New Music from Ensemble Contemporaine de Montreal

It is quite obvious that the "new" new music isn't exactly like the "old" new music in the field of contemporary classical. It isn't afraid to incorporate influences from rock and jazz; it can be more tonal that its 20th century predecessors, or alternatively, not. The rhythmic qualities of any given piece are not predictable. Again, all sorts of influences from world and popular sources can be involved. It also does not draw a distinct line between electronic and acoustical music.

This can all be experienced first hand in the new release by the Ensemble Contemporaine de Montreal, Nouveaux Territoires 03 (ATMA Classique). The CD makes available four new pieces by composers with whom most will not be familiar: Andre Ristic, Michel Gonneville, Michael Desterle and Nicole Lizee.

Four new works, four composers of today. Ristic gives us a sonically advanced world for violin and chamber orchestra. Michel Bonnevile creates very compelling music for mezzo-soprano Michele Motard and ensemble. Ms. Motard does not sing entirely in an operatic mode which is refreshing, and her voice is subject to an electronic alteration that extends and reinforces the musical impact of the work. Michael Desterle provides our ears with a sonic landscape that combines spacial sprawl with unusual pairings of instrumental colors. Finally Nicole Lizee dazzles ones senses with very vibrant chamber orchestrating.

These are works that show the influences of the musical and cultural worlds we all experience right now. All four composers transform those experiences into music that is very contemporary, yet also very listenable, compelling, even quite pleasurable. If you want another take on the chamber orchestra today, this is an excellent place to look!

Harris Eisenstadt's Canada Day: Preparation and Spontaneity

With a couple of years of rehearsals and gigs under their belt, drummer Harris Eisenstadt's Canada Day shows in their new recording that persistence pays off if talent is not lacking. The sort of modern jazz produced on the Clean Feed release has a group cohesion that comes after hard work and time have ripened and matured the initial group idea and concept.

It is no accident or whim that Canada reminds me a little of Albert and Bishop's group Lucky 7s. Both have horns, vibes and rhythm as the starting components, both have strong compositions and arrangements and equally strong soloists, and both have a free-wheeling loosely propulsive vibes-and-rhythm team. This to me is an indication of a healthy trend in the modern jazz produced today.

The similarities between the two groups are not superficial; however the personalities of the players and the nature of the compositions and arrangements distinguish the two groups as unique entities, not surprisingly.

Canada Day showcases the strong writing of its leader, Harris Eisenstadt. There are composed sections intertwined with the work of players with well developed identities. Nate Wooley has trumpet polish and finesse yet can articulate both as emphatically and as colorfully as the need or the inner urge dictates. This album shows why he has rapidly become a characteristic presence on the New York scene. His tenor mate Matt Bauder may be lesser known, but he turns in some fine performances here, solidly compact, lucid improvisational statements. Then of course the vibes-bass-drums team of Chris Dingman, Eivind Opsvik (who impresses me), and Mr. Eisenstadt, repectively, have much to do with the identity of the group sound. They drive and harmonically construct the foundation for what transpires. And they do it in ways that are creative and loosely flowing. Harris has a terrific sense of what to play and what not to play. He can be busy without in any way disrupting to totality of what's going on at any moment.

This is a CD that keeps getting better with every listen. There is enough there that you hear some of the more subtle aspects only after long exposure. Now that's a trait only the very best music has, to my mind.

Satoko Fujii, Japanese Free Piano Powerhouse

Music aficionados in the United States don't always pay enough attention to what's happening in the rest of the world. Take Japan as an example. There is much going on over there, yet many of us don't really know much about it. Tzadik Records' New Japan series begins to rectify that lack, and we've covered a few of those releases in the various blogs in the last year or so.

Today we look at another one: Satoko Fujii's piano trio-duo-solo record Kitsume-bi. Fujii has magnificent ideas, a huge ear for the possibilities in free piano improvisation, and a style that does not have a derivative foundation. She goes her own way.

