New Music Detroit: Smoke: Music of Marc Mellits
Innova Recordings

Cheekily pitched as “Music to inhale,” Smoke might on formal grounds be contemporary classical, but as performed by New Music Detroit (NMD) it packs the visceral punch of a high-energy rock band. On its first official album, the ten-member ensemble digs into Marc Mellits' material with an intensity that argues strongly on behalf of the Chicago-based composer while perhaps making an even stronger case for the group itself. Even better, his music—at least insofar as it's presented here—is a lot of fun, not the kind of thing one typically hears said about a classical recording. Such irreverence is refreshing on a release whose cover image suggests a stronger connection to The Grateful Dead than Beethoven.

Mellits is “absolutely thrilled” with the project outcome, and so he should be: performed by different group configurations, the four works (three previously unrecorded) impress as dynamic exercises distinguished by melodic richness and rhythmic propulsion. Founded in 2006, NMD's a flexible outfit overseen by Artistic Director and percussionist Ian Ding and fleshed out by Vicky Chow (piano), Gyan Riley (guitar), Shannon Orme (bass clarinet), Erik Ronmark (saxophones), Gina DiBello (violin), Adrienne Ronmark (violin), Samuel Bergman (viola), Una O'Riordan (cello), and Daniel Bauch (marimba). As the instrumentation indicates, NMD's a mini-orchestra capable of tackling any piece thrown its way, though it focuses on works from the late-twentieth century to the present day. The closing work excepted, the album material's presented in concise, bite-sized parts, the title work in eight, Red six, and Tapas also eight. Each setting draws from the NMD pool for its players, with Smoke and Prime arranged for quartet and quintet, respectively, and Red a piece for two marimbas and Tapas string quartet.

The title work kicks into gear with a muscular drum groove powering the saxophone-guitar-marimba front-line—a fitting scene-setter for a recording that boasts an above-average share of high-energy moments. Smoke offsets such punchiness with lovely second and fifth movements that, while still animated, are serene, even pastoral, while the third combines both into a discofied raver that Ding powers aggressively and Ronmark elevates with sing-song phrases. In the most surprising move, the work concludes with an eighth part that sees Riley serving up heavy, low-end riffs more characteristic of Metallica than Mahler. Mellits isn't without a sense of humour, either, as shown by the “Fast, Obsessive, Bombastic, Red” directive accompanying Red's sixth movement.

With strings stabbing furiously through its opening part, sedate is hardly the word one would use to describe Tapas, his third string quartet, though, like Smoke, the work exhibits a wide range during its eight movements. The third exudes a peaceful splendour rarely heard on the recording, while the fifth and eighth are plaintive and elegiac; more emblematic of the album's tone are the fourth and seventh, which lunge forth at a breathless pace and at maximum volume. Arranged for bass clarinet, baritone sax, piano, and percussion, the panoramic Prime unites all of Mellits' tendencies into a single-movement, seventeen-minute shape-shifter that in its intricate melodic design and forceful rhythmic drive shares much with the music of the late English composer Steve Martland.

October 2018