Anthony De Mare and "Speak:" Text-Sound-Song Artistry

Anthony De Mare, pianist, vocalist, dramatist, story-teller, is one-in-a-million. He realizes works that call upon his considerable talents to enact compositional dramas in a quasi-sprechstimme way. He narrates, sings, recites, provides vocal-sound elements and accompanies himself on the piano, all at the same time. You can hear it to good advantage on his definitive album Speak! The Singing-Speaking Pianist (Innova 241).

These are performance pieces composed by the likes of Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Frederic Rzewski, and three others.

The coordination and masterful execution of vocalise, singing, exclamatory assertion and pianistic punctuation is nothing short of extraordinary.

This fellow is very good! The pieces have enough in the way of music, story and pacing that time goes by quite quickly. And it is time spent to good use. In a way, this is the thinking person's Broadway, the hipster's alternative to opera, the musical equivalent of a very dynamic poetry reading, theater for those jaded with the usual claptrap.

It's a trip that you will very much enjoy if you have an open mind.

Jason Robinson, Solo Sax and Live Electronics

OK, Jason Robinson has released three excellent albums lately. There's the stunning duet disk with Anthony Davis (see this blog, below), there's the powerful sextet date (see yesterday's posting on my Gapplegate Guitar blogsite) and then there's his solo date Cerberus Reigning (Accretions 1), which is what we are about today.

In some ways this last piece of the three-chunk puzzle of Mr. Robinson the musician today is the most astonishing. It's just Jason on tenor, soprano, the gorgeous alto flute, and computer. The computer part enables real-time electronic alteration and augmentation, made possible by Ableton Live software and something Jason names as Cycling '74's Max/MSP. There's also a program he calls "Synchronous Aether." It evaluates the live music signal as it is made, and based on various parameters provides a complementary electronic voice to what is going on at any given time.

What you get with all this is some very interesting music. Jason plays compelling solo and/or structural-melodic cells on his various winds and electronically a kind of all-Jason orchestra appears as the end sonic result.

These sorts of exercises can sound random or they can sound disjointed. None of that here. Mr. Robinson has conceived of the music carefully so that it has movement, flow, contrast and memorability.

It is one of the most effective, musically fulminous and pleasurably contrasting programs I have ever heard in the solo & electronics realm. I think even people who don't think they like electronics will be forced to reconsider. That's their business though. For me, this is first-rate music. I'd say it is a tour de force, but that's become the cliche of critic's phrases. It's a tour de Robinson? OK, that.

Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut's Incendiary "Allemansratten"

From time to time I've been taking a look at Ayler Records' Download Only releases, which form a rather considerable body of work. Today we consider Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut's Allemansratten (Ayler Download 045).

This is a free-blowing date with Mike Fortune on drums, Mr. Shurdut on electric guitar and the three-horn lineup of Blaise Siwula, Ras Moshe and Nick Gianni (with Gianni also playing some Mandolin). It was recorded in the summer of 2005 at Fortune in Brooklyn, NY.

Jeffrey has been quite prolific in recent years with CD-ROM releases of free music. One might dub him the Eddie Condon of free jazz, in the sense that his guitar work on the date at hand is more felt than heard, and his principal role here is as organizer and facilitator.

There's a motif in seven that starts things off. From there the music centers around the free-blowing, collective improvising of the three saxophonists and the post-Sunny-Murray drumming of Mr. Fortune, for the most part.

What's nice about this one is the inspired saxophony. Each player has a distinct sound and attack, and they work together in classically free ways.

In the end I felt the exhilaration of the energy surge such impassioned free playing can bring. I also was left with the desire to hear more! This is a nice one if you like the free blowout. It goes for $10. See the Ayler link on this site.

Benjamin Herman and the Special Edition of Hypochristmastreefuzz

Benjamin Herman is a gas. Before you start trying to fill helium balloons with him, mind that he is a MUSICAL gas.

He has a tribute disk to the music of Misha Mengelberg, Hypochristmastreefuzz ((Dox 096), the original version of which was released in 2008. The Special Edition is a two-CD set that includes a live disk. It's all good.

Mr. Herman's alto sax is searing throughout. The music has that eccentric exuberance that Misha has always been known for. The studio date has a five-piece band plus vocalist and three-person "choir." The live disk pairs down to a quartet. The rhythm section cooks, Anton Goudsmit plays a very lively in & out electric guitar, and things go from mad bop to tongue-in-cheek secret agent instrumental, with much in between.

This is wonderful music. It gives you the wild and wooly, everything goes kind of Netherlandish jazz that when done well is so contagiously joyful. It is done well.

The Concorde Music Ensemble's "Reflections:" Music of the Past Decade

The music of the last ten years illustrates even more vividly the trend of the past 20 years. In the area of contemporary classical music, multi-stylistic expression and a creative eclecticism prevail. No one school of composition dominates. The musical signposts of classical composition from around 1900 through to 2011 are all present on the map of what's being written today. And certain inclusions of folk and vernacular influences are present that perhaps have not heretofore been a part of the various approaches of the recent past as well.

