Author: thomasamcgee

Samuel Andreyev’s new album release, Iridescent Notation, comprises works that span his entire compositional career, from his first published work to his most recent work Iridescent Notation, a cantata featuring the poetry of Tom Raworth.  The album is characterized by shifts between pure, ethereal passages, like mobiles or paintings, and noisier passages that evoke urban scenes.  For context, the ‘ethereal’ sections share similarities with Boulez’s Notations for Piano, or Takemitsu, while the ‘noisy’ sections are more comparable to Varese’s Ameriques.  This stylistic difference acts in symbiosis with Raworth’s poetry: while Raworth often writes about the commonplace, his poems simultaneously have an introspective quality and an outward profundity.  

The pieces in this album are often multi-layered and complex, while also retaining a great degree of clarity and conciseness.  This has just as much to do with Andreyev’s compositional technique as it does with the excellent balance and sound spatialization executed by conductor Luigi Gaggiero, the performers of the Ukho Ensemble, and sound engineer Andrii Mokrytskyi. 

The compositions in Iridescent Notation prioritize interactions between instruments, with an acute sensitivity to timbre and spatiality.  While some of the pieces in the album have a somewhat large instrumentation, one is never presented with a muddy orchestration, or an impermeable wall of cinematic-sounding orchestral music.  Instead, each instrumental detail serves a specific role and occupies a part of the musical space.  In this way, pieces like A Propos du La Conciert de la Semaine Derniere and Iridescent Notation are similar to Webern’s Op. 10.  Broadly, the pieces are gestural and mesmerizing on the surface level, and it generally takes multiple listens before one can comprehend the trajectories and interactions between passages that allow each piece to fully manifest itself.    

Some pieces make reference to Andreyev’s other works, both by localized sonic moments and in a broader, structural sense.  A dichotomous organization in I. The inventor Projected, recalls his piece Verifications: I., which is arranged in a diptych that juxtaposes a rapidly shifting passage with a more drawn-out, restful passage.  This sort of organization has a unique psychological effect on our time perception–the presentation of differing rates of novel information literally affects how we perceive time.  While this effect is certainly a striking feature of the music, the more lasting quality is one’s complete immersion in the music, and a sense of the music living.  The presence of the Casio SK-1 keyboard in Iridescent Notation creates another parallel with Verifications, Andreyev’s only other piece to use the instrument. 

Soprano (Maren Shwier) and first violinist (Rachel Koblyakov) are particularly commendable performers in this album.  Shwier shows control and expressivity throughout Iridescent Notation.  Her performance in VI. Come Back, Come Back, O Glittering and White is extremely beautiful, and she handles the wild juxtapositions in movement IV. with ease.  Koblyakov breathes an organic, timbral instability into sul ponticello harmonics in V. Pressing, Turning and manages to make runs of notes expand and bulge in a surreal way.  Dina Pysarenko’s performance on piano in A Propos du La Conciert de la Semaine Derniere must be mentioned as well.  Her sense of balance–making notes appear as inflections of others, as well as her ability to make a sustained note carry through a phrase and resurface–brings out details that are essential to this piece.  

As a fan of Andreyev’s music for many years, Iridescent Notation is one of his most captivating pieces yet, and the Ukho Ensemble gives vibrant performances of his previously-recorded pieces.  

Léa Boudreau’s new album Chaos Contrôlé includes sounds created solely through the ‘bending’ of circuits in electronic toys.  The music in Chaos Contrôlé is glitchy and paroxysmal in an extremely attention-grabbing way. While the compositional process used in this project would seem to pose significant limitations, this does not impede Boudreau in any way: she manages to create unbelievably imaginative sonic objects and to retain great control in manipulating these sounds.  

The sounds in the album are at once playful, colorful, and abrasive–somewhat like a musical embodiment of Trenton Doyle Hancock’s artwork.  Aggressive percussive forces, paired with children’s songs, create a dark and sardonic tone. While this comical element is present throughout the album, Boudreau does more than simply express a type of creepy humor.  The album addresses themes of childhood, blending the perspectives of child and parent by including titles that imply a parent’s advice to his or her child, and other titles and musical elements that express a child’s wonder.  Some of the themes are historically specific, while others are universal–Boudreau addresses anxieties and naiveté.

While the incorporation of toys and distorted children’s songs is novel and interesting in this album, many other evocative textures emerge throughout the work.  Retro synthesizers and video game sounds interact and are layered upon one another, creating visual and cultural associations. Computerized, swarm-like textures in Amies imaginaires (et autres incomprises) seem reminiscent of the impulsions from Stockhausen’s Gesang Der Jünglinge.  This album is a ‘song of the youth’ in a different way however, in its incorporation of toys and children’s songs, and more generally in Boudreau’s fresh and relevant perspective.  Amid the digital chaos of the album, there are beautiful waning moments, like in How to navigate through social anxiety in 3 easy steps. In this piece, contemplative harmonies are meditated on, and there are even some impressionistic sonorities that quell the musical landscape.  

