute an "attempt to examine certain experiences as I remember (and misremember) them from my childhood. Each individual movement is in some way a memory of how I learned to do something." For this recording, Lang gathered the separately commissioned but closely affined pieces into a suite for a varied ensemble of winds, strings, piano, and percussion, presented here by the Italian chamber ensemble Sentieri Selvaggi. Lang clearly draws on the repeated patterns and static harmonic fields of minimalism, but reduces the volume almost throughout to a restless murmur (save in the frenetic pianistic patter of Short Fall). The extramusical associations of the works range widely: a half-forgotten mnemonic memory device for the order of the planets lends its title -- as well as its gentle orbital feel and lack of closure -- to My Very Empty Mouth, the subtle intoxication of the dentist's laughing gas is invoked by the undulating woodwinds in Sweet Air, and the structural contours of Stick Figure are reduced to simple lines of sustained notes with sudden percussive strokes marking off its spare features. The streamlined yet lyrical nature of this music is complemented by the intimate, subtly articulated recording. (Jeremy Grimshaw)

Sentieri Selvaggi plays GAVIN BRYARS & PHILIP GLASS

Sentieri Selvaggi, made up of some of the brightest young Italian musicians to emerge around the turn of the millennium, has devoted itself to a wide range of contemporary music, ranging stylistically from Glass to Stockhausen. The two eight-minute pieces recorded here are taken from the full-length 1999 album Musica Coelestis, which included 12 pieces. The outstanding sound is clean and the instruments are vividly differentiated. The performance of the Glass is a reminder of the variety of interpretations that can be brought to minimalist repertoire. Glass and his ensemble perform Façades with rhythmic strictness, but with linear expressiveness; in fact, it comes across as one of the composer's more overtly emotional pieces. Sentieri Selvaggi performs it with absolute strictness with both rhythmic and dynamic contours. This makes for a square-ish performance, but it works on its own terms. It also tends to be somewhat bass-heavy, which has the advantage of making Glass' subtle changes in the lower string parts clearly audible. Bryars' Sub Rosa, for an unusually quirky ensemble of timbrally disparate instruments, is something of a remix for live performers of "Throughout," a song from Bill Frisell's 1984 album, In Line. Sentieri Selvaggi's recording is superior to Bryars' own murky version largely because of the splendidly clear sound quality that allows the strangeness of the ensemble to be savored and wondered at. It's a short CD, but one that should interest fans of Bryars and Glass. (Stephen Eddins)

Andrew Zolinsky DAVID LANG this was written by hand

On his new album from Cantaloupe Music, this was written by hand, David Lang treats the piano alternately as a eulogizer and as a medium to commune with the departed. Pianist Andrew Zolinsky’s technique is well suited to tastefully render these finely wrought improvisatory pieces, to sound out the meditative character of Lang’s postminimalism. The range of piano articulation presented here stretches from use of the instrument as pitched percussion all the way to liquid, dulcet burbles. Piano music in the contemporary classical world often embraces jazz tropes, or world music idioms, or past stylistic genres. Lang’s piano voice sometimes recalls the phase music of Reich but is for the most part quite original in its complete metrical flexibility (or complete lack of meter in some cases, it seems), and in the way it exhaustively explores all the possibilities of a spare musical form. The tracks here are all character pieces in my opinion. There are no grand statements; on the contrary, the prevailing voice is one of personal introspection, without a hint of sentimentality.

“this was written by hand” opens with a rising white-note motif, bubbling up and echoed upon itself to create a lush texture. Simple modal recitatives sound in the piano’s upper register. Eventually a voice in the tenor range takes tentative steps toward more chromatic territory, fleshing out austere impressions of tone. The piece was the composer’s attempt to revisit the act of writing without the convenience of a computer. It certainly flaunts its agogic freedom. The succession of notes seems to fold back upon itself before having a chance to establish any kind of conventional melody, so bashful are the various voices. The overall impression is of a blinded creature, resigned to slowly feeling about in the dark to find its way. The composition, whose subject is the artistic process itself, has a cunning metatextuality in spite of its chaste tonal garb. The piano is an old soul; it predates automobiles, let alone computers. It is thus fitting that the piano should eulogize that lost time, before the banality of comfort and connectivity in the digital age. (Rob Wendt)

Anonymous 4 DAVID LANG Love Fail

Composed by David Lang, love fail is a meditation on the timelessness of love that weaves together details from the story of Tristan and Isolde with more modern sources. The recording also spotlights the singular and magical sound of the vocal quartet Anonymous 4, whose longstanding commitment to medieval music and historical scholarship has been acclaimed worldwide. The music and libretto pull together narratives of love from such sources as Lydia Davis, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Béroul, Thomas of Britain and Richard Wagner. love fail was commissioned by The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2012 Next Wave Festival, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, The John F. Kennedy Center Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, The Wake Forest University/Secrest Artists Series, and Hancher Performances at the University of Iowa.

