I’ve listened to and liked a lot of Missy Mazzoli’s operatic and vocal music but hadn’t had much exposure to her purely instrumental writing so was interested to get hold of a copy of her new SACD release Dark with Excessive Bright.
The title track was originally composed as a concerto for double bass and string orchestra but here it’s given in two reworkings for solo violin; one with string orchestra and the other with string quintet. The soloist is Peter Herresthal and in the orchestral version he’s accompanied by the Bergen Philharmonic conducted by James Gaffigan. I think all the hallmarks of Mazzoli’s music, except perhaps the use of electronics, are present in this piece. There’s a baroque sensibility combined with 20th century minimalism but in the context of the 21st century’s embrace of individual voices rather than dominant fashions. So, largely tonal chords are recycled n different, fairly repetitive rhythmic patterns, but it never gets dull or new agey. I think I like the arrangement for string quintet even more. Here it’s players from the Arctic Philharmonic conducted by Tim Weiss accompanying. The textures are lighter and it seems to have more clarity. Good stuff.
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), played by the Arctic Philharmonic and Weiss, is fascinating. There are rococo loops, slow at first, then wilder, playing over a hurdy gurdy like wheezing, droning sound. It gets louder and more insistent and quite ominous before fading away into nothingness. Continue reading
Here’s what I know about so far for April.
From the good people of Silicon Valley, who brought us the iPod and the iPad and the iDontknowwhatelse, we now have iSing Silicon Valley; a choir of young women. Their new album is titled love and light and features the choir with, on some tracks, harpist Cheryl Fulton and soprano Estelelí Gomez in settings of Latin texts ranging from Hildegard of Bingen to contemporary composers. It’s all sort of in the range of plainchant to polyphony with young bright vibrato-less voices with maybe a New Agey touch (though that may be guilt by association),
field studies is a CD of chamber music by Canadian composer Emilie Cecilie Lebel. There are five tracks on the record; each around twelve minutes long, scored for various small forces and recorded in different locations.
To the intimate (i.e. tiny) Array Space last night for a concert by the Happenstancers who, in this iteration, consisted of Brad Cherwin – clarinet, Madlen Breckbill – viola and Micah Behr – piano. and, in the first number, viola.
operaramblings 