ALBUM REVIEW: Turtle Island Quartet’s Confetti Man

Posted on April 13, 2015 by maestrobeats

According to Native American folklore, Sky Woman fell down to the Earth long ago, back when it was entirely covered by water. Realizing that she could not survive in the water, the surrounding sea creatures dug up dirt from the bottom of the ocean in order to create land for her. They placed this dirt on the shell of a giant turtle—and eventually this turtle grew into Turtle Island, the land known today as North America.

This tale is a powerful symbol not only for creation, spirituality, and environmental awareness, but also for coexistence and community. It is a story which celebrates and synthesizes both old and new cultural traditions—a broader theme which the Turtle Island Quartet strives to explore through their music.

The Turtle Island Quartet is a Grammy Award-winning ensemble whose innovative and eclectic sound infuses a classical string quartet aesthetic with contemporary musical influences such as jazz, folk, funk, be-bop, bluegrass, Latin American groove, and Indian classical.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the quartet is comprised of violinists David Balakrishnan and Mateusz Smoczynski, violist Benjamin von Gutzeit, and cellist Mark Summer. Since the group’s inception in 1985, they have cultivated a vast and wide-ranging repertoire consisting primarily of original compositions and arrangements by quartet members.

And after 30 years as an ensemble, the group certainly has cause for celebration: they recently released their 15^th studio album, “Confetti Man.” The 10-track disc is a collection of original compositions, arrangements, and commissioned works.

The two-movement title track, written by Balakrishnan, integrates elements of classical with jazz, bluegrass, folk, and even a touch of Indian musical influences. The dynamic mixture of musical styles from across history (and across the world!) is meant to reflect the computer age, where everything is fast-paced and at our fingertips. Inspired by his wife’s painting depicted on the album cover, the piece explores a wide range of vibrant melodic material, as if traveling through a musical museum of different cultures and time periods, often blurring the line between musical traditions past and present, near and far.

The title track is followed up with “Windspan,” written for the quartet by the famous saxophonist Bob Mintzer of the Yellowjackets. As one might expect, the piece harnesses a bold, big band sound featuring some seriously saxophone-like string solos brimming with slides, glides, and bona fide jazz grooves.

Another jazzy showpiece is “La Jicotea,” which was written for the quartet by renowned clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera—a musician who is celebrated as much for his artistry in Latin jazz as for his achievements in the classical music realm. The piece combines both of these strengths, mixing Latin American grooves in unusual meters with a carefully-crafted polyphonic soundscape featuring imaginative musical textures and timbres.

The sweetest and most charming song on the album, though, is certainly Turtle Island’s rendition of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic “Send Me No Flowers,” featuring the inimitable Nellie McKay on vocals and ukulele. McKay’s sugary sweet, ’60s-tinged vocals float effortlessly above a darling and delicate string accompaniment.

Another piece with plenty of personality is Balakrishnan’s “Alex in A Major,” which was inspired by his next-door neighbor’s son. The charming and youthful main theme illustrates the boy’s playful and sassy nature, and the piece features both Balakrishnan and Smoczynski as dueling bluegrass fiddlers.

In all, Turtle Island’s “Confetti Man” is a charming and charismatic fusion of imaginatively diverse musical styles, a beautiful reminder that musical traditions old and new can still exist in perfect harmony.

ALBUM REVIEW: Tristan Perich’s Parallels

Posted on April 6, 2015 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

For many composers, a little bit of musical material can go a long way. For New York-based composer and sound artist Tristan Perich, even just 1-bit has a world of musical potential.

Throughout his career, Perich has created a variety of innovative works combining 1-bit electronics with traditional forms in both music and visual art. But what exactly is 1-bit? Perich describes it as music that never has more than one bit of information being played at any given time.

“In my work with 1-bit music, the audio waveforms are streams of 1s and 0s, on and off pulses of electricity that the audio speaker turns into sound,” Perich said. “I build my own circuits to make the connection between code and sound as direct as possible.”

Among Perich’s most famous 1-bit works is his 2004 composition “1-Bit Music,” the first album ever released as a microchip programmed to perform an entire electronic composition live. The piece takes the form of an electronic circuit assembled inside a transparent CD case—and the microchip performs the music through a headphone jack attached to the case itself. (Perich later created an entire “1-Bit Symphony,” also housed inside a single CD case.)

His latest musical venture? A series of four imaginatively packaged recordings, each featuring a single work composed for 1-bit electronics and acoustic instruments. The collection, titled “Compositions,” artfully captures Perich’s background in music, math, computer science, and visual art.

Each recording is set to be released individually throughout this calendar year, beginning with the March release of Perich’s “Parallels,” the first composition in the series. The piece is scored for tuned triangles, hi-hats, and 1-bit electronics, a fascinating combination of timbres which pushes the boundaries of music and sound art.

