May Roosevelt: Pearl
May Roosevelt
One word in particular comes to mind as I listen to May Roosevelt's digital album Pearl: mature. The music the Thessaloniki-born composer, thereminist, and producer presents on her fifth album shows a remarkable degree of refinement, and the careful arrangement of elements and sensitivity to timbre and compositional form make the forty-minute release arguably her most satisfying to date. The blend and balance she achieves between classical strings and her theremin, vocals, violin, and synthesizers results in a distinctive fusion of neoclassical and electronic music.
Roosevelt's seen and done much since her first EP, Panda, a story about love and fear, appeared in 2009. Issued four years later, her well-received Music to the poetry of Ntinos Christianopoulo augmented piano-based settings with theremin and recitations by the poet himself. Ode to Joy, an audio-video artwork she created for the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, is in the collection of the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki. Between 2020 and 2021, she presented a cycle of radio shows based on Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days under the title LTDM80J, and she continues to create evocative music for theatre and film.
An ethereal tone is established at the outset of Pearl by “Fantasia,” which takes on an even dreamier aspect when theremin swoops into view alongside blurry piano, wordless vocal sighs, and electronic textures. The music flirts with New Age but transcends any wallpaper-like impression when the theremin's melancholy song is so captivating. Roosevelt casts a deep spell for six minutes and shows in doing so how far her craft as a producer and sound designer has come. “Brave” perpetuates the mystical allure of “Fantasia” though this time features synthesizer more prominently and, bolstered by luscious strings and woodwind-like details, exudes a more pronounced neo-classical quality too. Her music ascends to a particularly haunting level in the sweeping reverie “Chapter 23” and mournful, two-part “Reflections.”
Whereas some pieces are neoclassical, others venture into different stylistic areas. With Thanos Kazantzis adding drums to her arpeggiated synthesizer patterns, “Frenchine” comes closest of all the pieces to electro-pop; the music's no less sophisticated for doing so, however. “L'amour,” similarly buoyed by burbling synthesizers, aligns itself to electronica too, yet rises to a striking level of grandeur during its second half.
A clear sign of the high level of artistry at which Roosevelt currently operates is that theremin is deployed for its musical value, not as a novelty effect. In a setting such as “Memoir [Ultramarine],” the instrument could almost pass for an electric violin and arrests the ear whether heard alone, doubled up, or heard in counterpoint. Here and elsewhere, her nuanced command of the instrument impresses. For the most part, Pearl is a one-person production, but she also receives memorable contributions from the string players and double bassist Iraklis Iosifidis. There's no question that Pearl sparkles most brightly, however, because of her.September 2023