That is clear and also very well illustrated by Ireland's Concorde Contemporary Music Ensemble and their new CD Reflections (Navona 5835). The album features five composers and works from the past decade that call upon anything from a mid-sized chamber ensemble to a duet. The composers are from a wide variety of backgrounds, but all share a commitment to making a music that is embedded in the world we live in today. The five composers, Alejandro Castanos, Jane O'Leary, Stephen Gardner, Judith Ring and Si-Hyun Yi each weigh in with a distinctive work. Highlights include Castanos' "Angulos" which has a lively rhythmic thrust and some of the best writing for temple blocks I have heard! Gardner's "Klezmeria" uses Klezmer related themes for a thoroughly charming clarinet-violin duet.

Through the various compositions a near-constant is the very formidable bass clarinet of Harry Sparnaay. He sounds beautiful.

If you want some very new music that is advanced without necessarily jarring loose the fillings in your teeth, seek no further.

It is a definite feather in the cap of the Concorde Ensemble, who plays these pieces beautifully, as it is a fascinating introduction to some very new music and new composers. Recommended.

Bob Gluck and Trio Present "Something Quiet"

My impression of Bob Gluck, from what I know of him, is that he is a man with a lot on, or rather in his mind. He is also a pianist of real accomplishment. Put those two things together, add the painstakingly original soprano sax of Joe Giardullo and the big-toned, eloquent bass of Christopher Dean Sullivan, allow them to freely elaborate seven Bob Gluck compositions, and you have something very worthwhile.

That's what you get on the new Gluck recording Something Quiet (FMR 294-0810). It's a "free" date with plenty of room for (mostly quiet) thoughtful expression.

Bob shows the subtle sensitivity of a pianist who has listened carefully to what's good in improvisational music today and also has had classical training (which comes out especially in a rubato lyricism). He makes of all of the raw sensations gained from exploring the musical scene and the diligent schooling into an original approach. Joe Giardullo adds the spice of a soprano sound that is penetrating without being piercing, that has the control, timbre, and phrasing of a master. Christopher Dean Sullivan brings in the bottom as a third line-creating voice. He doesn't accompany as much as he contributes to the musical dialog.

Put all that together and you get music that challenges your ears at the same time as it delivers musico-logical brilliance. It would be a good one for those who are intimidated by the more abrasive high-energy onslaughts of the wild-man contingent of free music making (which I love also but that's another matter) yet wish to explore what this free sort of music is about. It also will please those who are already well into the new music.

In short this has much going for it. I'd love to hear what this lineup would do with the addition of a drummer, but that's for another occasion. This is more in the chamber jazz realm and it's an excellent example of that to boot.

Jexper Holmen's Oort Cloud: Sustained Sound-Poetry at a High Level

What is an Oort Cloud? It is a massive cloud of comets that surrounds our part of the universe, a great distance away in human terms, but local presumably on the infinite universe level.

Danish composer Jexper Holmen has composed an hour-long work based on the contemplation of that formation. It is entitled Oort Cloud and has just been recorded and released as a Dacapo Records CD (8-226562).

When I worked at Scientific American books, the then-president referred to comets in a launch meeting as "those snoozy things." True. Get one of them in isolation, they are rather just "there." Put them in an Oort Cloud surrounding our friendly neighborhood universe-space and they become rather mysterious and at this point, ineffable.

The same might be said for Holmen's composition. One minute of it will not bring you to your feet with shouts of "Bravo!" An hour of this music very well might. That's because it's the cumulative effect of the musical cloud, hovering over our aural world, that becomes increasingly mystical, as it were, in its ever-presence.

The nuts and bolts of it are as follows: there are two accordionists and what sounds like an alto or soprano sax, situated in a resonant performance space. The accordions play continuous key-less tone clusters that shift gradually note-wise and vary in dynamic levels. The saxophonist gives out periodically with long multiphonic blasts and quieter soundings of same, as well as overtone-rich sustain notes. The key operative here is "sustain." The music is a continuous series of long tones that form collectively a kind of musical equivalent to the Oort Cloud.

It's ambient. It has patches that are fairly dissonant. The resonance of the performance chamber and the continually shifting blocks of unusual sound clusters make for an aural experience that has a kind of expansive effect on the perceiving hearer. It can become a kind of meditation on the mysteries of the universe and that cloud of comets that ring our world. That was what I began feeling as I listened over time.

There is nothing quite like this piece out there.You may love it, you may hate it, but you cannot ignore it. That says something. In that way, as in other ways as well, this music is a ringing success. Don't go near it, though, if you expect some kind of entertainment. It is rather more serious than that. It's almost a form of knowledge. For all that, it is unparalleled among works being produced today.