Alex Mincek's "Images of Duration" [In Homage to Ellsworth Kelly]" Released on Northern Spy Records

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 6, 2018, 11:41 a.m.

Alex Mincek has long been interested in how humans percieve sound, and how to craft music that plays with perceptual shifts—from slight to drastic. Images of Duration, released recently on Northern Spy Records, continues this compositional thread through elements both monumental and minute: two pianos, tuned 1/4 tone apart, are accompanied by a vast array of ad hoc percussion instruments, performing an hour-long piece that is full of doubles: flatness and dynamism, shallowness and profound depth, slowness and extreme speed. 

Masterfully performed by Yarn/Wire, for whom Mincek composed the work between 2015–2018, Images of Duration is a composition of long duration that is divided into eight sections, each of which presents listeners with new possibiilties for attention, perception, and reaction to sound. Titled with visual descriptors of form and color, these sections present dramatic contrasts in the dimensions of pitch, rhythm, timbre, and dynamics, and yet also maintain a consistent arc throughout the work as a whole. Stream the recording below! 

PSNY Recent Recordings: Part III

by Ted Gordon on June 5, 2018, 11:11 a.m.

We're back with another post featuring recent recordings of works by PSNY composers. This round begins with Mario Diaz de Leon's  Sanctuary, a 2017 album performed by the TAK Ensemble, which contains a unified, album-length piece created in collaboration with the performers. Sanctuary continues Diaz de Leon's exploration of intensities—of timbre, including the extensive use of electronics alongside acoustic instruments and the human voice; of rhythm, contrasting the bubbling arpeggios of electronic instruments to the cycles of breath and bow; and of the expressive possibilities of melody, carefully interwoven between instruments and voices. As Seth Colter Walls wrote in the New York Times, "The edgy electronic timbres can serve a range of compositional functions: contrasting dramatically with the purity of a soprano’s sound, in one moment, before finding, in the bass clarinet, a partner in grain." Check out "Sanctuary" below. 

In 2017, Alex Mincek also released a major album that collects recordings of several recent works, entitled Torrent. Released by Sound American, Torrent includes recordings of several works performed by members of the Wet Ink Large Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and the Mivos Quartet. These works were all composed in the past seven years, and include Pendulum VII, which is available from PSNY. Check out an excerpt below: 

Katharina Rosenberger also released a major album in 2017, Shift, performed by memebrs of Los Angeles's wasteLAnd and Rage Trombones (Matt Barbier & Weston Olencki). Released on famed expeirmental label HatHut records, Shift explores spatialization, long-form improvisation, and modularity, and was immaculately recorded by Tom Erbe at the University of California, San Diego. Check out an excerpt below.  

Scott Wollschleger's Soft Aberration, a major release on New Focus Records, collects beautiful performances of many of the composer's works, perfomed by soprano Corrine Byrne, trumpeter Andy Kozar, violist Anne Lanzilotti, cellist John Popham, pianist Karl Larson, Mivos Quartet, and Longleash trio. Check out an in-depth review at I Care If You Listen, which praises Wollschleger's works such as Soft Aberration, Brontal Symmetry, Bring Something Incomprehensible Into This World!, America, and String Quarter No. 2 "White Wall."

And finally on this roundup of dedicated composer portrait albums, we're pleased to feature The Music of Fred Lerdahl, Volume 5, released on Bridge Records. The four performances on this album present works from Lerdahl's long career, including Episodes & Refrains (1982), Quiet Music (1994 arr. 2001), Times 3 (2012), and Time and Again (2014). Check out an excerpt of Quiet Music below.

PSNY Recent Recordings: Part II

by Ted Gordon on May 23, 2018, 2:44 p.m.

We're continuing our celebration of recent recordings by PSNY composers this week, and that celebration begins with a landmark album for Anthony Cheung: Dystemporal, a portrait CD released on Wergo in 2016. Containing six premiere recordings of works Cheung, Dystemporal is performed by the Talea Ensemble, which Cheung co-directs alongside percussionist Alex Lipowski, and Ensemble Intercontemporain. These works represent a formative period in Cheung's career, and this new recording presents a landmark document of his unique compositional voice. They include: SynchroniCities (2012) for 8 musicians with electronics; Windswept Cypresses (2005) for flute, viola, harp, percussion; Running the (Full) Gamut (2008) for piano; Centripedalocity (2008) for 7 musicians; Enjamb, Infuse, Implode (2006) for 6 musicians; and Dystemporal (2012) for 23 musicians.

Another PSNY composer also saw a major portrait CD released in 2016: Lei Liang, whose Luminous, released on New World Records, documents five recent compositions that explore his long-standing research into traditional Asian arts and music, and their incorporation into a contemporary music aesthetic. These works, performed by musicians and ensembles including Steven Schick, Daniel Schlosberg, Aleck Karis, Third Coast Percussion, the Formosa Quartet, and the Palimpsest Ensemble, include: Verge Quartet (2013) for string quartet; Trans (2013) for solo percussion; The moon is following us (2015) for solo piano; Inkscape (2014) for percussion ensemble and piano; and Luminous (2014) contrabass solo and ensemble. Check out a performance of Luminous below.

With the Mivos Quartet, Kate Soper recorded her work 2015 work Nadja, a three-song cycle sets texts by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ovid, and André Breton that incorporates the composer's own voice into the quartet. Released on New Focus Recordings, Nadja is accompanied by works by Taylor Brook and Andrew Greenwald to complete Mivos's album, titled The Garden of Diverging Paths. Check out Soper and Mivos performing the work in 2015 below. 

Narrowing from large ensemble pieces to solo works, we're thrilled to feature percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum's solo album, Memory Palace, released on VisionIntoArt Records, the in-house label of Brooklyn venue National Sawdust. Memory Palace contains recordings of the eponymous 2012 work by Christopher Cerrone, as well as Timo Andres'Crashing Through Fences, which Rosenbaum originally commissioned and premiered in 2010. Check out a performance of Memory Palace at EMPAC below: