Imani Winds: Bruits
Bright Shiny Things

Imani Winds' Bruits wears its political heart on its sleeve. Medical in origin, the title terms refers to vascular murmur, the noises made by blood as it moves through obstructed arteries, and as such serves as an apt metaphor in Vijay Iyer's titular work for “the blocked system of justice in today's society.” Written by the pianist at the time of the 2012 Trayvon Martin trial, the five-movement setting incorporates a reading of the “Stand Your Ground” law that was part of the instructions to the jury. Joining Iyer's 2014 creation on the release are two other world-premiere recordings that likewise contend with social and political issues, Reena Esmail's The Light is the Same and Frederic Rzewski's three-part Sometimes.

Bruits is but the latest bold chapter in a still-developing story for flutist Brandon Patrick George, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mark Dover, bassoonist Monica Ellis, and French hornist Jeff Scott. For two decades, the wind quintet has been performing and recording material from the traditional chamber repertoire and works commissioned by the ensemble. It's in the latter that the group's socially engaged side comes especially to the fore, the material on Bruits, all of it written for the ensemble, resounding evidence. Associations with Wayne Shorter, Paquito D'Rivera, and Jason Moran have expanded Imani Winds' profile into jazz circles, while classical listeners have been treated to the group's rendering of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and numerous others.

Pianist Cory Smythe appears with the quintet on Bruits, which Iyer composed for Imani Winds in 2014. The opening “Gulf” sets the scene with pulsing patterns that suggest the hectic pace of the modern city as well as sombre tonalities that intimate the presence of darker undercurrents. Injustice is confronted head-on in “Force” in its inclusion of a reading of the “Stand Your Ground” law, after which “Wake” reinstates the instrumental presentation of the opener with an urgent groove and explorative solo statements. The third movement segues without pause into “Flocks,” which concludes with words by Georgia congresswoman Lucy McBath, whose son Jordan Davis was shot and killed while sitting in a car at a gas station. Iyer's compelling creation culminates with “Mass,” its incremental build to a crescendo a distillation in sound of the entire work's spirit.

Rzewski's Sometimes is as political, though in a different way. The work was commissioned by Duke University in 2015 to celebrate Dr. John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), an inspirational historian who wrote about the post-Civil War Reconstruction era when people of colour were first allowed to hold political office and enjoy benefits and freedoms they'd been hitherto denied. Like Iyer's, Rzewski's work includes two text-related sections, with “Prolog” featuring Franklin's words read by his son (accompanied by bassoon only), John Whittington Franklin, and “Lullaby (God to Hungry Child),” which gives voice to Langston Hughes' poem through the expressive singing of soprano Janai Brugger. The texts contrast in their messages, with Franklin's espousing hope for a better future (“We need a new American revolution / That will create a new ideology / Of comradeship in the great enterprise …”) and Hughes' a bitter comment on the divide between rich and poor (“I made the world for the rich / And the will-be-rich / And the have-always-been-rich / Not for you / Hungry child”). The eleven-minute central movement, “Sometimes,” offers an explorative rumination on “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” the spiritual's sorrow-tinged tone enacting an effective bridge for the outer movements.

Less overtly didactic is Esmail's The Light is the Same (the title from a a poem by the Sufi poet Rumi). Yet while its message is more subtly communicated, its impact is as powerful; in fact, of the three, it's Esmail's haunting piece I find myself returning to most. Its hypnotic quality is attributable in part to the two contrasting Hindustani ragas, the brooding Vachaspati and lighter Yaman, she drew upon for the work's construction. The ragas largely use the same notes yet sound very different when played, an effect she exploited to illustrate how people of different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities can seem so unlike one another yet similar in other respects.

February 2021