textura

Lawrence Moss: New Dawn
Innova

Any composer in want of inspiration need look no further than Lawrence Moss. Consider: after nearly fifty-six years at Mills College, Yale, and the University of Maryland, College Park, he retired from teaching a little over four years ago and has just released at the ripe young age of ninety-one his second Innova album, the aptly titled New Dawn. And while the earliest composition on the seventy-minute collection dates from 2001, two of its ten were written but a year ago. Moss even has other projects in the works, among them an entire album of new piano music written expressly for Kadisha Onalbayeva, who also performs on New Dawn. His follow-up to 2011's New Paths is also distinguished by the variety of its set-list. Besides a solo piano piece, solo percussion work, and orchestral tone poem, New Dawn includes duos for cello-and-piano, flute-and-percussion, choir-and-piano, and voice-and-flute. It's about as comprehensive an account of Moss's recent output as could be imagined.

The title of 2014's Ligeti Light reflects Moss's penchant for punning, but it's otherwise a sober solo piano setting etched by Onalbayeva, the first pianist from Kazakhstan to be designated as a Steinway Artist. In this seven-minute opener, Moss references the late Hungarian composer with an allusion to a typical Ligeti etude before plunging into unrelated territory. Up next, the late Arnold Winston leads the Kiev Philharmonic in a performance of the title work, an orchestral tone poem based on five Tang Dynasty poems. Though an equivalent number of movements is involved, the piece plays like a single-movement, ten-minute work. Contrasts of mood, timbre, tempo, and dynamics fluidly emerge to reflect the story-line in the texts, which recount a poet awakening, meditating in a bamboo grove, admiring gowned women at an afternoon pageant, and eventually parting from an old friend at midnight. Mirroring that trajectory, 2018's Moments for cello (Eric Kutz) and piano (Audrey Andrist) likewise guides the listener through five contrasting sections, including the lively “Whimsically” and lyrical “Aria.”

A different side of the composer surfaces in Gamelan for Flute and Percussion (2013), Moss's affectionate take on the traditional Balinese orchestra and its associated sounds. Flutist Sarah Eckman McIver and percussionist Lee Hinkle perform the three-movement work, Hinkle more responsible for establishing the gamelan connection in his usage of mallets, gongs, and chimes. 5 Bagatelles for Percussion solo (2012) subsequently affords him a vehicle for exploring a broad range of rhythms (Balkan ones in “Bulgar,” for example) and percussion sonorities, from drums and gongs to marimba and vibraphone. The three-part De Profundis (2015) is fittingly played by the Khasma Piano Duo (Ashlee Mack and Katherine Palumbo), given that the work's title is Latin for the Greek Khasma (chasm). Much like the other multi-movement works on the recording, this one progresses through multiple moods, in this instance from “Solemn” and “Lament” to “Ringing.”

Moss himself draws for inspiration from Walt Whitman for 2018's Voyagers, a setting for chorus (The Composers' Choir, conducted by Daniel Shaw) and piano of two late poems (“Sail Out for Good,” “One Thought Ever at the Fore”) that deal with life's final destination (“Depart, depart from solid earth / No more returning to these shores”). Whitman's words also surface in 2014's Grand is the Seen, a short work for soprano, flute, and piano memorable for its performance by Metropolitan Opera singer Danielle Talamantes. Accompanied by flute, percussion, and piano, she also graces the three-movement Dreams by Day and Night (2014), based on poems by the Tang Dynasty's Li Bai that Moss translated himself from the original Chinese, and at album's close, she and Sarah Eckman McIver (on flute and piccolo) unite superbly for the suitably stripped-down Inside, Outside: 4 Haiku for Our Time (2016). Though the work ends on a rather unsettling note with “Inner turmoil ...” and its rather foreboding message (“Mankind's chaos / Heaven spinning / How will it end?”), New Dawn itself is anything but bleak. On the contrary, its cumulative tone is celebratory, not just in the way it presents a broad overview of Moss's work but also in the way it showcases the exceptional creative vitality of a ninety-one-year-old composer.