Reviewing the BAM performance for the New York Times, Anthony Tommasini wrote: “It was Mr. Lang’s music, and the ethereal, pure-toned singing of Anonymous 4, that claimed me in the first section of the piece, which begins with the line ‘he was a blessed man.’”

In his liner notes, David Lang poses the question: “It’s ‘the greatest love story ever!’ But why? Of course, there is excitement, drama, love, lust, shame, death, dragons. I think the real reason is because the love of Tristan and Isolde begins by accident—they drink a love potion. They didn’t mean to drink it, and they didn’t mean to fall in love. They drink and—BAM!—it starts. It’s 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.”

The recording of love fail was supported by New Music USA, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Doris Duke Performing Artists Awards, and was made possible by annual program support and / or endowment gifts from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

Nico Muhly / Owen Pallett / Bryce Dessner / Shara Worden DAVID LANG Death Speaks

Death is present in so many of Schubert's lieder, and those appearances provide the starting point for the five songs that make up David Lang's Death Speaks. Lang went through the 600-plus texts that Schubert set, extracting all the lines that are either attributed explicitly to death, or to characters representing him, translating them "roughly" into English and creating lovesong-like lyrics. The settings are wonderfully spare and insistent, with accompaniments from guitar, piano and violin. Shara Worden, lead singer of My Brightest Diamond, is the vocalist, recorded in a close perspective, while the other work on the disc, Depart, offers a very different kind meditation on death. It was commissioned to be played in a French morgue, a peaceful setting in which the bereaved could see their loved ones for the last time. A sequence of slowly changing drones for wordless women's voices and cello, makes the perfect foil for Lang's naggingly memorable songs. (Andrew Clements / The Guardian)

Maya Beiser / Michael Harrison TIME LOOPS

The mysterious power of music has intrigued thinkers across the centuries. Plato described a universe in which Sirens situated atop the rings of the cosmic whorl each sing a single note from a great scale, together producing concords that can transport mortals to the heavenly regions. In our own time we tend to use other metaphors to explain the phenomenon -- with terms like "brain scan" and "beta-endorphins" -- but when listening to an exquisite piece of music, who could deny the emotional truth of Plato's vision?
Perhaps we respond so forcefully because, as Clement of Alexandria put it, the human body is itself a musical instrument. That was the view not only of the ancient Greeks but also of the Indian masters who strongly influenced Michael Harrison's musical development. Both proposed deep connections between the arrangements of tones and the human condition, and pointed to the most fundamental musical relationships -- those defined by Pythagoras in "whole number" proportions, as when strings vibrate in the ratio of 2:1, or 3:2, or 4:3 -- as being endowed with special qualities.
These comprise the tuning known as "just intonation," and generate the musical alchemy found throughout this intoxicatingly beautiful recording. In Just Ancient Loops, says cellist Maya Beiser, these unique musical relationships allow the sound of the cello to shimmer and bounce. "It's as if you are turning all the artificial lights off and just letting the rays of sunlight into your space," she says. In her recording and concert collaborations, Ms. Beiser has sought to redefine the traditional boundaries of the cello, opening new sonic possibilities for human expression. In this collaboration, Beiser and Harrison's musical and spiritual worlds converge.
"Michael's music is perfect for our times," Beiser observes. "It's architectural and precise, yet exhilarating and beautiful. It draws on music from ancient Greece and the Renaissance, Indian ragas and minimalism." This project is just the latest example of Michael Harrison's remarkable path, which has wound its way through compositional possibilities outside the modern Western canon and the denatured sounds of its modern tuning system. In his landmark piano work Revelation, he used "very small but perfectly tuned microtonal intervals to create a sound world of sustaining, pulsing" and kaleidoscopic effects. "With Time Loops, I'm demonstrating the simpler and more harmonious aspects of just intonation," he says. "As a result the tunings on the CD don't push the boundaries, but rather they sound clearer and more direct than the normal equal tempered scale that is used in most Western music."