Ellen Reid - Big Majestic

A Closer Listen

What does it mean for music to be of a physical place? The question is explored by Ellen Reid on her latest album, Big Majestic.  Reid is an American composer who won the Pulitzer in 2019 for her opera p r i s m. The music on Big Majestic originated in a different project, Ellen Reid SOUNDWALK: a geographical experience where music was composed for specific locations, such as Central Park in New York.  A GPS-enabled app arranged the music according to location as one walked. I’d love to experience it in real life, but sadly not all of us can go hang out in Central Park, so the composer has gifted us this album. This is a Good Thing. The music is great. 

Both Central Park and Ueno Park in Tokyo were featured in the original project, and feature here as companion tracks. Their shared aspect is sweeping string melodies with Great. Big. Intervals. The writing is reminiscent of Copland, in particular his Appalachia. 

The parts of the album featuring the Kronos Quartet – “West Coast Sky Forever” being one great track – again invoke Copland, with open fourths and fifths on the strings, the splits and slides sounding like the country fiddles Copland invokes in Rodeo. “Spiritual Sun,” featuring Shabaka Hutchings on shakuhachi, contains stacked, improvised melodies. The sound nearly recalls the dense repetitive textures of Steve Reich’s 70s masterpieces, but the album steers clear of all-out minimalism, preferring a clear melodic journey. 

Roomful of Teeth singer Lisel appears on two paired tracks, contributing wordless vocal harmonies and clusters near the sound of John Adams’ “Shaker Loops” or “Harmonium.” Like all of the other guests on this album, her contribution adds to an attractive overall sensation of wonder and space.

‘Alone on Mulholland’ brings a brilliant combination of concept and sound, with the composer playing the synth. In an impressive and understated coup de theatre, what may be the ribbon on a CS80 is used to slide notes long distances over repeated ostinati, so that new harmonies come into and out of focus as the tuning of the sliding note shifts. 

This music is obviously from somewhere; the sound world can’t really be anything other than 20th (and now 21st) century USA. The individual places, the parks, the titles of tracks, may or may not match the images the sounds conjure, but this music is still a journey to physical places of some description, as thoughtful as it is enjoyable.  (Richard Walley)