Second Inversion’s Top 5 Album Reviews of 2016

You can count on Second Inversion for Album Reviews of the latest and greatest new releases. These are the top 5 most popular reviews of 2016!

#5: Jessie Montgomery: Strum (Azica)

download-26The album combines classical chamber music with elements of folk music, spirituals, improvisation, poetry, and politics, crafting a unique and insightful newmusic perspective on the cross-cultural intersections of American history. And while this album may just be the beginning for Montgomery, “Strum” certainly echoes with possibility. – Maggie Molloy


#4: Northwestern University Cello Ensemble: Shadow, Echo, Memory (Sono Luminus)

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As the album continues onward from the Rachmaninov through the Mahler, it becomes clear that the Ensemble has achieved their purported goal of using the cello to express textures of dark and light, bring to life sounds and images from another time, and finally to aid listeners in revisiting their own histories. It does indeed provide a fascinating, haunting individual experience to those who are up for a little soul-searching. – Brendan Howe


#3: Contact: Discreet Music by Brian Eno (Cantaloupe Music)

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As performers, Contact makes the music their own—and as listeners, so do we. With precision, patience, and the utmost reverence, Contact recreates Eno’s ambient masterwork as an echo chamber of circling motives and mismatched musical textures. Each ripple of the repetitious melody is a perfectly crafted piece of the larger pattern, a discreet but unique little gem in and of itself. – Maggie Molloy


#2: Boston Modern Orchestra Project: Mason Bates’ Mothership (BMOP/Sound)

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Part of what makes this music great is its versatility: it’s at home in so many different settings, from the venerated orchestral concert hall, to the sweaty dance club, to your living room on a Tuesday night. – Geoffrey Larson


#1: Pink Floyd: “Wish You Were Here” Symphonic featuring Alice Cooper with the London Orion Orchestra (Decca)

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Fans of Pink Floyd will definitely enjoy the musical fantasia of Wish You Were Here Symphonic.  Those who are less familiar with Pink Floyd will also find a lot to love in this recording.  You listen to this album for the symphonic arrangements and in every way they deliver.

This was Smith’s first go at producing an album by himself and I’d call it a great success.  I hope to hear symphonic versions of Pink Floyd’s other classics in the future.  Hint hint, Pete Smith.  Tell us, where will you go from Here? – Rachele Hales

STAFF PICKS: Friday Faves

Second Inversion hosts and community members share a favorite selection from this Friday’s playlist and a few other gems, too. Tune in at the indicated times below on Friday, April 29 to hear these pieces. In the meantime, you’ll hear other great new and unusual music from all corners of the classical genre 24/7!

Nina Simone: Stars from Little Girl Blue (Naive Records)

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Elton John named one of his pianos after her,  Beyoncé cited her as a strong musical influence, and in 2014 cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton released an entire album dedicated to offering Nina Simone the voice of her cello. That album is Little Girl Blue, and we’re featuring one of the pieces from said album that I admire most: “Stars.” The bare texture of “Stars” gives it a sober atmosphere, yet it is a passionate piece that keeps building up. – Rachele Hales

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 8am hour today to hear this recording.


Donnacha Dennehy: Stainless Staining from Stainless Staining; Lisa Moore, piano (Cantaloupe Music)

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This is a busy time of year. Personally, I have lately been in the mood to just keep my head down and focus on the tasks at hand. The vacations and summer plans are all arranged, but right now, there’s work to be done. My pick for this week is music that supports such a mindset: Donnacha Dennehy’s Stainless Staining. The intricate rhythmic modulations and evolving motives here are the perfect soundtrack for taking care of business. This is not surprising, given the cinematic qualities that are present in this work; at points, this piece sounds like a film score in search of a film. The sustained intensity to which this piece builds is somewhat unexpected given its minimalistic and relatively relaxed opening, but it is ultimately quite pleasing. Also notable is the wide variety of sounds that Moore draws out of the piano; these sounds and their flow into and out of each other are truly beguiling. Have that third cup of coffee and enjoy the ride! – Seth Tompkins

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 10am hour today to hear an excerpt from this recording.


Brian Eno and Icebreaker: Stars from Apollo (Cantaloupe Music)

apollocoverdigitalhiresMusic can take you anywhere in the world—from the shores of Spain to the Steppes of Central Asia, from the romantic forests of France to the regal palaces of Russia. But music also has the power to take you far beyond this world—out into the dark mysteries and uncharted territories of the universe.