The recording features a performance by the Meehan/Perkins Duo, comprised of percussionists Todd Meehan and Doug Perkins. The sonic interaction between human hands playing instruments and computer codes generating tones creates a truly mesmerizing electroacoustic soundscape.

(Buy the album on iTunes)

Furthermore, the piece echoes an intriguing theme present in many of Perich’s artistic works: the intersection between music and math, mere mortal and machine. For Perich, the physical aspect of performance (by both human and computer) is a crucial component of his artistic vision.

“Similar to performance, computation itself is a physical process, so these compositions are essentially duets between human and machine, explorations of this soundmaking process,” he said.

“Parallels” seeks to draw comparisons between the duality of 1-bit sound (on vs. off) with the duality of tuned triangles and hi-hats (open vs. closed timbres)—hence the title. The 50-minute piece restlessly experiments with a unique fusion of pure 1-bit tones combined with pitched and unpitched percussive sounds. With rhythmic verve and mathematical precision, the music skitters, jitters, and glitches, relentlessly oscillating between tone and noise.

If you’re looking for a little bit more Perich, stay tuned for the rest of the “Composition” series. Next in the collection is “Telescope” for two bass clarinets, two baritone saxophones, and 1-bit electronics, followed by “Dual Synthesis” for harpsichord and 1-bit electronics, and “Active Field” for 10 violins and 1-bit electronics. Each installment of the series (including “Parallels”) comes as a CD package with a poster-sized print of the entire musical score.

In itself, “Parallels” is a hypnotic fusion of creativity, code, and computer science—an imaginative glimpse into the intersection of music and mathematics. And in a world full of composers competing for novelty and innovation, Perich has certainly made a name for himself as a 1-bit wonder.

ALBUM REVIEW: Missy Mazzoli’s Vespers for a New Dark Age

Posted on March 30, 2015 by maestrobeats

by Jill Kimball
These days, there’s not much room for mystery. Thanks to technology, we can learn someone’s whole life story on the internet before a first date. We can walk the streets of far-flung cities without leaving the couch. There’s even a machine that connects with our brains and sketches out visual scenes from our dreams.

Composer Missy Mazzoli wonders whether there’s still room for the supernatural in our increasingly technological world, which she calls a “new dark age.” She explores that question in her latest album, Vespers for a New Dark Age.

In the last Dark Ages, we marveled in the mystery of a higher power and prayed in music-centered vesper services at church. Mazzoli’s album places the traditional vesper service in a 21st-century context, using contemporary poetry instead of liturgical readings, and mixing electronic music with human-powered sounds, including vocals by Roomful of Teeth, instrumentals by her orchestra Victoire, and percussion by Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche.

The resulting sound is wonderfully otherworldly, borrowing the best aspects of liturgical choral music, avant-garde electronica, and new age, and tying them all together. One of Missy Mazzoli’s greatest strengths as a composer is her ability to paint a unique, vivid musical picture, and she has certainly done that here.

Another of her strengths is finding original, incredibly thought-provoking text to set to music. Here, she has set excerpts of pointedly secular poems by Matthew Zapruder, which juxtapose oddly but beautifully with the rigid structure of a musical church service.

Zapruder clearly believes our gradual departure from the rituals and mysteries of religion is directly related to advancements in technology. He dismisses as archaic the idea that his thoughts and actions have cosmic consequences. Yet he still acknowledges that there’s some comfort in believing in the supernatural, especially in difficult times. (“Come on all you ghosts, / we need you, winter is not / through with us.” And, “I know you can hear me / I know you are here / I have heard you cough / and sigh.”)

Over the course of eight movements, the sounds of three ethereal vocalists combine with a few instrumental musicians and a bit of electronically-produced mixing to ask a question: what happens when spirituality meets technology? The answer is fuzzy, but some things are certain: In this age, we’re less inclined to accept mystery. But when life gets hard, or when we’re so mired in technology that we forget about human relationships (“I need things / no one can buy / and don’t even know / what they are”), we’d still like to believe there’s something out there that’s bigger than us.

That something doesn’t necessarily have to be a deity. It could just be a great piece of music…like this one.

ALBUM REVIEW: Ólafur Arnalds’ “The Chopin Project”

Posted on March 23, 2015 by maestrobeats

by Rachele Hales

Ólafur Arnalds popped up on my radar in 2009 when he started a project of writing a new composition every day for a week and immediately made each one available online. The compositions were later officially released in the collection “Found Songs.” He did not undertake the same experiment for his latest release, The Chopin Project, instead teasing his fans with mysterious updates via Twitter along with his coconspirator/barefoot pianist extraordinaire, Alice Sara Ott. For Arnalds fans the waiting was agony, but all good things…

As a youngster playing in hardcore/metal bands, Arnalds frequently visited his grandmother and was exposed to classical music in her home. “She would always make me listen to Chopin,” he writes in the liner notes, “if it had been my parents forcing classical music down my throat at that time in my life I probably would have puked on their face. But, I guess out of respect for my grandmother, I always listened with her and slowly it started to grow on me.” After his grandmother passed away the Chopin-shaped fragment of his heart was aching to be expressed.