For the date she is joined by the always interesting Mark Dresser on bass and the explosive Jim Black on drums. For several cuts Sachi Hayasaka appears on soprano sax, and it's clear from those numbers that Sachi needs to be heard more over here.

But this is Satoko's show. There are some really compelling group presentations to be heard. Like the straight-eight motor-manic section of "Past Life," where a Pandora's Box of eighth notes spin wildly from Fujii's piano while bass and drums provide counter ballasts of sound parcels that contrast as well as complement.

Ms. Fujii has a sureness of execution and a confidence in her own stylistic parameters that translate into controlled yet at times wildly exuberant music, other times (especially in tandem with Ms. Hayasaka) ponderously reflective.

One ignores Satko Fujii at one's own peril. If you miss this CD, you miss a music making document that can be your personal blueprint for what's good about the improvised world today.

Two Operas by Michael Nyman

British composer Michael Nyman got my attention several years ago with his music.

So when I had the chance to review two later Nyman operas, I was filled with anticipation. I refer to the new 4-CD set just released on Michael Nyman Recordings, providing full versions of Man and Boy: Dada and Love Counts.

Man and Boy centers around the moving story of Dada artist Kurt Schwitters, who in real life was persecuted by the Nazis for his "anti-Aryan" Merzbow art and escaped Germany in the early '40s. The story of Man and Boy picks up when he has entered England as a refugee. He strikes up a friendship with a young boy he meets at a bus stop. The boy collects discarded bus tickets, a rather pointless hobby. Schwitters too is interested in gathering these particular castoffs of everyday life for a new Merzbow collage. Schwitter's eventually courts the boy's mother, a widow as a result of the Nazi V-Rocket "Sputterbug" bombings. That's the basic premise of the plot. An underlying theme is the contrast between the monstrous cultural unreason of the Nazis versus the benign unreason of Schwitter's art. The fragility and tenuous nature of existence in the face of Nazi savagery and the need to try to continue on with life in spite of its utter disintegration also provide important thematic elements.

The music and libretto conjoin quite nicely. The cast and orchestra are totally convincing in their realization of the work. The music combines a kind of '40s dance hall quality with restless passage work and melodic cells that repeat and develop in time. It all works very well and reaffirms that Nyman has gone his own way to produce a music that is accessible yet movingly "post-modern," a term I use with reluctance but in the sense of a combination of disparate elements to achieve a new synthesis. There is the music-dance hall element, some of the minimalist tendencies, conventional tonality, orchestration that touches on a sort of neo-classicism, and some old-time jazz and pop references. The end result is most assuredly Nyman Music, just as Charles Ives' various juxtapositions produced music that bore the inimitable stamp of his musical personality.

The second opera, Love Counts, has similar qualities. It too has the various combinations of "high" and "low" musics Nyman-style. It may not be quite as compelling as Man and Boy: Dada, but it certainly has plenty of redeeming qualities and a quirky plot typical, it would seem, of Nyman's preferred subject matter. Space does not really permit a long discussion of the virtues of this work. It doesn't quite strike me as reaching the level of Man and Boy, but it is nonetheless nice that it is included as a companion piece in this set.

These are superlative performances that will undoubtedly not be rivalled for a long time to come. Nyman should not be ignored. He is an important composer and these two works are quite excellent examples of why that is so.

Patty Waters on Tour, 1966

The radically free vocal stylings of Patty Waters wasn't (and isn't) an acquired taste. You either came to grips with her low hums, breathy legato chanteusery and highly emotional peaks of primal intensity or you left it alone. When her second album appeared on ESP in 1966, plenty of people did the latter. As time went on, however, there were those who heard something there. She was a pioneer for the free jazz vocalisms that others that came after didn't precisely imitate, but did tacitly acknowledge. Abbey Lincoln occasionally precursed her but little else was on hand when she burst upon the scene.

The On Tour album was made at various points in the ESP NY State College concert series of 1966. (I suspect some minds were blown during those gigs.)

