Christopher Cerrone's "The Pieces that Fall to Earth" Released on New Amsterdam Records

by Ted Gordon on July 30, 2019, 2:13 p.m.

Christopher Cerrone's long-awaited album, The Pieces that Fall to Earth, has recently been released on New Amsterdam Records. This new album collects three vocal cycles, all performed by the Los Angeles-based collective Wild Up: The Pieces that Fall to Earth, with soprano Lindsay Kesselman; The Naomi Songs, sung by vocalist Theo Bleckmann; and The Branch Will Not Break, sung by a chorus of eight vocalists. 

The three vocal cycles collected on The Pieces that Fall to Earth each draw their text from different contemporary poets: Kay Ryan, Bill Knott, and James Wright. In each cycle, Cerrone activates the subtle and powerful affective worlds created through his setting of these poems to music, marrying the modernist and avant-garde sound-worlds of composers such as Luciano Berio and Morton Feldman with more traditional strophic settings of lush and memorable vocal melodies. 

Cerrone notes, “These authors profoundly inspired the music that I wrote. I feel that by setting their disparate languages, I have composed three works that are kindred spirits, but whose differences are as profound as their similarities.”

The blog I Care if You Listen recently premiered a music video for "Swept Up Whole," from the album's titular vocal cycle, featuring soprano Lindsay Kesselman. As Cerrone writes,

In “Swept Up Whole,” the narrator sings “You aren’t / swept up whole, / however it / feels. You’re / atomized. The wind / passes. You / recongeal. It’s a surprise.” This film, conceived of by Evan Chapman and Kevin Eikenberg of Four/Ten Media, takes this poem and reimagines its themes visually and chronologically.

The Pieces that Fall to Earth has already been celebrated with an album release concert in Los Angeles; on August 2nd, the album will see another release event at New York's Areté, featuring Theo Bleckmann singing The Naomi Songs in an arrangement for piano and voice, accompanied by Timo Andres, who also wrote liner notes to the album. Rachel Lee Priday will perform Cerrone’s Sonata for Violin and Piano with Andres, and percussionist Andy Meyerson of The Living Earth Show will play a solo version of Cerrone’s meditative A Natural History of Vacant Lots." Cerrone will also accompany soprano Alexandra Smither in his work "I will learn to love a person."

Go Get'em, Timo & Andrew!

by Ted Gordon on March 20, 2012, 11:44 a.m.

PSNY Composer Timothy Andres is currently in Los Angeles for a string of performances this week and next: two with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and one with wild Up, a modern music collective. The LACO concerts look great: one a world premiere of "Old Keys," commissioned by LACO's Sound Investment; the other a performance of his solo piano work, "Sorbet" (which you can conveniently purchase on this site!). 

Curiously, wild Up's concert is themed "Brooklyn vs. Los Angeles." While we're not at all biased (although most of our office lives in Brooklyn), we'll have another pinch-hitter on the Brooklyn roster: Andrew Norman, proud resident of Bed-Stuy. I'm not exactly sure how the judging will work, but it looks like it'll be a good concert regardless. (Sadly, my fantasies of an Iron Chef-style composer competition will probably not come to fruition.) But with Andres and Norman on one side, the odds might be slightly stacked....