LAVENA: in your hands
Bright Shiny Things

Cellist Lavena Johanson's solo debut release under the LAVENA name impresses for being so smartly curated and presented. While it's primarily a collection of solo performances, in your hands is enriched by the participation of violinist William Herzog and percussionist Jeff Stern on separate pieces; as rewarding, the strong set-list combines material by Caroline Shaw, Ted Hearne, and Judah Adashi with world premiere recordings of works by Gemma Peacocke, Jessie Montgomery, and Bryce Dessner.

Naturally, central to the album's impact is Johanson's playing. That shouldn't surprise: after all, the Seattle-born cellist began playing the instrument at six and went on to study at the Peabody Conservatory and become a founding member of The Atlas String Quartet. Indicative of how far her interests reach, she's toured with the indie rock band Ra Ra Riot and is comfortable extending her playing into experimental territory with electronics and other effects. in your hands isn't, however, a crossover record, even if the contemporary classical works presented on the release cut a broad stylistic swath.

Composed by Peacocke in Paris in 2015, Amygdala inaugurates the release with an unsettling blend of tactile electronics and expressive cello statements. Johanson drapes bowed lines across skittering surfaces, the collective mass coming across like some geological entity expanding in size. Destabilizing flurries of upper-register string figures intensify the impression of unease, a state reinforced by the monotone static of electronics humming alongside the cello.

Like the album in general, Montgomery's Duo for Violin and Cello stretches widely across its movements, from the agitated restlessness of “Meandering” to the elegiac sombreness of “Dirge” and kinetic slash-and-drive of “Presto.” Electronics don't enter into the performance, which requires nothing more than the inspired playing of Herzog and Johanson to make its mark. Written during the week Dessner spent as composer-in-residence at Finland's annual Meidän Festivaali (held in Tuusula, Sibelius's hometown), Tuusula proves particularly compelling in providing a fifteen-minute showcase for the cellist's sweeping artistry and technical command. In a work that in moments recalls cello pieces by Britten and John Tavener, Johanson wholly immerses herself in the world conceived by Dessner, otherwise known for his work with Eighth Blackbird and The National.

Shaw based her moving in manus tuas (2009) on a sixteenth-century motet by Thomas Tallis and aspired in her own creation to capture the sensation of hearing it performed at Christ Church in New Haven, Connecticut. The result flatters both composer and performer, Shaw for showing how seamlessly she can operate within a particular idiom and Johanson for giving voice to the writing through expert control of dynamics, tone colour, and space. A creature of an entirely kind is the four-part Furtive Movements, which Hearne titled after one of the means by which individuals can be detained under New York's ‘Stop and Frisk' policy. The sound world is far removed from a pure acoustic realm, with Stern's percussion and the wedging of a wine cork between the cello's middle strings lending the piece a raw, improv-like quality. Indicative of just how far Furtive Movements travels, the third movement threads robo-funk gestures into the writing and the fourth evokes at times the interplay between violinist David Cross and drummer Bill Bruford in the early-‘70s incarnation of King Crimson.

May 2021