Debra Kaye: Time is the Sea We Swim In
Navona Records

Imagine if listeners unacquainted with Debra Kaye's work were asked to share their impressions after attending an evening concert featuring the New York-based composer's material. Presented with a programme as wide-ranging as that on Time is the Sea We Swim In, they might struggle to provide a clear and defining portrait; mentions of her boundless curiosity, adventurous spirit, and open-minded sensibility would likely arise, however. It's not uncommon for Navona Records to feature a broad sampling of pieces on a composer-centred album and for them to be performed by a number of different soloists and ensembles. But Time is the Sea We Swim In, Kaye's second release on the label (and one as evocatively titled as her first, Ikarus Among the Stars), takes this to an extreme in featuring solo piano settings, a string quartet, trios, and, most unexpectedly, a jazz quartet. While the compositions are all Kaye's, the contrasts between the selections are dramatic. The eruptive While We Were Sleeping, for example, feels worlds removed from the other solo piano piece, At Liberty, which is so melodically enticing it could pass for an instrumental version of a pop song.

Performed by pianist Craig Ketter, While We Were Sleeping (2012) opens the collection auspiciously. Whereas the title might suggest peaceful repose, in keeping with its origins—it grew out of an improvisation Kaye was doing while hearing the weather report the night before Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc—the material is turbulence incarnate. Her propensity for improvisation is accounted for in the composition too, with the traditional notation that guides the pianist during the opening section gradually reducing to a “graphic score” that includes only a few notation guidelines and asks the soloist to respond spontaneously otherwise. After a portentous opening of rather Schoenberg-like character, the music swells as violent gestures evoke the destructive fury of a storm. Subsequent to that, it moves on, the music reflecting the stillness of the aftermath in its slow dissipation.

Performing Time is the Sea We Swim In is Lincoln Trio (violinst Desirée Ruhstrat, cellist David Cunliffe, pianist Marta Aznavoorian), for whom the piece was written and who premiered it in early 2020. The philosophical conundrum of time as something that can race at one moment and slow to a crawl the next was the springboard for Kaye's imagining. Emerging softly from piano chords and cello harmonics, the music quickly blossoms into a florid array of interlacing lines that in turn gains in acceleration and intensity. During one part, plucked strings buoy the playing; at another, folk-like figures work a rustic air into the writing. Changes in presentation are plentiful, yet the fluidity of the trio's playing establishes a through-line from one section to the next. The hush of the opening reinstates itself at the end, the move perhaps suggestive of an elder's stoical acceptance of time's ineluctable passing. A different trio, this one comprising violist David Yang, cellist Hikaru Tamaki, and shakuhachi player James Nyoraku Schlefer, presents three zen poems (2019/rev. 2022), inspired by the writings of Zen monks of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It's the shakuhachi that understandably gives the piece its defining character, but the strings are as integral to the impact of the material. Meditative episodes emerge, but so too do animated ones as Kaye blends her musical responses to the texts and the instruments into a riveting trio expression.

Commissioned for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Howland Chamber Music Circle, String Quartet No. 2—Howland Quartet (2017) is performed by Voxare String Quartet (violinists Emily Ondracek-Peterson and Galina Zhdanova, violist Erik Peterson, and cellist Wendy Law). Advancing through three movements, the work progresses from the harmonics, flurries, and glissandos of the first part, “A shimmering idea … you decide to follow,” to lyrical expressions in the plaintive second, “The beauty of the dream upon reflection,” and countrified swing in the third, “Danza Energico,” Kaye isn't averse to weaving a reference or two into her material when the urge strikes. Quotes surface in this case, from “Come All Ye Faithful” in the first to Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1 in the second.

Kaye herself performs At Liberty (1988), the earliest work on the album and, like While We Were Sleeping, one with an improvisation history. As she worked intuitively through a series of improvisations, the piece gradually evolved into the triumphant statement captured on the recording. In truth, had Time is the Sea We Swim In ended there it would have been a more than satisfying set. Yet while long at nearly fourteen minutes, Colossus 1067 (2021) makes for a memorable conclusion when she uses tenor saxist Dan Block, pianist Steve Sandberg, double bassist Frank Wagner, and drummer David Meade to represent the mechanical operations of a roller coaster, itself a metaphor for life's ups and downs. The work came into being when photographer Gus Foster commissioned it for a museum retrospective and Kaye drew inspiration from a panoramic photo he'd taken on the Colossus, one of the last wooden roller coasters in the United States—none of which the listener needs to know when the exuberant playing of the four engages on its own terms.

March 2024