Michael Byron: Bridges of Pearl and Dust
Cold Blue
Robert Carl: Splectra
Cold Blue
Cold Blue
Matt Sargent's Separation Songs upholds Cold Blue's penchant for innovative compositional concepts while at the same time gracing its catalogue with an exceptionally beautiful piece of music. The work is one of three recent additions to the label's discography, Sargent's a long-form, single-movement opus and the others compact CD singles by Robert Carl and Michael Byron, the latter one of Cold Blue's longest-standing composers.
Imagine the stirring, plaintive cry of a Shaker hymn sustained for seventy-three, swoon-inducing minutes and you'll have some immediate idea of Sargent's setting. Performed with sensitivity by the Los Angeles-based Eclipse Quartet, Separation Songs is, in formal terms, rather simple in design yet no less exquisite for being so. Sargent, a composer, guitarist, music technologist, and audio engineer who calls upstate New York home and who's created work in unusual locations such as the grain elevators of Buffalo's Silo City and Death Valley's Rhyolite ghost town, converted tunes from William Billings's New England Psalm Singer (1770) into an eloquent set of fifty-four variations on four-voice hymn tunes. If the playing on this recording sounds especially full, it's in part explained by the fact that the work was scored for two string quartets and was thus realized by having Eclipse execute both parts using overdubbing.
With no breaks in the presentation and the material evolving slowly, Separation Songs begins to take on the character of generative music created for a gallery installation, especially when it hews to a static dynamic pitch rather than a conventional narrative arc (though resolution is intimated, subtly and artfully, as it approaches its end); it's easy to imagine the piece stretching out for hours on end, its programmed variations looping endlessly and holding mesmerized gallery visitors in thrall. The title, by the way, alludes to the fact that when the hymn tunes re-emerge in the presentation, they're filtered through a ‘separation process' that sees selected notes transposed from one quartet to the other, resulting in new rhythms and harmonies. While that formal design brands it a contemporary composition, no formal understanding of the work is required for one to be moved: this is a modern work that seduces the listener with the sensuality of its rustic sound, the serenity of its tone, and the sincerity of its tender phrases. Assuredly, the gentle, keening cry of Eclipse's strings will stay with you long after this lovely recording ends.
If the CD singles are less affecting emotionally than Separation Songs, they're nevertheless fine creations on their own terms. Splectra by Robert Carl, a composer, performer, and author, as well as chair of the composition department at the Hartt School, University of Hartford, is a two-movement work for solo harp that's performed splendidly by Grammy-winning harpist Alison Bjorkedal; describing it as a solo work is accurate, yet the application of digital processing (overtones generated via a Max software patch designed by Carl and, wouldn't you know, Matt Sargent) expands on the instrument's sonorities so much that the recording can in certain moments seem to involve more than a single performer. Each movement builds on a simple rising motive, such that pitches relating to its opening note's harmonic series are added and thereby enhance the harmonic richness of the sound design. The work's lower-register beginning lends the material an initially brooding character, but soon enough dramatic contrasts between higher and lower plucks make for an engrossing presentation, especially when the sustain generated by the processing creates a layered effect that makes the music all the more bewitching. Bjorkedal's realization of Carl's material is virtuosic but not self-indulgent, the harpist's energy focused on bringing the piece to fruition as the composer intended. As accomplished as the work itself is, this recording of Splectra rewards as much for the magical sound of the harp and Bjorkedal's remarkable rendering of the material.
One of the best things about Cold Blue's singles series is that in featuring a single piece the work's impact isn't diluted by the presence of others. That's particularly true in the case of Byron's Bridges of Pearl and Dust, a single-movement setting for four vibraphones performed by LA-based percussionist-composer Ben Phelps. In Byron's own words (displayed on the package's inner sleeve), Bridges of Pearl and Dust is music “about one thing: It points toward a musical experience in the present tense; the burden of anticipation is lifted, and drama, along with its potential for surprise, is abandoned.” Even with the density that accrues from the multi-layering of the vibraphone, the work exudes a luminosity and even grandeur in its ever-glimmering flow. The harmonic splendour of the presentation accounts in part for the recording's appeal, as do the intricate intertwining of the four vibraphones and the polyrhythmic feel of the music. Interlocking patterns generate a prismatic effect, much like flickers of light glistening within a darkened space, and insistent forward momentum is created by the uninterrupted stream of sound. Recordings of material by the LA-born and NYC-based Byron have appeared on six previous Cold Blue releases; this seventh is an excellent addition to a significant body of work that impresses as both a separate collection of recordings and as a microcosm of the label's entire output.December 2019