Awadagin Pratt: Still Point
New Amsterdam Records

Collaborating with six composers, the eight-part vocal outfit Roomful of Teeth, and the conductor-less string orchestra A Far Cry, American pianist Awadagin Pratt used five lines from T. S. Eliot's The Four Quartets as the creative impetus for his ambitious, adventurous, and genre-fluid recording, the text reading, in part: “At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.” Stasis and movement paradoxically co-exist at the still point, their duality rife with tension and struggle. Paralleling that relationship, Pratt likewise aspires to give voice to inexpressible dimensions of human experience that, in his words, “cannot be tidily communicated.”

Just shy of eighty minutes, Still Point is a consistently stimulating travelogue featuring newly commissioned works by Alvin Singleton, Jessie Montgomery, Judd Greenstein, Paola Prestini, Peteris Vasks, and Tyshawn Sorey, all of who responded to Eliot's words in strikingly thoughtful manner. Pratt's virtuosic command of the piano is called upon at various times but done so in accordance with the content provided by the composers. He's the common thread binding the disparate pieces together, naturally, and through his presence the album achieves a cohesiveness such a diverse project might otherwise lack. The listener is advised to settle in and get comfortable as the shortest of the six performances, many of which could pass for mini-piano concertos, lasts ten minutes and the longest more than seventeen.

The collaborative undertaking began when executive producer Mark Rabideau invited Pratt and Greenstein to adjudicate a chamber ensemble contest designed to, in part, reflect on established classical music practice; that in turn got Pratt pondering his own artistic journey and most critically led to the commissioning of the composers. (The in-depth liner notes by Rabideau are a must-read, incidentally, for anyone wishing to fully appreciate the recording.)

In keeping with its title, Montgomery's Rounds is structurally a rondo that moves fluidly between a principal theme and explorations. It engages immediately for its effervescent intro, swooping melody, and the coupling of Pratt's light-speed sparkle with A Far Cry's aggressive flourishes. It also develops quickly as that energized opening rapidly segues into a slower, ponderous section characterized by dramatic string writing and clangorous piano chords. Consistent with rondo form, the theme effervescently returns until its momentum is arrested by an even more contemplative episode than before. After minimal sprinkles of piano notes suspend over a hushed string base, Pratt delivers a ruminative cadenza of both titanic force and fragile delicacy.

In writing Code, Prestini mused upon the relationship between Eliot and Emily Hale, a writer and schoolteacher with whom he exchanged more than 1,100 letters over nearly seventeen years; the piece is more arresting, however, for the evocative sound world she creates from vocals, strings, and piano. After an entrancing hush of bird sounds is replicated by Roomful of Teeth in the opening minute, Pratt enters gently to perpetuate the mystical ambiance until the material explodes into expressions of passion, agitation, and turmoil. Strings and vocals are integrated effectively into the design, each surfacing as Prestini's music calls for it. After resting on the sidelines, the singers, for example, return a dozen minutes into the piece to then dominate with animalistic babbling and full-throated declamations before retreating and ceding the stage to Pratt.

Over the course of twelve minutes, Singleton's Time Past, Time Future, whose title references the paradox at the heart of the Eliot text and the mutability of time, pulls together strands from different influences and genres, classical obviously but jazz too. Whereas in one section elegant piano phrases call Bach to mind, in another jagged chords and hammering ostinato rhythms hint at Stravinsky and Gershwin. Time Past, Time Future isn't a lazy pastiche, however, but rather a dynamic sampling of Singleton's inner world.

Though the piece was originally written for violin and cello, Pratt performs Vasks' Castillo Interior alone, the work a musical rendering of The Interior Castle, the 1577 text by Spanish Carmelite nun and Christian mystic St. Teresa of Avila. In being the only solo piano piece on the album, Castillo Interior registers as a particularly intimate performance, regardless of whether the tone is ecstatic or tranquil. It's during the latter moments that the material achieves its greatest impact, with Pratt giving voice to the work's lyrical tenderness beautifully. Haunting by comparison is Sorey's Untitled Composition for Piano and Eight Voices, which sees Pratt punctuating vibrato-free vocal clusters with sparse chords. Don't be surprised if Ligeti and Feldman come to mind as Sorey's chromatic creation blooms. The album concludes with Still Point, the composition by one of the original instigators of the project, Greenstein. Like the others, he used a particular aspect of Eliot's poem for inspiration, in his case the notion of oscillation, which is applied to two chords alongside of which pulsating flurries of string and vocal parts appear. Ecstatic vocalizing drives the material forward, as do rippling piano figures and surging string textures. Yet as dense and dynamic as the presentation is, the piece and the album fittingly end with Pratt alone.

As comfortable performing Bach and Florence Price as freshly composed pieces, Pratt was once described in the Los Angeles Times as “extravagantly gifted,” and even a single listen to this recording shows why. Though he's been anything but idle, Still Point is apparently his first album release in twelve years. With the attention it should garner, critical and otherwise, he might want to capitalize on the moment and start thinking about a follow-up sooner than later.

September 2023