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Text of the page (random words):
lected on the hat now art cd of lim s orchestral music the advantage of reproducing it in this context is to hear lim s writing in contrast to that of three other composers rather than as part of a portrait of her own orchestral writing like many of lim s works since the late 1990s the guest draws on words by the sufi poet rumi the guest is the divine presence sometimes symbolised in rumi s poetry by states of longing or desire in lim s music such states are often actualised through lines of distance and connection between instruments the teaching episode between violin and string drum in extinction events and dawn chorus is probably the most dramatic example of this but the juxtaposition of a renaissance recorder with a modern orchestra offers plenty of other possibilities again schwarzer plays a modern reconstruction of ganassi the same instrument lim used for the solo weaver of fictions written for genevieve lacey plus alto and basset instruments lim s music is intensely melodic in the sense of a continuous musical line into out of and around which schwarzer s recorder swims and weaves before dissolving at the end into the sound of the orchestral winds dai fujikura s recorder concerto was also preceded by a solo work pérla in this case this was made in close collaboration with schwarzer composer and performer exchanging their favourite sounds and techniques back and forth to create a unique musical vocabulary for the work that was shaped by the character and abilities of its performer for his concerto fujikura expanded and amplified these ideas into his writing for string orchestra the bamberg symphony conducted by jonathan stockhammer in this way he answers the problem of audibility described above by turning his orchestra into a kind of hyper recorder the punning title of iris ter schiphorst s whistle blower points in two directions first to the recorder player themselves literally the blower of a whistle more pointedly however it turns our thoughts to those individuals who speak up to and expose abuses of power and for which the dynamic of a single recorder against a massed ensemble provides a suitable metaphor in this case the ensemble is not an orchestra but the smaller but no less commanding ensemble resonanz conducted by peter rundel those whistleblowers include the us army soldier chelsea manning who was convicted in 2013 of disclosing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to wikileaks and who in 2016 petitioned president obama to commute her 35 year sentence part of manning s letter is used as material in this collage like work as is the sound recording of the 12 july 2007 baghdad airstrike video one of the most shocking and infamous files leaked by manning in which us apache helicopters are seen to fire on two vans of civilians killing eleven men and injuring two children schiphorst s collaborative process with schwarzer involved what she calls performative composing guided improvisation workshops that were recorded then mined for musical materials unlike the other three works on this disc the difference between soloist and orchestra is not used as a means for creating loving contact amplification or empathy but as a framework for the violence of systems like that that imprisoned manning and the struggles whistleblowers face to make their voices heard and to enact meaningful change all in all schwarzer s album could have been a colllection of curiosities and oddball combinations but in fact it is a remarkable cross section of the state of the art four contrasting works by four composers from very different musical backgrounds all of whom approach the fundamental challenges and affordances of the format in different but illuminating ways each work is special and all of them are given an exemplary reading by a leading soloist highly recommended you can listen to all four works via the new focus website share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading by tim rutherford johnson in cd reviews 30 march 2025 993 words leave a comment delayed memorial chas smith researching another piece of writing i discovered today with great sadness that the american composer and instrument builder chas smith died earlier this year on 13 may i can t say that i knew a huge amount about smith s life before today although he found success in hollywood particularly through his work on dune he is a very peripheral figure to contemporary composition if you would like to know more there s a great interview with fretboard journal here and another in artillery here i mention him now if only to note the impact his music had on my own development when i first encountered it in the mid 2000s around when i started my new music writing journey in earnest when the online music subscription service emusic first launched i scoured it relentlessly for whatever new music i could find on there it wasn t always that much but what was represented pretty well was the kind of late minimalism post minimalism represented by labels such as cold blue it was in this dusty corner of emusic s catalogues that i discovered smith s albums aluminium overcast and an hour out of desert center both now available along with others on bandcamp i was fascinated by what i heard and loved the sound it made those deep enveloping drones punctuated with metallic clangs the sound of heat and space and distance it wasn t like anything else i knew at that time i listened to those records over and over what they introduced to my still limited european view was a different kind of music that wasn t made in resistance to or allegiance with the technical precepts of mid century but that had at the same time an aesthetic coherence and discipline all of its own smith wasn t the only composer who could be credited with such a way of working of course similar things could be said about many other musicians but for some reason his work became emblematic for me of the existence of any number of alternative approaches perhaps because it is so icon like in its simultaneous transparency and inscrutability perhaps because it tickles that part of my brain that lives for huge sonorous resonances perhaps because it hit me at a time when i needed to be shown a world apart from the one in which i had so far been educated whatever the reason it meant a lot to me then and i am very grateful to it today thank you chas here s one of my favourite things you made share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading by tim rutherford johnson in music 17 september 2024 426 words 2 comments train home review rolf hind sky in a small cage first of all i loved it this being the end of a busy and challenging summer i came to hind s opera with little foreknowledge beyond knowing most of the players involved and some of hind s music although not so much recently i also came with few expectations often that s a problem if you re trying to piece something like an opera together without the necessary background information i even forgot to grab a programme on my way in in the event though everything was beautifully clear and legible not just the music but the libretto and staging too all of it worked harmoniously and in