The Intriguing Guitar Music of Henze (Volume Two)

Now I haven't heard the first volume of Naxos' collection of the guitar music of Hans Werner Henze (b. 1926), but if it's anything like volume two (Guitar Music 2) (Naxos 8.557345), it is something very good indeed. Volume two centers around the beautifully executed and thoroughly conceived performances of guitarist Franz Halasz. Henze's music is quite difficult to play and Maestro Halasz not only makes it seem easy, he brings out the logic of the music in ways that give comprehension, cohesion, and a great deal of pleasure to my ears.

There are four works represented here, covering the composer's output between 1974 and 1986. The very beautiful "Guitar Sonata No. 1 on Shakespearean Characters" opens the program, and it is delightful. "Carillon, Recitatif, Masque" follows, scored for guitar, mandolin and harp. It too is extraordinarily attractive. Henze's detailed concern for the sonoric possibilities at hand combines with his very fluid inventive genius, here and elsewhere. It's music that is as modern as modern can be, yet has a sensuous quality that engages the listener on a visceral level.

The 1986 "Ode to an Aeolian Harp" joins Halasz with a chamber ensemble. It further underscores Henze's transparent, brightly colored musical palette. The wind-like play of phrasing and the somewhat brittle solo guitar response make for pure magic.

Great music, fabulous performances! Now I must hear Volume One. Henze should not be overlooked. He is a master and these are some compositional jewels.

Greg Baker Plays the Guitar Music of Gene Pritsker

Gene Pritsker personifies the composer in the so-called postmodern world today. He engages with hip-hop, rap, r&b and rock while simultaneously developing an original style (or styles) in modern classical music. An aspect of that can be heard to good advantage on Scars, Wounds, and Lacerations: The Guitar Music of Gene Pritsker (no label listed).

This is a beautiful recording with Greg Baker as the guitarist on all pieces. The range of styles and moods covered are considerable. For example the title composition "Scars, Wounds, and Lacerations" is for solo classical guitar and consists of four short movements squarely in the solo classical guitar tradition, with more than a hint of Spanish influence, a wealth of inventive melodic ideas and well-crafted, idiomatic guitar writing. It is not a brutal piece as the title may suggest.

"Quaaludes and Fugues (Book One)" finds Greg Baker on the electric guitar for a series of fascinating, self-contained miniatures that vary from a kind of Mahavishnu-McLaughlin sound to modern contrapuntal writing that reflects Bach as much as rock.

The "Two Dances for Four Electric Guitars" puts Baker in the overdub mode for some lively motored sounds where the part writing is as modern as it is timelessly inspired.

The "Requiem" brings us into metal territory as Baker wields a distorted, effect laden guitar and is accompanied by a sampled band-orchestra. Here we have Gene Pritsker at his avant best. The four movement piece juxtaposes quirky yet idiomatic metal with all kinds of backdrops, from electronica with a backbeat to world music samples manipulated for maximum pulsation, to a loop of a snippet from what I believe is Mozart's Requiem used as a looping ostinato for some metal guitar pyrotechnics.

Scars, Wounds, and Lacerations" maintains Prtizker's subversive disregard for genre distinctions while providing some breathtaking music.

Pritzker is a phenomenon. Greg Bell is a guitarist who can convincingly and masterfully pull off the many stylistic shifts and collisions the music affords. There are few guitarists I can think of that could do justice to the wide scope of Pritzker's music. And it's not just that Mr. Baker does it; he thrives in the process, showing true artistry.

If you have an open mind (open ears) this one will get your attention and bring you much musical pleasure. Hats off to Gene Pritzker and Greg Baker for having the courage to even attempt to realize such a hugely disparate setting for the six-stringed instrument, and then to realize it with great beauty and skill.

See my other postings on this blog for more on Gene Pritzker's music.

