A Closer Listen
The year’s most beautiful music can be found here, from soft piano to soaring strings, humble ensemble to booming orchestra. This was a banner year for modern composition, which even recruited one of the world’s biggest post-rock bands into its fold (although the band had always embraced modern composition in its recordings).
These composers try to make sense of the world, translating moods and colors into sound. Reflecting emotion with sonic mirrors, they turn private musings into public performances, while asking big questions about war, climate change and our place in the world. Most of all, they invite listeners to dream of a better planet, insisting that such a thing is still possible.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Ella Ollikainen ~ ARCHORA / AIŌN (Sono Luminus)
Anna Thorvaldsdottir makes big works. Works that aren’t afraid to explore the unknown or tackle the impossible. On Archora, a work co-commissioned by a number of world orchestras, she explores “primordial energy and the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm.” The work evokes the experience of briefly glimpsing this alternative realm and the “afterglow” or wonder that follows it. Deep horns, searching strings, and percussive interruptions swirl around the listener. Moments of immense beauty are matched by descents into the depths of sound. Also included on the orchestral portrait she released this year is Aion, a symphony-scale work in three parts that speculatively explores the experience of time and space. Through slow movements that occasionally devolve into seemingly spontaneous chaos and others that expand into a majestic wall of sound, Thorvaldsdottir uses music to plumb the depths of our endlessly bewildering experience of space and time. (Jennifer Smart)
Original Review
Cicada ~ Seeking the Sources of Streams (flau)
Cicada’s Seeking the Sources of Streams took on a hike into the gorgeous landscape of Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range. The album weaves earth-water connections and spiritual impressions brought to life by rich instrumentation and field recordings. Cicada’s pacing echoes nature’s rhythms, guiding a journey from departure to a symbolic return home, inviting reflection on our bond with nature. The closing piece, “Forest Trail to the Home Away Home,” provokes contemplation on our origins, leaving lingering questions in its final note. (Garreth Brooke)
Original Review
Erik Hall ~ Canto Ostinato (Simeon ten Holt) (Western Vinyl)
Following his acclaimed reinterpretation of Steve Reich’s work, Erik Hall’s Canto Ostinato interprets into Simeon ten Holt’s 1976 minimalist composition, celebrated for granting performers significant artistic freedom. Hall’s creative embrace of vintage and modern instruments results in an enchanting blend of timbres and ever-shifting musical patterns, which mirrors the profound beauty of watching light dance through a kaleidoscope. This album sneaks up on you: when first hitting play I found it merely appealing, but as it proceeded through its many iterations it slowly but surely filled me to the brim with joy. None of its charm has faded in the intervening months. (Garreth Brooke)
Original Review
Jessica Pavone ~ Clamor (Out of Your Head)
New York based violist Jessica Pavone has worked with such luminaries as Anthony Braxton, William Parker, and Mary Halvorson, with many solo records on venerable labels including Tzadik and Relative Pitch. Clamor, released by the artist-run label Out Of Your Head, consists of four compositions for string sextet, joined for one piece by a soloist on bassoon. Each takes its title and structure from historical instances of women creatively overcoming obstacles imposed on them; seesawing to see over walls, communicating with a secret language, and an innovative alternative to constricting fashion. Pavone has spoken about her struggles with pitch in composition, finding it easier to focus on rhythm and timbre rather than melody and harmony. Clamor’s inspirations provide the ensemble compositional structure while allowing for the freedom of indeterminacy of each individual member to improvise and negotiate. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Original Review
Less Bells ~ The Drowned Ground (Meadows Heavy Recorders)
Come for the drowned ground, stay for the murderwind. Here the coyotes are howling, the tumbleweeds are blowing, the ghosts are gravitating to an old western town. Shimmer meets serenade on an album that seems like a heat mirage. Hurdy gurdy, lap steel, singing saw and pencil banjo provide an antiquated feeling. One can imagine the dust clouds rising, the spurs kicking, the settlers running for shelter. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
Natalia Tsupryk ~ do nestyamy
Like most of Ukrainians, when she penned “beyond the cemetery wall”, her tribute to fallen soldiers, Tsupryk knew people who died fighting the Russian invasion. The track subsequently acquired special poignancy when a close friend and fellow musician was killed on the front. The ensuing EP builds on the elegiac and understated hushed tones of the single to create a delicately orchestrated tapestry of piano, strings and voice. (Gianmarco Del Re)
Ukrainian Field Notes XXVIII
Quatuor Bozzini ~ Éliane Radique: Occam Delta XV (Collection QB)
In the first decade of the new millennium, just as she was finally receiving attention for her groundbreaking electronic works, Éliane Radigue surprisingly turned to composing for acoustic instruments. These “Occams” are compositions based on the particular resonances of a given instrument, each score growing out of the relationship between performers and their instrument: Rivers (for solo performer), Deltas (for small ensemble), and Oceans (for large ensemble). Occam Delta XV was written for Montreal string quartet Quatuor Bozzini, who have made a name for themselves as the finest interpreters of 20th century and contemporary new and experimental music. The result is like flowing water, seemingly static and yet always changing, the rich timbres of the string quartet generating overtones as sensuous as those of any synthesizer. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Original Review
Rone with Orchestre National De Lyon ~ L(oo)ping (InFiné)
How glorious to have one’s compositions covered by a full orchestra! This exuberant music has found a new home, traveling from club floors to concert halls. The electronic elements remain, now amplified by strings and brass. While listening to this live set, one can feel the joy of the composer, who has always seemed ebullient, but now seems rejuvenated as well. A sequel EP, Enc(o)re, followed in its wake. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
Sigur Rós ~ ÁTTA (KRUNK)
Possibly the only post-rock band big enough to do a surprise album drop and make it matter, Sigur Rós surprised fans with a second facet of the release: it’s not post-rock. The album falls squarely into the realm of modern composition while retaining the band’s recognizable sound. The tracks are restrained, yet gorgeous, gentle, yet powerful. Each track has a video, a different avenue of entry. Hopefully the next album – if there is one – is less than a decade away. (Richard Allen)
Original Review
Violeta Vicci ~ Cavaglia (Fabrique)
Albums about climate change have been a feature of the past decade or so in instrumental music, often emphasizing the dramatically global scale of our environmental destruction. Vicci’s Cavaglia focuses on a single place, treating it as an emotional soundscape where the transformative power of capitalism begets more than just sublime negation of all life, also creating a sad sort of generative beauty. In the “Caralin” video, the melting of the glaciers sweeps entire cliffs with gorgeous waterfalls, their death an arrestingly melancholic new form of life. Like finding a sea fossil in the desert, the ruins of nature provoke a unique kind of wonder. (David Murrieta Flores)
Original Review
Wed Dec 20 00:01:34 GMT 2023