Isaac Schankler: Because Patterns
Aerocade Music

Benefits accrue to composer and performer alike from this presentation of three electroacoustic works by Los Angeles-based Isaac Schankler. Currently Assistant Professor of Music at Cal Poly Pomona, Schankler is a composer, accordionist, and electronic musician whose material is realized exquisitely on the forty-two-minute recording by pianists Aron Kallay and Vicki Ray, double bassist Scott Worthington, violinist Sakura Tsai, and pianist Nadia Shpachenko. The Ray-Kallay Duo appears alongside Worthington on Because Patterns/Deep State, whereas Tsai and Shpachenko present solo performances of Mobile I and Future Feelings, respectively. Describing them as such isn't perhaps entirely accurate, however, when the pieces seem more like collaborations between the performers and electronics. Regardless, the material benefits mightily from the high-level artistry of the musicians, and one's impression of Schankler's composing ability is enhanced in turn by their performances. All five players bring impressive credentials to the project: Shpachenko, for example, is, like Schankler, a Professor of Music at Cal Poly Pomona University, whereas Ray is head of keyboard studies at the California Institute of the Arts.

The bipartite nature of the Because Patterns/Deep State title derives from the fact that it originated as separate pieces the composer ultimately mashed together. Written for the Ray-Kallay Duo, Because Patterns combines percussive-sounding prepared piano playing with electronic material generated from a mathematical model referred to by Schankler as “cellular automaton”; Deep State, written for Worthington, blends improvisation with low bass drones extended by electronics. Though the composer thought the pieces worked great live, they felt less satisfying in their recorded forms and so, realizing that the two were exploring similar ideas albeit in different ways, decided to merge them. That move naturally brought about further modifications, including added electronic treatments and the use of sampled pianos to double the recorded ones. As presented, the twenty-four-minute construction is anything but a simple conflation of two sections; instead, the material advances seamlessly through multiple episodes, each one evolving patiently into the next.

After electronic patterns and bass accents lend the material an atmospheric character at the outset, the prepared pianos enter to extend the initial display into the acoustic realm. The pianos quickly recede, allowing droning tones and metallic timbres to dominate and for pulsations of strings to flood the audio field. Sounds bleed into one another, morph into new forms, and advance and retreat, such that the interlocking patterns of the pianos, for example, repeatedly appear and disappear. Transitions occur fluidly to make the changes in sound design feel organic, despite the at times dramatic contrast between the sections. Attended to closely, the piece reveals itself to be a remarkable creation one imagines would mesmerize even more in a live, visuals-enhanced environment.

The recording for the ten-minute Mobile I involved using Max/MSP to generate live electronic sounds designed to track and react to Tsai's statements. Initially her expressions appear alone, but electronics surface at the two-minute mark and proceed thereafter to swell around her, the violin ostensibly located at the center of a mutating swirl that's influenced by her every gesture. One final surprise appears towards the end when a pulsating rhythm pattern appears to accompany the violinist to the finish line. As shown by her own solo releases, Shpachenko's no stranger to electronics-enhanced piano compositions, and consequently she appears right at home in Future Feelings (which she commissioned and premiered). Enveloped by shimmering textures, her patterns elegantly flow, the cumulative effect of their dance-like movements lulling. The piece's Romantic character moves to the fore three minutes in, though their emotional impact's countered by the burble and hiss of electronics. A tension between old and new pervades the performance, the electronics attempting to wrestle the piano into the present and the acoustic instrument pushing back to reassert the Romanticism at the music's core. Tsai and Shpachenko are both remarkable players whose performances imbue Schankler's settings with humanity.

August 2019