Awakenings: New American Chamber Music for Guitar

The present volume exemplifies the diverse, multi-stylistic musical world we currently inhabit. Awakenings: New American Chamber Music for Guitar (Naxos 8.559650) centers around three modern classical works written in the last decade. The styles covered are of a widely contrasting sort.

Aaron Jay Kernis's "Two Awakenings and a Double Lullaby," written for soprano, guitar, violin and piano, combines an advanced harmonic standpoint with both rhapsodic lyricism and echoes of the post-serialist past. Kernis brings together the appealingly sensuous sound of the ensemble with poetic texts about the innocence and wonder of a child's first awakenings into the world. The second half of the work evokes the "putting-to-sleep" side of parenting by giving voice to "calling forth the angelic watch," typically a part of traditional Euro-American lullabies.

Jorge Liderman's "Aged Tunes" contrasts with a rhythmically lively piece for string quartet and classical guitar. This one has some interesting guitar parts and a neo-classical charm. The sound of the quartet with solo guitar has such presence you wish more had been done with this sort of texture since the days of Boccherini. As it is we have this piece and it stands out as a good example of inventive writing that is modern and directly communicating at the same time.

The final piece brings in a full guitar ensemble, both electric and classical guitars in a very interesting sort of post-minimalist confluence. Steven Mackey's "Measures of Turbulence" creates gong-like sonorances through ingenious uses of ensemble harmonics and some striking classical guitar ensemble passages that contrast vividly with the electric scoring. It is most definitely a piece of memorable music. Mackay takes on where Fripp's League of Crafty Guitarists leaves off. Ostinatos, chordal and multi-voiced writing immerse the listener in a fascinating ever-shifting soundscape. This work alone would be worth having even if the other two works were not interesting as well, which they are.

Performances and recording quality are both excellent. David Tannenbaum plays the guitar parts on the first two works and he sounds quite good. He conducts the San Francisco Conservatory Guitar Ensemble for the Mackey work and the players shine forth nicely.

The program has a satisfying flow to it and will most certainly be interesting to those who want to experience contrasting compositional approaches to the contemporary concert guitar both as a solo and an ensemble instrument. Recommended.

Christopher Adler, A Bright-Light Composer

January 29, 2009—From the evidence of his latest CD Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze (Innova), composer-pianist Christopher Adler is one of bright lights on the West Coast today. The minimalist style of modern concert music has been a large contributor to the new music heard in the past 30 years, sometimes to mixed results. The key to Adler and his success in this idiom is probably contained in the classic idea of VARIATIONS. This can be opposed to the “process” favored by the early work of Steve Reich and others. With Mr. Adler there is periodicity and repetition, but the forms of change in his music seem to be driven by a non-mechanical musical sensibility not always at the forefront in other similar musics. How can the set of transformations undergone in any particular piece be understood? Adler’s solution is always to create musical interest by letting the variations follow an inspirational path guided by pure invention. What could be a snooze becomes just the opposite.

The five pieces represented on this disk vary also in the ensemble colors available with the instrumentation at hand. The larger group pieces, “Iris” for flute, guitar, cello and marimba, and “Ecstatic Volutions” for acoustic and electric guitars, oboe, bassoon, and piano, create sound color-texture and nicely wrought, idiomatically conceived parts that mesh together for a very interesting aural experience. But this is no less true of the smaller ensemble writing. For example the long standing duet of Adler on piano and Alan Lechusza on winds, here soprano sax, puts in one of the more exciting performances of the disk, “I Want to Believe.” There is a jazz-like attention to velocity and color and a drive to the music that engages. The title cut stands out for me as well in its effective use of guitars and its ability to unveil an arsenal of musical ideas in a relatively short time period. This is music as essential as it is essentialist, no doubt as interesting to play as it is to hear. Listen and you’ll learn as well as enjoy. You might even get the urge to dance. Get this CD at www.innova.mu.