September 2019


	Lawrence Moss: New Dawn Innova Any composer in want of inspiration need look no further than Lawrence Moss. Consider: after nearly fifty-six years at Mills College, Yale, and the University of Maryland, College Park, he retired from teaching a little over four years ago and has just released at the ripe young age of ninety-one his second Innova album, the aptly titled New Dawn. And while the earliest composition on the seventy-minute collection dates from 2001, two of its ten were written but a year ago. Moss even has other projects in the works, among them an entire album of new piano music written expressly for Kadisha Onalbayeva, who also performs on New Dawn. His follow-up to 2011's New Paths is also distinguished by the variety of its set-list. Besides a solo piano piece, solo percussion work, and orchestral tone poem, New Dawn includes duos for cello-and-piano, flute-and-percussion, choir-and-piano, and voice-and-flute. It's about as comprehensive an account of Moss's recent output as could be imagined. The title of 2014's Ligeti Light reflects Moss's penchant for punning, but it's otherwise a sober solo piano setting etched by Onalbayeva, the first pianist from Kazakhstan to be designated as a Steinway Artist. In this seven-minute opener, Moss references the late Hungarian composer with an allusion to a typical Ligeti etude before plunging into unrelated territory. Up next, the late Arnold Winston leads the Kiev Philharmonic in a performance of the title work, an orchestral tone poem based on five Tang Dynasty poems. Though an equivalent number of movements is involved, the piece plays like a single-movement, ten-minute work. Contrasts of mood, timbre, tempo, and dynamics fluidly emerge to reflect the story-line in the texts, which recount a poet awakening, meditating in a bamboo grove, admiring gowned women at an afternoon pageant, and eventually parting from an old friend at midnight. Mirroring that trajectory, 2018's Moments for cello (Eric Kutz) and piano (Audrey Andrist) likewise guides the listener through five contrasting sections, including the lively “Whimsically” and lyrical “Aria.” A different side of the composer surfaces in Gamelan for Flute and Percussion (2013), Moss's affectionate take on the traditional Balinese orchestra and its associated sounds. Flutist Sarah Eckman McIver and percussionist Lee Hinkle perform the three-movement work, Hinkle more responsible for establishing the gamelan connection in his usage of mallets, gongs, and chimes. 5 Bagatelles for Percussion solo (2012) subsequently affords him a vehicle for exploring a broad range of rhythms (Balkan ones in “Bulgar,” for example) and percussion sonorities, from drums and gongs to marimba and vibraphone. The three-part De Profundis (2015) is fittingly played by the Khasma Piano Duo (Ashlee Mack and Katherine Palumbo), given that the work's title is Latin for the Greek Khasma (chasm). Much like the other multi-movement works on the recording, this one progresses through multiple moods, in this instance from “Solemn” and “Lament” to “Ringing.” Moss himself draws for inspiration from Walt Whitman for 2018's Voyagers, a setting for chorus (The Composers' Choir, conducted by Daniel Shaw) and piano of two late poems (“Sail Out for Good,” “One Thought Ever at the Fore”) that deal with life's final destination (“Depart, depart from solid earth / No more returning to these shores”). Whitman's words also surface in 2014's Grand is the Seen, a short work for soprano, flute, and piano memorable for its performance by Metropolitan Opera singer Danielle Talamantes. Accompanied by flute, percussion, and piano, she also graces the three-movement Dreams by Day and Night (2014), based on poems by the Tang Dynasty's Li Bai that Moss translated himself from the original Chinese, and at album's close, she and Sarah Eckman McIver (on flute and piccolo) unite superbly for the suitably stripped-down Inside, Outside: 4 Haiku for Our Time (2016). Though the work ends on a rather unsettling note with “Inner turmoil ...” and its rather foreboding message (“Mankind's chaos / Heaven spinning / How will it end?”), New Dawn itself is anything but bleak. On the contrary, its cumulative tone is celebratory, not just in the way it presents a broad overview of Moss's work but also in the way it showcases the exceptional creative vitality of a ninety-one-year-old composer. September 2019