There are three performing units, Patty with the pianist Ran Blake, with the Burton Greene trio, and with a Giuseppe Logan group that included pianist Dave Burrell. Three important pianists in the new thing, then, are an integral part of the performances and their presence is felt in varying degrees. In the course of the album she takes on some standards as launching points; otherwise there is her own material involved. A high point is the Waters-Blake version of "It Never Entered My Mind." Moody, dissonant, sultry. . . it brings out the pain of the lyrics in a direct way and may convince you that her artistry is quite real.

What can one say about Patty Waters? The first album is essential for those who want to grasp the history and aesthetics of the free vocalists and where it all started. The second album is a continuation of what she was doing on the first and has its own trajectory.

This music still has the capacity to excite the listener, or alternately, divert him or her to other recordings. In short some may hate this. Other's will like it intensely. Either way Ms. Waters was a vocal artist of unique sensibility.

A limited edition audiophile vinyl pressing of this record is now available through ESP. Check their site for details.

Trombonist David Taylor in A Most Unusual Recording

David Taylor has played his bass trombone with all kinds of people, from Sinatra to Boulez. He has his own virtuoso approach to the instrument and has made a number of interesting albums under his own name and in the company of fellow trombonist Steve Swell. His Tzadik album Red Sea breaks with a conventional jazz improvisational approach to enter uncharted territory. It's an exploration of Jewish roots, most particularly the cantorial vocal style of Pierre Pinchik. What he does with that is not what one might expect.

The CD is filled with all kinds of unusual musical colors, instrument combinations and moods. There are soundscapes, klezmer-like interjections and so much in between that description almost cannot do the music justice. It is most unusual, most interesting and highly absorbing music with Taylor's trombone expressions the center of it all, but with the surrounding drapery of musical discourse taking the entire project into a rather new realm. It's orchestrally rich without there being an orchestra involved. It's thematically Semitic without having much in the way of the traditional trappings or the instrumentation one might expect. It doesn't groove so much as sprawl. It's almost indescribable. But it's good.

Britten and The Beggars Opera, A New Recording

I've admired the operas of Benjamin Britten on a number of levels for many years. I particularly like how the music translates dramatic moments of the plot in ingenious ways. An example, The Turn of the Screw has a scene where the young lad who is being haunted and endangered by a malevolent ghost is practicing scales upon the piano. Britten uses this opportunity to create a mini-concerto for piano and orchestra, with the scalular passages and orchestral accompaniment going increasingly off the tonality. It underscores the unsettled, latently venomous atmosphere present and the increasingly evident psychological instability of the boy. But it does so in a way that puts the compellingly personal stamp of Britten's musical mind upon it.

Of all the Britten works, however, his adaptation of Gay's The Beggars Opera may be the least characteristic. The original version of the work was a great success in London from the moment of its debut in 1728. It enjoyed a long run, with numerous performances both in England and America throughout the century. Gay wrote the libretto and cobbled the music from popular song and a number of borrowed melodies by composers of the time. The subject matter dealt in a sometimes bawdy manner with what used to be termed the lumpen proletariat, pickpockets, thieves, corrupt lawyers and "loose wenches," as the phrase went then. Britten's revival took the music more or less as it was presented in the original but recomposed, reorchestrated, and rescored the instrumental parts.

We have a new recording of the Britten adaptation, with soloists and Christian Curnyn conducting the City of London Sinfonia (Chandos). The two CDs comprise the complete opera, including the somewhat lengthy spoken dialog.

The cast captures well the roguish tenor of the characters and the common folkway roots of much of the music. The real hero of this opera to me is Britten himself. His orchestrations and rearrangements are spiced by modernistic dissonances and chamber orchestral touches worthy of repeated listening. Maestro Curnyn does a fine job bringing out the various nuances of the score.

If you love Britten this will give you more of it to enjoy. On another level the opera itself has much historical interest. Those not familiar with Britten might best look elsewhere for an introduction, such as his best known work Peter Grimes. Nonetheless, there is plenty to enjoy in this new version and the adaptation itself.