Elizabeth Robinson: Aviary
Aerocade Music

That Aviary promises to be a bright and uplifting listen is intimated by the sunny yellow-orange on its package and joyful visage of flutist Elizabeth Robinson on the cover. The artist herself avers that there “should be more fun in new music,” and certainly any recording whose compositions evoke different bird types and do so using veritable orgies of flutes fits the bill. But while Aviary is anything but lugubrious, it is serious insofar as it showcases the range of possibilities of which the instrument's capable and how broad its expressive capabilities are.

No one is better qualified for such a project than Robinson, a highly respected flutist and educator originally from rural Tennessee and now based in South Dakota. She's an established soloist and chamber performer who's appeared with multiple orchestras and wind ensembles throughout the United States and currently holds the Diana Osterhout piccolo chair of the Topeka Symphony; as an educator, she's an Assistant Professor of Music at South Dakota State University, where she teaches flute and courses in music theory. Robinson's also the co-founder of the Flute New Music Consortium (FNMC) and is its current Vice President.

Though Robinson wrote her dissertation on the solo flute works of Toru Takemitsu, he isn't part of the set-list; instead, Aviary features new commissions by composers Nicole Chamberlain, Gay Kahkonen, Anne McKennon, Kimberly Osberg, and Lisa Bost-Sandberg with the works variously scored for flute, piccolo, or flute quartet. It's very much Robinson's album, but she's hardly alone: on five of the seven pieces she's joined by fellow flutists Emlyn Johnson, Carmen A. Lemoine, Erin K. Murphy, and Nicole Riner, with their contributions making for an even more resplendent presentation.

The album begins with Kahkonen's three-part Missouri Adventure, commissioned in celebration of the state's Bicentennial anniversary and inspired by the abundant beauty of Missouri's landscapes. One is immediately struck by the precision with which the flutists blend and how seamlessly their vibratos align as they bring Kahkonen's material to vivid life. “Forest and Sky” is as expansive and majestic as one would expect, and “Missouri Adventure” (which weaves “Shenandoah” into its design) is exactly that, a fast-paced thrill-ride the quartet executes with authority.

The fun truly begins with Osberg's Fowl Play, whose cheekily titled parts use four exotic chicken breeds as imaginative springboards. Inspired in part by photographs in the coffee table book Extraordinary Chickens, Osberg set out to create arresting musical portraits of the Duckwing Phoenix and Silkie, Polish, and Sumatra Chickens. Whereas flutes peck, warble, romp, and coo through the joyful “Discopeckque,” “Chasing Tail” tickles the ear with alto and bass flute textures and euphoric piccolo-led dance moves. Flutter tongue, pizzicato, and tremolo are put to good effect in “Featherbrained,” after which two piccolos cross swords, so to speak, in “Cock Flight.” Osberg's other composition Hoppy Feet alludes to the world's smallest penguin, the rockhopper, and uses a myriad of effects to suggest the comical antics of the creature.

A flutist as well as composer, Chamberlain draws on her expertise as a flutist in writing her material and also often incorporates extended techniques into her pieces. That said, Death Whistle, the first of two works by her on Aviary (and the only one featuring Robinson alone), pays homage to the piccolo, not flute, and is sprinkled with inside jokes and Chamberlain's signature irreverence. The latter's heard right away in the piercing high pitches that careen through “Ear Knife” and in the very title of “#PiccolOhMyGod,” which calls on the virtuosity of the performer in its panoply of rapid-fire trills and other gestures. Also by Chamberlain, Spooklight uses as its springboard an urban legend from the Joplin, Missouri area about the so-called “spooklight,” characterized as an orb of light that hovers in the dark distance. Try not to smile when Chamberlain couples a funk bass pulse with circus-like whimsy and mischievous references.

McKennon, like Chamberlain a flutist and composer, is represented on the album by Flamingo! and when creating the regal romp focused on a mating ritual that sees male flamingos stomping and waddling to attract females. In writing Starling, Bost-Sandberg was inspired by three aspects of the creature, its iridescent feathers, flocking behaviour, and vocalizations. While not overtly programmatic, the piece calls to mind the striking image of starlings swooping in a collective mass and uses trills and other effects to simulate the warble of its birdsong.

September 2024