Jacob Greenberg: Bright Codes
Tundra Records

A perusal of the discography page at Jacob Greenberg's site credits him with piano on almost every recording he's released as a solo artist or appeared on as a collaborator or member of ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble). Two recent New Focus Recordings sets, for example, 2019's Neo/Classic and 2018's Hanging Gardens, feature him playing acoustic piano exclusively. That makes his latest collection, Bright Codes, all the more enticing for featuring Greenberg on harmonium and piano; enhancing its appeal is the fact that all of its pieces were written for him between 2013 and 2021. The project couldn't, in other words, be more personal.

Issued on ICE's in-house Tundra imprint, the eighty-minute set—equivalent in old-school terms to a double-album release—is an eclectic affair featuring material by Dai Fujikura, Amy Williams, IONE, and Nathan Davis. In writing the pieces for Greenberg, the composers naturally crafted them with his particular strengths in mind. Self-produced by the pianist, the material was recorded between 2017 and 2021 at Oktaven Audio in Mt. Vernon, New York. The inclusion of harmonium gives the recording a character dramatically unlike his other recordings and the pieces on which it appears a meditative, drone-like quality more associated with Eastern than Western music. Stated otherwise, its presence aligns seamlessly with Greenberg's inclinations and intrepid sensibility.

The album's tone is established by Fujikura's White Rainbow in being a harmonium-only performance. Titled after the white rainbow (also called a fogbow) that results from small droplets within a cloud, the piece exudes a gentle, luminous quality in keeping with the phenomenon after which it's titled. Advancing methodically, it unfurls in slow, wave-like movements, with gleaming harmonium timbres that could be mistaken for an accordion's. While the four piano miniatures of Fujikura's Bright Codes sonically relocate us within a comparatively familiar classical milieu, they reflect as explorative a compositional mindset as the titular setting.

Arranged for harmonium and voice, Williams' Fünf Worte comprises miniatures also, though in this case the five have soprano Tony Arnold concentrating on a single German word in each instance. Naturally the combination of the two elements makes for an arresting presentation, but it's the connection exemplified by the long-time collaborators—her singing's pivotal to Hanging Gardens, for instance—that's makes the performance so gripping. Whereas “Fingerspitzengefühl” and “Kuddelmuddel” are playful, “Verschlimmbessern” opts for brooding mysteriousness. Like Fujikura's pair, Williams' Cineshape 4 shifts the focus to acoustic piano after Fünf Worte, in this case a twelve-minute excursion the composer patterned after Run Lola Run (1998). The film famously begins its story the same way three times but has it develop differently with each telling, a form Cineshape 4 replicates. Similar to the film, the music is in constant motion, though passages do arise where it briefly slows, almost as if it's catching its breath before starting up again. Strangely enough, moments also emerge that take on a swinging, boogie-woogie feel.

Author and poet IONE perpetuates the album's experimental character in The Memory of Now, a trippy meditation that sees Greenberg fully engaged with the harmonium's potential and the composer intoning phrases (“sound, sound, the sounds of now … until a memory arises…") conducive to invoking free-flowing, spontaneous expressions in the dialogue. Bright Codes ends with two long-from settings by Nathan Davis, Ghostlight for lightly prepared piano and Seedling for harmonium and electronics. In the first, its title a reference to the sole bulb that shines on the dark stage of a closed theatre, objects were placed on or between some of the instrument's strings to produce microtonal pulses and gong-like sonorities that form a streaming backdrop to the piano's trajectory from highest to lowest registers. Particularly ear-catching is the intricate tapestry that gradually assembles as the piece advances towards its declamatory climax. Seedling ventures even further afield in merging the harmonium with electronic sounds, the softly shimmering and at times quivering result conjuring the image of tremulous micro-entities gracefully buoyed by the breeze.

December 2021