Brian Eno’s Apollo takes you to the furthest reaches of outer space through a series of ambient and atmospheric pieces performed by the 12-piece contemporary music group Icebreaker. The pieces were originally composed in the 1980s for a feature-length documentary titled For All Mankind, directed by Al Reinert. The original version of the film had no narration, and simply featured 35mm footage of the Apollo moon missions collected together and set to Eno’s music.

But honestly, you don’t have to watch the movie to appreciate the music—it stands on its own. Icebreaker brings sparkle, polish, and an inimitable sense of awe to Eno’s music, highlighting the shimmering timbres, subtle orchestration, and nebulous atmospheres of outer space. We can’t all be astronauts, but this music will definitely have you seeing stars.  – Maggie Molloy

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 5pm hour today to hear an excerpt from this recording.


Ahnnu: Perception (Leaving Records)

LA-based composer Leland “Ahnnu” Jackson artfully dissects the customs of hip-hop for their abstract emotional essence in his 2015 album, Perception. Mixing field recordings with ‘90s mixtape production methods, Ahnnu creates a dusty, distant ventilator hum, which slips into the subconscious unnoticed, rendering the album a soundscape for the id. Ahnnu bypasses the rules and logic of perception and, with surgical precision, stimulates the limbic system in a considerable number of ways – the neck-prickling, nervous, noir energy of Informant’s modulated synths to the nostalgic, reflective, vinyl textures of Anneal. Given hip-hop’s well established extroversion, Ahnnu’s ambitious project taking the art form to conceptual introversion yields highly intriguing results. – Brendan Howe

ALBUM REVIEW: “Discreet Music” by Brian Eno

by Maggie Molloy

Editor’s Note: Brian Eno was a longtime friend and collaborator of the late David Bowie, who died this weekend after an 18-month battle with cancer. As we mourn the loss of this talented artist and creative visionary, we find comfort in knowing that his bold vision, fierce courage, and revolutionary music live on in the lives and art of his family, friends, fans, and collaborators. Bowie’s immeasurable contributions to the world of music extend far past the confines of rock, glam, pop, or classical genres, reminding us that when it comes to art, the sky is the limit—and a creative spirit like his belongs right up alongside the stars. Rest in peace, David Bowie.

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Brian Eno, courtesy Warp Records

In this day and age, we tend to take music for granted. It’s always playing in the background, whether it’s in on the radio, in the car, around the house, in a movie, or—if you’re really old-school—on your vintage record player. But before technology made it possible for us to stream music wherever we are at all hours of the day and night, the notion of “background music” as we now know it simply didn’t exist.

It wasn’t until 1917 when the French composer and iconoclast Erik Satie first coined the term “furniture music”—that is, music played in the background while listeners engaged in other activities. He wrote many pieces which were meant to be just another piece of furniture in the room—each comprised of interesting colors and textures, pleasing to the ear but not intended to capture one’s full attention.

And in 1975, the British ambient music composer Brian Eno took this notion of furniture music one step further, creating something even more ambient, ethereal and—well, discreet.

Thus was born “Discreet Music,” Eno’s 30-minute ambient music masterpiece: a gentle immersion into the slow, warm sound waves of an EMS synthesizer. The inspiration for the piece came to him when he was left bedridden in the hospital by a car accident. An album of 18th-century harp music was playing in his hospital room with the volume turned down toward the threshold of inaudibility—but he lacked the strength to get out of bed and turn it up.

“This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music,” Eno said, “As part of the ambience of the environment just as the color of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience.”

And now, another 40 years later, Toronto’s classical Contact ensemble has created a modern arrangement of Eno’s original “Discreet Music” for acoustic and electric instruments. Arranged by Contact’s artistic director and percussionist Jerry Pergolesi, the new recording is scored for violin, cello, soprano saxophone, guitar, double bass, vibraphone, piano, flute, and gongs.

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Contact Contemporary Music

Aside from the expansion of musical instruments, Contact’s version of “Discreet Music” also expands the length of the piece. Contact’s performance is one hour long, so as to fill an entire CD—just as Eno’s original was 30 minutes long, so as to fill one side of a vinyl album.

And no, Contact did not just place a giant repeat sign at the end of Eno’s original score. “Discreet Music” was originally written as an experiment into generative composition: a type of self-organizing music created within compositional parameters predetermined by the composer. Such systems create pieces that could theoretically go on forever—static, ongoing musical material which never repeats exactly the same way twice.

In other words, it is music of process, not product.

In Eno’s original, he wrote two simple melodic lines and then hooked his synth up to a tape delay system that allowed the melodies to transform and evolve with very little input on his part. In Contact’s version, the band itself is the looping apparatus.