the same direction i don t know what baffled andrew clements quite so much and i m usually terrible at keeping up with a plot but it also wasn t simplistic it had the deceptive transparency of a buddhist or taoist epigram it had depth it probed at the opera s heart is the story of the thirteenth century poet rumi and his meeting with the dervish shams e tabrizi an encounter that changed the course of rumi s life hind s music and dante micheaux s libretto tied together this love like story with a path towards enlightenment threading them around each other in both their joys and perils the whole thing is framed informally from the musicians milling around in the foyer beforehand distributing slips of paper with the libretto printed on them to the festive outburst of dance and song that concludes the work the stage was lit from its centre by a small fire with the musicians the riot ensemble plus a few additional members arranged in a wide semi circle behind it as we took our seats drummer sam wilson beat a slow gathering pulse the whole thing and it wasn t just the presence of gamelan instruments at the front of the ensemble or the play of light and screens in the staging had the feeling of stumbling onto a village shadow puppet play in a balinese clearing or perhaps a show in a baghdadi marketplace the staging itself was staged which gave vividness and vitality to the story it was very hind sky in a small cage is one of those works without being too grandiose about it it reminded me in this way of messiaen s st françoise that contained everything of an artist the thing they have been put on earth to say more prosaically it was also about birds and circles singing and spinning were repeating motifs throughout from the whirling screens that made up a large part of frederic wake walker s minimalistic staging to the parable of the birds narrated by loré lixenberg through megaphone amplified squawks and trills her aria was the most obviously virtuoso moment of the work there were echoes of lim s angel of history in its rapid switches between species voices and lixenberg carried it off brilliantly additional circles were created by impromptu entrances and exits of the players themselves as though they were taking informal refreshment breaks not longer after i d made this connection with birds and circles lixenberg now in the role of rumi s wife sang how birds make great circles of their freedom they fall and falling they re given wings the libretto as these lines suggest is beautiful a lot is adapted from rumi himself no shade to micheaux but lines like these are surely from the sufi poet their eyes met like two sparks from the same fire i am the musical air through a flute a spark of stone a flickering in metal both candle and the moth crazy around it rose and the nightingale lost in the fragrance near the work s end when the singers dispersed around the auditorium carrying recorded bird songs with them it was clear that we were both the nightingale and the fragrance i had a few niggles as rumi s wife lixenberg or perhaps her writing was possibly a shade too operatic at some moments and mitchener was under used after her first entrance she sat on one corner of the stage unlit for almost three quarters of the piece the orchestral writing while often striking and original was somewhat unbalanced there was lots of percussion and plucked struck strings including two harps guitar and prepared piano but the strings themselves had little to do a lot of the time riot s oboist philip howarth doubling on shawm had to carry practically all the instrumental melody although he did a great job of it one last detail when we first meet him shams is eating sweets from a paper bag finished and licking his sticky fingers he scrunches up the bag and tosses it to the floor where it remains a small and apparently accidental obstacle that the rest of the production must avoid yet near the end and after shams murder a kind of ritual pyre is made around the fire of all the pros used so far in the story the paper bag stills lies where it was tossed apparently forgotten it is not added to the pile but then when the pyre is cleared away rumi notices it picks it up and giving it one last scrunch takes it away with him i don t know why i found this moment so affecting but it seemed to sum up the whole production for me precise transparent but no less surprising or moving for it share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading by tim rutherford johnson in music opera reviews 10 september 2024 888 words leave a comment some recent sleevenotes in the last couple of years i ve found myself writing more and more sleevenote essays i ve said in the past that this is one of my favourite mediums for writing 1500 words or so is a lovely length long enough to explore an idea short enough to contain in one breath and while there is a responsibility to talk about the music in question there are no rules for how you should do that sleevenotes reach a reader who is already in a particularly receptive frame of mind unwrapping a disc putting it on taking time to listen they sit somewhere between the essayistic the poetic and the critical which is a place that gives you a lot of freedom as a writer anyway some examples i ve been very proud to have been involved with have come out recently and i wanted to share snippets and give the artists some love riot ensemble patricia alessandrini leçons de ténèbres hcr the music of patricia alessandrini is heard as if submerged beneath water wrapped in layers of fog or obscured by a series of veils sounds appear muffled and distant as though they must pass through thick unforgiving media before reaching clear air and our ears the aural impression is apt these sounds do reach us from far away shrouded as if in dust or cobwebs from the archives of musical history filtered by and through electronic processes alessandrini s compositions frequently begin with an existing musical work and often one with a rich surrounding history mads emils dreyer disappearer dacapo forsvindere 2 by mads emil dreyer begins like a fairy tale its nursery rhyme like quality is thanks to the gently chiming sound of the celesta and the steady simple pulse of the vibraphone but it is also frozen music glistening and thawing slowly under a cool winter sun as the layers of sound accumulate to reveal hidden spaces between them i m reminded of the young girl unn s first encounter with the ice palace in tarjei vesaas s novel of the same name a frozen waterfall swollen by the cascading river into an enchanted world of small pinnacles gables frosted domes soft curves and confused tracery dreyer s piece builds slowly adding bowed vibraphone and crotale tones short glockenspiel flourishes and different harmonic shades yet as the layers of chimes and bowed metal slowly grow and thicken there are subtle hints of something flickering just beyond past the range of peripheral vision a subtle magic or an uncanny presence perhaps like a figure walking out of sight into the dark but it s ok the music says listen that minor fall is only a bluesy twist i m just having fun building intricate towers and secret alcoves with the harmonies sorry if i made you worry sarah saviet spun coviello replace your...