Sybarite5: Collective Wisdom
Bright Shiny Things

It's not unusual for a group to see one member leave and be replaced by another; it is, however, extremely rare for three-fifths of an ensemble to be replaced with new blood. But that's exactly what happened to Sybarite5 between the release of the American string quintet's 2020 album, Live from New York, It's Sybarite5, and, following 2018's Outliers, its first studio album in five years, Collective Wisdom. That no seismic alteration in the group's sound has resulted is no doubt attributable to the stabilizing presence of double bassist Louis Levitt and violinist Sami Merdinian and the clarity of vision the founding members bring to the group. Best of all, the superb playing of the original five remains solidly in place in the new iteration: under the guiding hands of Levitt and Merdinian, the performances on Collective Wisdom make it seem as if violinist Suliman Tekalli, violist Caeli Smith, and cellist Laura Andrade have been there since the start.

Sybarite5's uncompromising commitment to living composers also remains firmly in place on the new set. There's no Bach or Brahms to soften the impact of contemporary composition, but no one should get too nervous on that count: all nine of these single-movement pieces are as accessible as new music gets, and, with one exception, are modest in duration. Works by Michael Gilbertson, Jackson Greenberg, Jessica Meyer, Pedro Giraudo, The Punch Brothers, and Curtis Stewart appear alongside three Armenian folk songs by Komitas. On an eclectic album where six tracks are less than five minutes apiece, only Greenberg's Apartments pushes past the ten-minute mark. It bears worth mentioning too that, unlike most chamber ensembles, the members of Sybarite5 are as comfortable soloing as executing notated charts.

Collective Wisdom begins with a whirling dervish of kinetic energy, The Punch Brothers' Movement & Location (apparently written with retired baseball player Greg Maddux in mind). The dynamic, high-velocity tune's a strong opening statement, not to mention a compelling argument in support of this new group model. Less frenetic is Stewart's Mangas, which seduces by other means, specifically in its arresting fusion of lilting Greek melodies with reggae-inflected funk rhythms. If Meyer's Slow Burn is also marked by rhythmic variety and insistence, there's a good reason: sensual and swinging, the piece was commissioned by Sybarite5 to be premiered alongside a dancer from the Black Diamond Burlesque Company.

At the album's centre are the songs written by Komitas (aka Soghomon Soghomonian) and arranged by Merdinian. “The Red Shawl” engages for its heartfelt expression of yearning, the hushed “Spring” for its solemnity and dignity, and “Oh Nazan” for the charm of its hopeful tone. Written during a period of personal loss, Giraudo's Con un nudo en la garganta (in English, “With a lump in the throat”) exudes the stately melancholy of a classic Piazzolla milonga.

The title work, actually the closing movement from a three-part suite Pulitzer Prize finalist Gilbertson wrote for Sybarite5 in 2014, begins with aggressively plucked pizzicati that pinballs between the instruments before furiously bowed figures emerge to take their place alongside the plucking. Driven by manic energy, Collective Wisdom reinstates the character of Movement & Location and reinvigorates the album as it nears its end. Greenberg's Apartments is something of an outlier in the way it folds extra-musical elements into its design and for the freedom with which the musicians play. Consistent with the title, the work juxtaposes real-world sounds—rain drizzle, AM news radio transmissions, coffee machines—and mournful string phrases representative of persons inhabiting separate living spaces. It's up to the quintet's members to determine when and how they respond to the sound design, which makes each performance of the work unique.

November 2023