It may sound complicated, but the result is really quite simple: ambient, meditative music that’s best listened to while doing something else.

Contact’s recording was completed in one take, in keeping with the spirit of the original—allowing the music to organize itself. The recording is divided into seven parts which blend seamlessly into one another, with the textural details blossoming and transforming ever so slowly across the full 60 minutes.

The result is a mild and melancholy meditation into the process of music-making—a willingness to sit quietly and listen to one’s own surroundings as they merge and coalesce in ever-changing ways.

“We concluded that music didn’t have to have rhythms, melodies, harmonies, structures, even notes, that it didn’t have to involve instruments, musicians and special venues,” Eno once wrote of the mid-20th century movement toward more experimental ways of writing music. “It was accepted that music was not something intrinsic to certain arrangements of things—to certain ways of organizing sounds—but was actually a process of apprehending that we, as listeners, could choose to conduct.”

And in that regard, Contact offers a fresh reinterpretation of the work, following the systems set in place by Eno while also expanding the music melodically, texturally, and timbrally.

“If there is a lasting message from experimental music,” Eno wrote, “It’s this: music is something your mind does.”

As performers, Contact makes the music their own—and as listeners, so do we. With precision, patience, and the utmost reverence, Contact recreates Eno’s ambient masterwork as an echo chamber of circling motives and mismatched musical textures. Each ripple of the repetitious melody is a perfectly crafted piece of the larger pattern, a discreet but unique little gem in and of itself.

So in the end, maybe “Discreet Music” really is just another piece of furniture in the room—but wow, what an incredible piece of furniture.

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LIVE CONCERT SPOTLIGHT: February 13-15

by Maggie Molloy

Messiaen, new music marathons, and more are bound to make your Valentine’s Day weekend memorable!

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SSO Musicians at LPR (c) Brandon Patoc

(Photo Credit: Brandon Patoc)

Get into the Valentine’s Day spirit this weekend with an intimate late-night contemporary music performance in Benaroya Hall’s breathtaking Samuel and Althea Stroum Grand Lobby. Seattle Symphony musicians will be performing the second installment of this season’s [untitled] series, a unique musical sequence which presents new and contemporary music in a more casual concert setting.

This Friday’s performance features Jacob Druckman’s avant-garde “Synapse” for tape as well as his virtuosic “Valentine” for solo double bass. The program also includes Vladimir Martynov’s timeless “Schubert-Quintet (Unfinished)” and John Adams’ dynamic String Quartet, a piece which restlessly explores elements of minimalism, folk melodies, and more.

Here’s a great interview feature produced by Seattle Symphony!

The performance is this Friday, Feb. 13 at 10 p.m. in Benaroya Hall’s grand lobby.

 

Bang on a Can Marathon

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(Photo Credit: Peter Serling)

An entire marathon of new music is coming through Seattle this Sunday—literally. Six full hours of new music, to be exact. This Sunday the New York-based contemporary classical music collective Bang on a Can is taking over Seattle’s Moore Theatre to present a wide variety of new musical works by local, national, and international artists.

One of the evening’s highlights includes the electric chamber band Bang on a Can All-Stars and red fish blue fish performing the Seattle premiere of Steve Reich’s masterwork, “Music for 18 Musicians.” You can also look forward to a performance of Brian Eno’s ambient classic, “Music for Airports” and a musical set by Seattle’s own experimental hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces. The jam-packed program also includes an indie-orchestral collaboration featuring Seattle composer Jherek Bischoff with Scrape Ensemble and Jim Knapp, a piano-percussion duo featuring Gust Burns and Greg Campbell, signature works by Bang on a Can co-founders, and so much more!

The marathon kicks off this Sunday, Feb. 15 at 4 p.m. at the Moore Theatre. Doors open at 3 p.m.

 

Simple Measures Presents “Messiaen Around with Time”

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What classical music enthusiast doesn’t love a good music pun? Fill your weekly corny music joke quota this weekend at Simple Measures’ “Messiaen Around with Time.”

Celebrate 20th century French composer Olivier Messiaen as Seattle artists bring to life his enduring eight-movement masterpiece, “Quartet for the End of Time.” Messiaen wrote and premiered the piece while in a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany in 1940. The piece combines birdsong and beautiful imagery to create poignant and powerful music. Simple Measures will share the full story behind the piece before clarinetist Sean Osborn, violinist Cordula Merks, pianist Mark Salman, and cellist Rajan Krishnaswami perform it.

The performances are this Friday, Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford and this Sunday, Feb. 15 at 2 p.m. at Town Hall in Seattle.