Richard Carrick's "lanterne" Released on New Focus Recordings

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 6, 2020, 2:38 p.m.

Richard Carrick has often felt most at home composing music for intimate spaces. In his chamber music, Carrick brings his own sense of virtuosity and structure to the interaction between nimble performers, adding his own meticulous artistry to the act of small-scale musical performance. As a performer himself, and as co-director of the Either/Or Ensemble, Carrick seeks out the precarious nuance and subtlety of live performance, writing works for small instrumental forces that focus both performer and listener to the present moment. 

lanterne, Carrick's latest release with New Focus Recordings, brings several of his works together on an album that celebrates this kind of small-scale intimacy in a time when so many people have been forced into social isolation, and in a time when the reflection made possible by his music is all the more valuable. Though this album was conceived well before COVID, Carrick's music takes on even more meditative power. In the titular composition lanterne, for example, Carrick explores the intricate possibilities of the bass flute, creating a kind of "wall of sound" that emerges from its lower register and climbs rhythmically throughout the instrument's harmonics and even the performer's own voice. The gasping, breathy sonorities of lanterne also emerge metaphorically in Carrick's 2018 string quartet Space:Time, which imagines the physical barriers of space travel—from the claustrophobia of the interior spaces for humans, to the pull of gravity and acceleration "into the light", as its coda is titled. 

Like many composers, Carrick often works with the musicians for whom he has written many of the works on lanterne both in person and remotely—this latter method involving correspondence including scores, recordings, videos, and voice memos. The ability for Carrick and his collaborators to share sketches, ideas, and sounds together, even though they are not in the same space, enables Carrick to compose works that evoke liveness and virtuosity through careful craft and technique. Carrick often draws inspiration for this refinement of performative gesture from gugak, the traditional music of Korea, which often features highly controlled yet wildly expressive sounds generated on instruments intended for small spaces. On lanterne, three works explicitly incorporate structural and sonic elements from gugak: Danga, Seongeum, and sandstone(s), the last of which incorporates traditional Korean instruments put into timbral dialogue with flute, violin, and cello.  

Recorded before the current crisis, but mixed and mastered in the isolation of a global pandemic, Carrick's lanterne is a prescient reminder of the possibilities of smallness and intimacy that emerge from the interaction between composers, performers, carefully crafted as scoee and recording—even in a time when we all must remain physically alone. Check out an interview with Carrick by New Focus Recordings below.

Æolus Quartet Performs Keeril Makan's "Washed by Fire"

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 21, 2017, 10:54 a.m.

Keeril Makan's Washed by Fire (for string quartet) explores the performance of identity—personal, sonic, and compositional. Makan began this piece by collaborating with choreographer Benjamin Levy, and strove to "[create] a piece that resonated with me on a fundamental level, one in which my emotions are not filtered by abstraction, where the focus is on a visceral connection with time." As such, Washed by Fire stands out in Makan's repertoire; Makan writes, "by embracing musical references that my mind often avoids, I was able to reconnect with rhythm, melody, and mode in a way that is markedly different from my other recent music."

The Æolus Quartet will bring Washed by Fire to Corpus Christi, TX, in a series of two concerts: one on February 24th at the House of Rock, and another on February 25th at Wolfe Recital Hall. Check out Washed by Fire performed by members of the Either/Or Ensemble below. 

Beat Furrer in Portrait at Miller Theatre with Either/Or Ensemble

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 31, 2017, 3:13 p.m.

The "Composer Portraits" series at Columbia University's Miller Theatre has brought the public an unprecedented in-depth look (and listen) into the works of countless living composers over the years. On February 2, Miller Theatre hosts a Portrait Concert featuring the works of Beat Furrer, the renowned Austrian composer, performed by the Either/Or Ensemble.

The program includes the US Premiere of his recent work for clarinet and string quartet, intorno al bianco, as well as linea dell'orizzonte, for ensemble, Ira-Arca, for bass flute and double bass, amd spur for piano and string quartet.

The Either/Or Ensemble was co-founded by fellow PSNY composer Richard Carrick, who will conduct the evening's performances. (This resonates with Furrer's own history as a composer and conductor, having founded Klangforum Wien in 1985). Carrick recently returned to the United States from Rwanda, where he held a Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to returning to Either/Or, Carrick also returns to a new post in Boston as the Chair of the Composition Department at the Berklee School of Music. 

Check out a recording of Furrer's spur below.