John Zorn's "The Last Supper"

January 23, 2009—The impressively prolific John Zorn has recently released his 22nd (!) volume of music for films, The Last Supper (Tzadik). It is scored for percussion and a small group of vocalists. That might not sound very exciting on the first blush of things, but this is no ordinary music. The vocals are in the wordless, post-Swingle Singer mode and much of what they sing is loosely in the hocket style, which some medieval composers and the Pygmies of the Congo region of Africa have in common. Hocket involves phrases where individuals or specific groups are responsible for particular notes in a phrase, in alternation back and forth. The results for this Zorn creation are repeating and varying lines where male and female vocalists work together to create mesmerizing and musically fascinating results. Zorn is no dogmatist so this technique is used but not overused. The percussion ensemble functions as a contrasting accompaniment to the vocals and also has spots where it takes over and provides layered rhythmic grooves that hypnotically reinforce a kind of primal quality that is apparently an important part of the film.

This music is not run-of-the-mill minimalism, new age tribal drum circle stuff, or anything else of the common run of musics that can be heard ad nauseum as backdrops for modern films or just as backdrops. Neither does the music sound like an afterthought to the film. It stands on its own as a very interesting and innovative musical space. I must say it’s one of my favorite things thus far this year and you should listen to it if you want to shake yourself out of the doldrums of everyday sameness.

New Music from Annie Gosfield

January 20, 2009—New York based composer Annie Gosfield could be considered my neighbor. I live just outside Manhattan and so am a part of the NY Metro sprawl. Since my tightened budget does not allow for cultural events or all but the most necessary commuting I don’t get into the heart of the city often and it is probably not likely I will make face-to-face contact with her in the near future. Nonetheless we both belong to an invisibly connected universe of cultural workers and, whatever it means, a New York sort of outlook on it.

Ms. Gosfield’s music is well represented on the Tzadik release Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites. Now I find myself responding to her music almost instinctively. Is it the shared aural and cultural values of this metropolis that make that possible? It could have something to do with it. But most importantly Ms. Gosfield has absorbed the vocabulary of modern music to speak it fluently and with originality, and that sounds a chord of resonance with me.

Her short quartet “Lightheaded and Heavy Hearted” comes off skillfully and sincerely as something that comes after late Bartok and brings a personal touch to the genre. The title cut, “Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites” is perhaps the most captivating of the pieces, combining thoughtfully constructed solo violin passages with washes of gongs, percussion and electronics. In its own way it reminds me of my youth and the local hours I spent listening to the family short wave for the sorts of static and bleeps that I believed were raw audio satellite transmissions. I don’t know the truth of that but this music reminds me of what has become of local sectors of outer space in the years following the heyday of the space program and those sessions I had with the radio. Parts of our above-earth space vacuum must be like certain abandoned industrial sectors of Passaic, NJ (I am thinking of Robert Smithson’s photoessays on the latter topic, done in the late ‘60s). No longer functioning as intended (the satellites drifting, perhaps long since out of service), they exist now emptied of their original meaning, there as a symbol of time passed.

The remaining two pieces further explore the sound poetry of where we are now through prepared piano writing of style and earthiness, effective string writing with gongs and percussion, as well as electronically processed sounds of nameless machines and power tools. Gosfield’s music is not exactly casual, but it certainly isn’t formal either. There is a wondrous, restrained expressiveness and interesting juxtaposition of sound classes, none of which wear out their welcome on repeated hearings. I do recommend this disk for anyone who would like to know something of where new music is right now. It’s here, looking backwards to the ended century and the close of the American Machine Age as well as forward to tomorrow and what that will bring. That’s somehow appropriate music for the beginnings of a new epoch.

Composer Chris Dench: Chamber Works

January 15, 2009—Modern concert music remains vividly alive and filled with a healthy vitality. The rigid formalism of the serialist and post-serialist days seems to be gone, the wacky eccentrisms of later Stockhausen and Cage are perhaps not as central now as they were around 1985. What has happened can be looked at on a number of levels. There seems to be a more informal, music-first, words-about-the-music second approach. Innovation is perhaps downplayed for various sorts of sonority. Much of the acoustic-electric and instrumental language is of a flow, a lucidity that communicates with a directness. The sound of jazz-derived free improv and the modern concert piece can be similar on the surface. Both camps have learned something from one another. The improv folks have gotten something of the use of space and sound from the concert people, the latter have been influenced by the spontaneous fluidity and timbre pallet of the improv people. This is a drastic simplification, but good enough for the purposes of this morning’s blog. And in the realm of electro-acoustic and minimalist musics, there are other factors in play too.

With all that in mind we turn to British ex-pat, Australian based composer Chris Dench and his CD of chamber pieces, Beyond Status Geometry (Tzadik). This is a welcome addition to the repertory. Four pieces are represented. The earliest piece (1985-6), a percussion quartet that gives the title to the disk, has a delightful bombastic quality. The two later chamber works, “Light-Strung Sigils” and “Permutation City” have a more conventionally concert oriented sound but are marked by solid invention and inspired levels of performance. The final piece, a solo piano excursion, has a wistful yet robust expressionism that somehow manages to suggest and transcend the piano sounds of Ives and Cecil Taylor while remaining in a world of its own. Dench is well worth your attention and I look forward to hearing more from him.

The Music of Paola Prestini: Tone Color and Originality

Originally posted on December 22, 2008

[When I originally wrote this it was:] The second day of winter, the main day of Chanukah, three days before Christmas and as cold in New Jersey as anybody could wish. This morning’s music forms a reflective soundtrack to all of that in Paola Prestini’s Body Maps (Tzadik). I must admit the graphics on the CD are all but unreadable, a typical situation in the world of post-Wired mutations of design, so I will not complain.

Such thoughts aside the music at hand is in the contemporary concert music realm. It is a series of somewhat ruminative modern chamber pieces that avoid minimalism while remaining more or less tonal. Tone color is the order of the day and Ms. Prestini shows originality and a dramatic flair for keeping listener attention. This is pretty subtle music and all the more exceptional for it. I find myself coming to appreciate these works more and more. She is worthy of notice and I would now love to hear some of her larger ensemble, longer form works. Prestini gives us modern music of a distinctly listener friendly sort and what’s wrong with that? Signing off and glad that the heat is working. . .

Brad Lubman's Muscular Avant Garde Music

Originally posted on November 18, 2008

One more in the contemporary classical mode and then it’s on to other things. Brad Lubman cannot be said to be a household name. He is a prominent conductor in new music circles and Tzadik recently put out a disk of his compositions called Insomniac. As with some of the previous composers discussed recently, his music combines in various ways instruments in real-time along with electronically altered and pure electronic sounds. He gives you dramatic contrasts and reference to machine-like tapestries as well as sounds more conventional to the modern concert arena.

He tends to grab the listener a little more aggressively than some of the other composers we’ve been reviewing. His music is a little in-your-face and in the end it makes for a memorable program. This is more muscular material, less involved in dreamscape weaving. The music decidedly will not accept relegation to a background role. You either listen to this music or you turn it off. It demands to be accepted on its own terms. If you agree to that, you get a program of music in a whirlwind. Music for an age where our machines still create infernal clatter out there. It’s consequently more of an urban thing, more industrial in the many ways one could use that word. Good for us when there can still be drastically differing approaches to organizing sound. Here’s one of them—a completely valid way to go about things, executed with a good ear for melding the unusual and the familiar in a personal blend. It will give your ears a workout and you might just like it. Give it a shot.