Overall, Chaos Contrôlé is a decidedly experimental album that expands the classical electronic music canon in a very interesting way.  This is an exciting and imaginative project that I am sure I will return to many times in the future.  

Each piece in Steven Mackey’s album Time Release demonstrates his ability to incorporate varied and imaginative orchestral textures and gestures into a cohesive narrative. Mackey’s music has neo-romantic elements, comprising gestural melodic expression and dialectical forms.  He largely uses extended tonality with chromaticism. However, there are frequent non-diatonic and polytonal interjections that are vaguely reminiscent of Charles Ives’ music, as well as textural sections with disorienting pitch content. Notably, Mackey employs these extended tonal sonorities without sounding trite or cinematic.  The well-balanced and masterful orchestration of Mackey’s music is handled equally masterfully by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s performance of the work.

Gestural polyrhythms and momentary metric modulations in Mackey’s piece Time Release create a sense of time morphing, possibly reflecting the album’s title.  In Time Release: I. Stately – Short/Long, the percussion assumes more than an ornery role, with wood blocks, various earthy percussion instruments and hanging cymbals creating a textured groove and rhythmic dialogue.  This is one high point of the album: a refined percussion groove, ornamented with refreshing pitches from the marimba, progresses over swaying and shifting string gestures. Later in the piece, marimba solos are accompanied by a contrapuntal string melody.  This unique instrumental combination continuously returns throughout Time Release and adds levity to the piece.  As Time Release unfolds, different instruments such as the clarinet and horn are given soloistic autonomy.  The marimba continues to engage in compelling dialogue with the orchestra and various soloistic forces throughout the piece.  

Another high point of the album is Mackey’s piece Urban Ocean, in which suspended coloristic moments (the piece’s beginning, for example) are incorporated into the narrative of the piece.  These are interesting timbral and harmonic moments–bearing a vague resemblance to some spectral music–in which Mackey forms unique acoustic presentations by combining the various symphonic forces.  Other pieces in Time Release are recognizably ‘Mackey’ for their expressive, tuneful melodies, as well as their transient, shifting tone and atmosphere.  

While Mackey is known to incorporate elements of rock music into his compositions, this album only somewhat reflects that aspect of his work.  The album does, however, have some sections which evoke rock as well as other musical genres: the widespread use of the clave, an Afro-Cuban rhythmic pattern (Turn The Key), as well as an energetic, rock-infused percussion solo (Time Release: II. Playful Turbulence – Slow/Fast), display Mackey’s interest for musical styles that are commonly untouched in contemporary classical music.  

Clarinetist and electroacoustic composer Andrea Cheeseman achieves a remarkable range of sonorities and atmospheres from the clarinet and recorded sound in “Somewhere,” while achieving a common aesthetic throughout the album.  Cheeseman’s clarinet lines are often of main focus in these pieces: verdant, thoughtful melodic lines evoke Stravinsky and Bartok.  Cheeseman frequently employs recognizable sonic samples, along with disfigured percussion with industrial qualities.  Her use of panning effects and attention to register creates tangible layers of depth and dimension.  These effects sometimes border on the cinematic.  

To highlight the range of sounds and techniques Cheeseman uses, in one song human breathing, accompanying the clarinet, transforms into currents of rattling sound. A Gnawa-like groove consisting of sampled weaving loom sounds drives Penelope’s Song forward, while processed bird calls appear in another piece.  Breath has a fascinating celestial atmosphere reminiscent of Gamelan music, with a vaporized mosaic of microtonal pitches.   

While recorded sound and polystylism are important aspects of “Somewhere,” Cheeseman also creates interest using more basic musical elements.  Arioso Doubles opens with clarinet lines that metamorphose into shimmering feedback, which sometimes harmonize with the clarinet.  Cheeseman’s clarinet lines are often angular and tonally disorienting, yet they retain an organic quality.  Moments appear in Ariosa Doubles that could render the piece polystylistic: accompanied by a rich timbral sheet of processed harmony, one section of the piece sounds like a reminiscence of folk music—bare, yet honest and evocative.  Cheeseman transitions back to more complex pitch organizations after this simple melodic section.  

The folk music sonority found in Ariosa Doubles reappears throughout the album, most distinctly in the piece Favorable Odds. Pentatonic clarinet lines create impressionistic atmospheres that morph into sounds of English folk music.  Favorable Odds is certainly polystylistic:  The pentatonic opening transitions to an unquantized stammering of electronic blips and buzzes, which turns into a forward driving groove with bluesy clarinet lines.  While this sounds like an impossible conglomeration of sonorities, the piece has a striking amount of integrity. 

The juxtaposition of musical styles, including adapted world music styles, urges the listener to develop a narrative about the relationship between the eras and cultures belonging to each style.  The episodic arrangement of different styles creates potential for a rich polyvalence of narratives, which could involve topics like technological progression and nature, or globalization.  From a purely aesthetic perspective, Cheeseman’s album contrasts sonorities that are distinctive and compelling in order to create elaborate sound environments.  

Thomas McGee