There seems to be no limit to the novel or unusual instrumental combinations and colors composers of contemporary chamber music are willing to explore. That there is a broad world of timbre out there even for the smallest ensemble is brought out in this recording of eight works by five composers for the unconventional duo of trumpet and percussion, played by Jon Nelson and Tom Kolor, respectively.
Nelson and Kolor’s collaboration announces itself with the opening trumpet summons of Moshe Shulman’s Secret Messages II. The piece is scored for trumpet with mutes accompanied by a percussion array of wine cups, table knife, and plastic water bottle, and is structured as an elaborately textured game of call-and-response between the two players. for vibraphone and trumpet, one of two compositions by Dave Ballou—himself a fine trumpeter—is an essentially contrapuntal work, albeit in a stealthy way. The two instruments play long-sustained tones against each other—asymmetrically, given the difference in duration between the length of a breath and the shorter loiter time of a struck note—alternating with more conventionally melodic line-against-line playing. Cuban-American composer Dafnis Prieto’s Trail of Memories, a lyrically engaging work, has a loose, improvised feel to much of it, possibly reflecting the composer’s work as a jazz drummer. And yet passages are tightly scored, with Nelson and Kolor converging on unison lines in a pleasingly unexpected way. Fittingly, Kolor is featured here on drum kit as well as mallet percussion. Like Prieto’s piece Jeffrey Stadelman’s Koral #18, one of three pieces represented here from his Koral series of short works, alludes to a genre from outside the world of art music, in this case through the interplay of trumpet with castanets and guiros. Stadelman’s Koral #17 is a solo for muted trumpet, one of two solo trumpet pieces. The second, Ballou’s Samskara, is a beautifully melodic, introspective soliloquy for the instrument that, perhaps, only a trumpeter could compose. Kolor, for his part, solos on Stadelman’s Koral #1, a work for percussionist and electronics. The album’s closing piece, Ice Fishing in Kanona by Emil Harnas 2, also an electroacoustic work, leverages various forms of synthesis and other effects to alienate the sounds of the acoustic instruments in dramatically compelling ways.
Daniel Barbiero
Avant Music News 