Vicky Chow / Michael Gordon - Sonatra

Pitchfork 75

Over the last three decades, composer Michael Gordon has done as much as anyone to promote and develop the tradition of minimalist classical music. Upon his arrival in New York, in the late 1970s, he plunged head first into the scene already established by Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Along with his collaborators in the Bang on a Can collective, Gordon also helped push the style forward.

His interest in no wave and punk is plain to hear in the odd harmonies and stomping profile of early works like “Four Kings Fight Five.” By the time of his 1992 composition “Yo Shakespeare,” Gordon’s work with rhythm was unusual enough to earn the excited praise of Reich himself. (The elder composer had some memorable advice for Gordon, too: “The first thing you’ve got to do in this score is, on the front page, you’ve got to say, ‘This is the rhythm.’ Because if people look at this score, they’re going to think you’re an idiot. But if you actually tell them on the front page that you know you’re an idiot, then they’ll take you seriously.”) Ever since, one of Gordon’s great skills has been the way he keeps a crazed, obsessive concept interesting over long stretches.

In recent years, Gordon has explored some comparatively mellow textures—treading closer to the dream-state effect created by some other minimalists. Gordon’s popular piece for pitched percussion, Timber, was recently remixed by a variety of electronic music stars. But his new piece for solo piano finds Gordon reconnecting with his high-intensity mode. Played by the contemporary piano virtuoso Vicky Chow, Sonatra offers a fresh glimpse of classic Gordon. It’s meticulously designed, hard-charging and in an unusual way, addictive.

The 15-minute composition that forms the album’s core begins with single-note progressions, galloping up the length of the keyboard. Gordon uses both major- and minor-third intervals as his stepping stones—creating impressions of uniformity and unpredictability at the same time. When the final note in each successive line starts to change, you get a sense of how the piece will undermine its seeming emphasis on repetition.

With the manic feel of the piece well established, Gordon starts engineering new sonic effects. Soon, clusters of notes in one of Chow’s hands start to sound as though fully set apart from what’s going on at the other end of the piano. Chow carries off these distinct, interlocking parts with great poise, even at a great pace. Then the two motifs gradually merge back into an unbroken line—a great, cascading rampage of melody.

Keeping a sense of proportion in mind is one of the dozens of challenges facing a pianist who takes on this music. Aside from her obvious technical facility, Chow also has a poetic feel for the piece’s overall structure. The forceful quality of Gordon’s opening material sounds plenty loud, from the drop. But Chow has deep reserves of emphasis: the floor-rattling power she provides, when reintroducing some bass notes in the third minute, is gorgeous in its considered, hardcore force.

In the final third of Sonatra, superimposed piano lines start to embrace jazzy harmony—it’s as though a trace of cocktail-piano noodling has infiltrated the otherwise barreling music. Gordon says the title of Sonatra amounts to a sideways embrace of Frank Sinatra (as well as the classical sonata form). But in Chow’s hands, the riffs-for-days feel can call to mind other swing references; at times, her playing conjures a vision of some vintage piano genius like Art Tatum coming back to life and getting high on post-minimalism.

Gordon’s writing—and Chow’s execution—delivers a delirium state of rare potency. And then they do it all again, kinda. The album’s second half is devoted to another performance of the piece, with one significant difference. Instead of performing Sonatra on an equal-tempered piano (aka the kind of piano you’re probably used to hearing), Chow plays the second take on a “just intonation” instrument.

Differences between the “pure” intervals of “just intonation” setups and common tuning are complex (and fascinating to explore). But at their essence, “just intonation” tunings just sound plain odd to most of us, today. The first wave of minimalists—including composer-performers like La Monte Young and Terry Riley—also explored “just” tunings to fantastic effect. So Gordon’s alternate version of Sonatra is part of a long-running conversation in minimalist circles. For this performance, Gordon merged two different “just” tunings pioneered by the composer and keyboardist Wendy Carlos. As this version of Sonatra moves into the middle section—in which lines of notes are played in different octaves—and then the piece’s final, more complex harmonies, this tuning begins to produce strange new effects, even as the rhythmic energy remains familiar from the initial take.

Chow’s just-intonation performance of Sonatra doesn’t have quite the same jazzy exhibitionism as her first, equal-tempered take. But this makes sense—as the resulting harmonies of the “just-intonation” version sound a fair bit removed from mainstream jazz practice. And over the balance of the second performance, the composer’s snaking lines start to sound just as compelling in this alternative intonation. Gordon is used to pushing around received ideas about composition: fusing punk, jazz and classical accents. But this is the first time he’s pushed his own writing around every bit as forcefully. It’s a smart idea, executed with a thrilling degree of insight by one of our era’s most brilliant pianists.