Heare Ensemble: VOX
Innova

A natural companion to Jennie Oh Brown's recent solo album Giantess is VOX, the premiere recording by the Heare Ensemble. Not only does the flutist appear alongside pianist Jennifer Blyth and cellist Kurt Fowler in the group, both Innova releases include renditions of Carter Pann's Melodies for Robert. However, the primary work on VOX is arguably George Crumb's eight-part Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), an environmentally conscious piece the musicians first performed as graduate students at the Eastman School of Music and have since presented more than twenty-five times. However much the three pieces accompanying it might at first glance seem unrelated, they were chosen, in part, for overlapping thematically with ideas explored in Vox Balaenae.

Without question, Crumb's 1971 creation registers strongly. Emblematic of the composer's style, Vox Balaenae was created after he was exposed to hydrophone recordings made by marine biologists in the ‘60s that illustrated the communicative power of whale songs. Initially designed to be presented by masked performers in a blue-lit concert setting that would mimic the ocean's depths, the performance loses that theatrical dimension, obviously, in the recorded version. Little else is sacrificed, however, in the realization, as the trio carefully follows Crumb's guidelines in evoking the sounds of whales, seagulls, and nature. Whereas a primal wildness establishes itself early in the vocalizations that accompany Brown's flute phrases in “Vocalise (...for the beginning of time),” Fowler's cello glissandos and Blyth's inner piano textures suggest whale communications in “Archeozoic (Variation I).” An Eastern quality also surfaces at times, specifically in the sitar-like twang generated by Fowler and the generally meditative tone of some movements. Passages of extreme quiet alternate with louder ones, and listeners familiar with Crumb's music would no doubt identify “Mesozoic (Variation IV)” as his the moment those fortissimo clusters dazzle the senses. Listening to Vox Balaenae in 2020, one can't help but regard Crumb as prescient for anticipating environmentally related works by figures such as John Luther Adams and Ingram Marshall.

Narong Prangcharoen's Bencharong (2002) follows, its title a reference to Thai porcelain that's typically created using three to eight colours and often handed out on special occasions. Each of the work's five short movements represents the composer's attempt to distill into musical form the character of each colour. Though Prangcharoen's work is less audacious than Crumb's in the world evoked, it's nevertheless an engaging piece executed with passion by the trio; it also effectively captures the high level of connectedness the three demonstrate in their performances. Mood contrasts are central to Prangcharoen's stylistically diverse setting, with the material ranging from the high-spirited “Red” and sparkling “Yellow” to the introspective “White” and macabre “Black.”

May 2020