Electro-Acoustic Music From Maryanne Amacher

Originally posted on November 11, 2008

We make a seemingly wide leap from yesterday’s Teddy Bears to electro-acoustic composer Maryanne Amacher. Her latest CD Sound Characters 2 (Tzadik) constructs sprawling landscapes of electronically altered sounds. The disk contains the long work “Teo.” At least part of this was generated through the acoustical properties of a cavern deep underneath the ancient Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan. It is ambient sound without much in the way of melody or conventional tones, but it’s less harsh than some of the pure noise pieces being created today. What’s interesting to me is that the entire piece holds together with its own internal logic, like some intelligent space alien that is attempting to communicate with humanity in a language not understood.

There’s something about it that seems reasonable and sensible, and yet the meaning component is elusive. I especially like the intensity of the final section, which drones and undulates like a chromium hornets’ nest. If you listen to metal or jambands or whatever, you will find this pretty much of a jar out of your usual ideas of what you should be hearing. It is more of what is happening TODAY in the world, and a good example of it at that. You can ignore it, hate it, embrace it or disdain it, but it is not going away. It is a party where if you don’t like what’s going on YOU are the one that has to leave. Ms. Amacher will stay. And to me she is most welcome to do so.

So what does this have to do with guitars? Nothing. Everything. It is all connected. We are in a period of post-whatever-went-before. A musician should be aware of what comes after what-already-has-been. There never could have been a Dark Side of the Moon without Stockhausen and Cage. And the same sorts of things are true today.

Ito's "Watermill" A Musical Zen Rock Garden of Styles

Originally posted on November 7, 2008

The MUSIC OF THE WORLD and WORLD MUSIC, if you think about it, are two different shades of the same thing. The first implies the sum total of all musics made anywhere at any time; the second resonates with the idea that this a particular music of a particular time and place, somewhere not where the listener happens to be. As technology evolves and intra-communications become ever more possible and intensified, so that regions become less isolated and more exposed to other regions and their music, that distinction can break down.

Now you can have music that combines a number of different world styles, and it may be made in your backyard. Music that is here where we are, but partakes of other and self musics too. Maybe that’s the way it’s always been anyway, but the process took more time in earlier ages, like watching the hour hand on an analog clock instead of the second hand. So American music, some of it at least, involves African and European elements combining with things that happened in the Caribbean, for example, and then transmutes in the US and further transmutes as it spreads out to the rest of the world.

Today’s CD has something of the minute-hand quality of that melding. Composer Teiji Ito’s Watermill (Tzadik) combines Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan, Native American and modern classical and avant elements in this piece that was originally performed for Jerome Robin’s ballet in New York, 1971. We can now listen to this new performance in 2008, so that collapses the time element too. The minute hand has temporarily stopped and we listen.

What of the music? It is compelling, sometimes meditative, sometimes extrovertly agitated, but always interesting. It’s one of those recordings that you have to think a little about where you would file it. And so the artist too. Where does he fit? All over the place. That’s the beauty of Tzadik Records releases, they often challenge accepted categories. That’s good in general and it makes Watermill a musical Zen rock garden with objects you don’t expect to find in there, not just rocks and sand. In your mind, you are challenged to arrange the elements in various ways. And of course there’s no one perfect way. An open age should have open-ended music. Are we there yet? Maybe.

Ian Yeager's Music for Guitar and Computer

Originally posted on September 30, 2008

I had never heard of Ian Yeager, but when I was browsing on the CD Baby site, I spotted his recording of Music for Guitar and Computer and on an impulse took a chance and ordered it. It is a full CD containing one long piece broken into small sections and it has become more and more attractive to me as I listen.

It is in the ambient mode, something a little like Brian Eno’s work. The electronics appear to be altered guitar sounds for the most part, and they doodle and drone as the guitar in a clean electric mode arpeggiates chords, plays melodic fragments that repeat and otherwise sets up a dream-like musical landscape.

It is not a piece of music with rapid fingerings or anything that would make you think, “wow, what a guitarist.” It does stick to your musical ribs though. Once you hear it a few times, a clear picture of the music stays in your head so that a year from now, say, you might pull it off the shelf and remember what it sounds like and want to hear it again. In our throw-away world that in itself is an achievement.