Post-Haste Reed Duo: Donut Robot!
Aerocade Music

In gracing Donut Robot! with a comic illustration cover, Post-Haste Reed Duo adds levity to a genre not typically known for lightheartedness. That's merely one of many things that makes this saxophone-and-bassoon duo project so endearing. More important than the refreshingly unpretentious attitude Sean Fredenburg and Javier Rodriguez bring to it are performances that exemplify unbridled enthusiasm. The two execute the six works on this hour-long release with such fervor, the listener can't help but get swept up in the process.

Not only are there few saxophone-and-bassoon duos, the number of works written for the combination is small. For that reason, Fredenburg and Rodriguez, the former Instructor of Saxophone at Portland State University and the latter Assistant Professor of Bassoon at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho, channel a considerable amount of time and energy into commissioning composers to increase the existing repertoire. To that end, works by Edward Hines, Drew Baker, Andrea L. Reinkemeyer, Takuma Itoh, Michael Johanson, and Ruby Fulton show how fertile the ground is for this particular instrument pairing while at the same time providing wide-ranging vehicles for Post-Haste Reed Duo to demonstrate how unbounded the terrain can be for players so dedicated.

That aforementioned irreverence extends into Fulton's title work, the writing of which was inspired by an autocorrect text message from Rodriguez to Fredenburg. The technology fail amused the composer, but it also prompted her to consider the more serious repercussions of such failures, suspicions of which were borne out by headlines from real news stories she found such as “Pokemon Go Caused Accidents and Deaths” and “Teenager Electrocuted in Her Sleep By iPhone Charger.” In the work's entrancing opening section, each player flips between foreground and background as a mechanistically repeated pattern is alternated between the two. Subsequent to that episode, the second part, rooted in a compositional method involving pitches assigned to speech rhythms, navigates intricate pathways with focused intent, the instruments both voicing patterns in unison and diverging from one another in precise counterpoint.

Parting company from the opener dramatically, Baker's First Light presents a prolonged exploration of microtonality with harmony set at very close intervals, the bassoon and saxophone often separated by a mere quarter tone and the former played in its highest register. Adding to the proximity between the instruments, Baker designed the material so that the two are heard continuously, with rests positioned to avoid any breaks in the presentation. This makes for an arresting musical outcome, especially when the gradations in pitch are so close they almost seem identical yet are still different enough to never fully align. The effect is rather like overhearing the reedy vocalizations of two creatures oscillating and undulating without pause.

Johanson's three-part Soundscapes begins with “The Hills of Basilicata,” an alternately joyous and serene portrait of a beautiful, verdant region in southern Italy whose rolling hills and mountains are evoked by the acrobatic dance engaged in by the instruments; written in response to a snowstorm that covered everything outside the composer's home in a white blanket, “Snowscape” utlilizes microtones and multiphonics to convey the reflective state Johanson found himself in when pondering the stillness of the scene. In keeping with its title, “Moto Perpetuo” is a hot-wired, momentum-powered romp far different in tone from the sober central movement.

For Hines' Hommage: Saygun et Bartók en Turquie 1936 (Chanson de Hatice Dekioglu), the listener time-travels to 1936 when Bartók and fellow composer A. Adnan Saygun recorded thirteen-year-old Hatice Dekioglu singing a folk song at a village in Turkey (over time, Bartók and Saygun collected nearly 100 folk tunes and melodies using wax cylinder recording machines and notating the material by hand). In this moving piece, Hines created a set of variations from the theme in the original recording, and towards the end the grainy recording of Dekioglu's voice appears accompanied by soprano sax and bassoon (in a daring turn, translated text of the words sung by her are recited by the duo in the middle of the work).

Its title taken from the second line of Christina Rossetti's poem, Echo, Reinkemeyer's In the Speaking Silence is dedicated to the memory of the composer's mother, who passed away during the writing of the piece; while the presentation is composed, a gamut of emotions is expressed during its eight minutes, from reverence and supplication to mournfulness despair. At album's end, Itoh's Snapshots, arranged for bassoon and alto saxophone, presents four short movements featuring extremely contrasting styles, techniques, and moods; as different as they are, however, motives are shared between movements to link them. Whereas the honks and brays of “Grotesque” suggest two geese fighting, “Chain” opts for the fluid, cyclical flow of minimalism-styled patterning. “Haunted” inventively tackles glissando from multiple angles, setting the stage for one final surprise, a bebop-inspired “Early Bird Special” whose roller-coaster sax riffing might have you thinking of Charlie “Bird” Parker himself.

April 2019