Julia Den Boer: Kermès
New Focus Recordings

First things first: Kermès derives its title from two Mediterranean kermes oaks-located insect species from which red pigment can be ground. The works on French-American pianist Julia Den Boer's second album aren't literally about red kermes dye, however; the idea of seeking out rich, deep, and diverse hues and the tints and shades thereof is something the pieces share. In their respectively idiosyncratic ways, Giulia Lorusso, Linda Catlin Smith, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Rebecca Saunders explore the piano's capacity for colour and texture in the material presented on the hour-long release, which Den Boer recorded at Oktaven Audio in Mt. Vernon, New York in October 2020.

The choice of material is in keeping with the NYC-based pianist's reputation as a contemporary music interpreter and advocate. While Kermès features her alone, Den Boer, a graduate of McGill University and SUNY Stony Brook University, also has established herself as a valued collaborator and chamber musician, as well as a member of Wavefield Ensemble. While only four works are performed, they encompass a substantial amount of stylistic territory and provide superb showcases for Den Boer's technical and interpretative command. Whereas Lorusso's Déserts (2018), for example, wends dynamically through its five parts, Smith's The Underfolding (2001) is an explorative travelogue of twenty-one-minute's duration and emblematic of the composer's distinctive style.

The five parts of Déserts, indexed as a single track and performed without interruption, were written with specific deserts in mind: the Wadi Rum in Jordan, carved out by the river;the salt desert Uyuni in Bolivia; the Atacama, a flowering desert located betwixt Southern Peru and Northern Chile; the Libya-located sand sea desert Murzuq; and the Hammada, the rocky desert, found in the Western Sahara. The character of each desert differs, of course, which Lorusso exploits as a creative springboard for her poetic treatments. Beginning pensively, the piece progresses into rippling undulations that evoke the rolling plains of a desert landform until, again, notes grow few in number and the pauses between them become as central to the expression. There's a patience to the pianist's approach that shows a deference on her part to the material, a commitment, in other words, to allow their essences to declare themselves and operate in humble service to that.

In The Underfolding, Smith emphasizes a number of things simultaneously, firstly harmonic ambiguity created by using, in her words, “chords and clusters to shade pitch and rhythm,” and secondly the layering of sound through the use of sustain to approximate in sound the underpainting technique of the visual artist. In this way the piece teases at melody whilst also generating an almost tectonic quality in its accumulating layers. Such material demands a painterly sensitivity from the pianist when it's delivered at a slow, measured pace. A delicate handling of touch and sustain is needed to allow the shadings to crystallize into multiple hues as notes and chords combine. There's momentum here, but it's of the gentle, reflective, and contemplative kind.

Similar to Lorusso's piece, Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Reminiscence (2017) comprises seven short sections performed in a seamless flow. Her work often evokes the austere grandeur and mystery of her native Iceland, and certainly one can hear echoes of that in Den Boer's realization. In a piece that conveys the barrenness of an ice-covered landscape, minimal note voicings appear alongside groaning bass rumbles plus icy glissandi sourced from the instrument's inner strings.

Saunders returns us to the long-form spirit of The Underfolding with Crimson (2005), its title aligning with the blood-red colour of the magnified brushstroke on the album cover; reference is also made to Molly Bloom's closing monologue in Ulysses, in which appear the words, “and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and ... yes.” In contrast to the mounting ecstasy Molly experiences, Saunders's material develops more methodically across its eighteen minutes, moving as it does through sharp explosions of chordal splashes, sprinklings, and clusters. Witnessing her blend high-pitched note clusters with swipes of the instrument's insides and percussive tapping on the piano proves engrossing.

January 2022