All Chopin recordings sounded the same to him. With nearly all classical recordings focused on capturing a perfect performance and using technology to process that performance into something so polished it no longer feels authentic, Arnalds questioned why technology itself was never used as part of the interpretation. “Why can’t the microphones, the room – the sound – also be a performer? Why would all of these factors need to stay invisible? And why would a ‘good’ classical piano sound naturally have to be the silvery, brilliant concert grand sound that we have on classical recordings today [when] we know that pianos of the 19th century sounded so very different?” Armed with a pocketful of excellent questions and a mission to break the norm, he partnered with Ott and together they explored Reykjavik searching for vintage recording equipment, unusual pianos, and venues that would act as performers themselves in Arnalds & Ott’s interpretations. Then came the recording.

“Verses” is our introduction to the album. It’s a new composition by Arnalds that borrows from Chopin’s “Piano Sonata No. 3 (Largo),” which immediately follows as track 2. You know how when you were in junior high sometimes you bought a new album that you loved so much you didn’t even want to tell anyone about it? You just locked your door and stayed in your bedroom all night, lying in your bed, reading the liner notes, listening to the album over and over? “Verses” is exactly like that. It is intimate and sad with the trademark Arnalds atmosphere and makes you just want to stay inside journaling for hours and hours.

The entire album has that quality – it’s just one glorious, delicate piece after another. From the gentle shoosh-shoosh in “Reminiscence” (during which there’s a point where you can even hear a performer taking in breath) to the distant chatter and rainfall heard in “Nocturne in G Minor,” the recordings make the listener feel close to the piano – in the same room, even – and so very close to the music. Several tracks use Chopin as a jumping off point, which turns the album as a whole into a dreamlike story arc you wish would never end.

Be sure to purchase this album if you like what you hear!

ALBUM REVIEW: Michael Gordon’s “Dystopia”

Posted on March 9, 2015 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Stapleton

Of all the modern late 20^th and early 21^st century repertoire out there, it can take a lot to stand out. Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon’s Dystopia succeeds, particularly in two of the areas Second Inversion loves to focus on – rethinking the past and paying homage.

The title track is one of many collaborative projects between Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. They all encapsulate the aura of cities (Los Angeles as the focus here) and in all of these works the music is composed first and the film is conceptualized to fit the score. Bill’s video combines new and old footage from the streets of Los Angeles, as far back as some 1898 footage by Thomas Edison! Here’s an excerpt, courtesy of Cantaloupe Records:

Even without the film, Dystopia provides a “choose your own adventure” visual experience. I recommend you press play, close your eyes, and let the expansive color palette create a journey – whether it’s 90mph traffic ride through LA, a ride on a New York City subway, a motorcycle ride on winding mountain roads. The possibilities are endless.

It truly is a ride that is full speed ahead for eight and a half solid minutes, winds down for a few minutes, and revs back up, ebbing and flowing (like traffic and bumps in the road that slow us down. Flat tire? Overheated engine? We’ve all been there..) throughout the piece.

Gordon combines sounds and textures that offer freshness to the orchestral repertoire. He “explores the gray areas between harmony and dissonance,” which comes to me as enhanced, nuanced, and varied sounds for the orchestra. It’s the most exciting and engaging 30 minutes of music I’ve experienced in a long time.

Many composers pay tribute to those who have inspired or taught them. Gordon says, “Beethoven’s brutish and loud music has always inspired me… At the time it was written, it was probably the loudest music on the planet.” Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was a commission from the Beethovenfest Bonn in 2006 and Gordon utilized one element from each of the original symphony: “From the first movement, I couldn’t resist working with the huge barbaric opening chords. From the second movement, I took the divine and other-worldly theme, adjusting it slightly so that when it ends, it is in a key one half-step higher. The theme continues to cycle around and slowly spirals up. From the third movement, I lifted the background accompaniment and brought it to the foreground. From the fourth movement I used the main theme.”

This homage to Beethoven is so curiously engaging. The retained elements are very apparent from the first chord, which is totally a “fooled ya!” moment as it meows down to dissonance. Throughout the entire piece, the push & pull and transformation of the themes and harmonies fight my ears to hear Beethoven’s original in Gordon’s re-write. It’s as if the notes were tossed up in the air with excellent care, floating and mingling with one another, crisscrossing to land in brand new worlds of musical excitement. I highly recommend this mind-bending piece for an eyebrow-raising, intriguing listening experience.

For a Michael Gordon bonus, I would be remiss without redirecting you to our in-studio performance by Bang on a Can All-Star, Ashley Gordon: