Cellist Amanda Gookin Plays a Harrowing but Guardedly Triumphant Solo Show at Roulette
Survivors of child abuse are like the unjabbed. They walk among you, unnoticed, steeled in what Catherine Austin Fitts calls the “refiners fire,” but scarred for life. At her solo show this past evening at Roulette, cellist Amanda Gookin channeled equal parts resilience and numbed horror as a child abuse survivor herself.
She asserted that she had few childhood memories, and from those she shared with a near sold-out audience, it’s easy to understand why. The daughter of a troubled woman who could sing Brahms beautifully but was crippled by what appears to have been serious borderline personality disorder, Gookin began the show seated on the stairs to the stage. With a steady calm, she read a revealing letter to an unnamed sister, mentioning their shared depressive tendencies. She would reprise that letter at the end of the concert: its authorship came as no surprise.
From that introduction, she picked up an amplified frame drum with ball bearings inside and took a slow stroll through the audience to the soundboard and back, as hypnotic waves washed over the crowd. Perhaps this attested to the push and pull of abusive relationships from a child’s point of view.
On one hand, Gookin’s parents had the means to send her away to Bible camp in Texas during the summer. But then her mother found her Jesus diary, discovered her daughter’s entreaties for parental healing, and that was the end of that. As Gookin told it, Wilton, Connecticut in the early 90s was a tough place to be a kid from the one home on the block where the ambulance or police cruiser would be a regular presence. The moment where she recounted a friend’s mother trying to get her to open up about her feelings, late one evening on a quiet staircase, was unaffectedly shattering.
And yet, years later, when her mother died of cancer, Gookin was overwhelmed with grief, and was quick to acknowledge how codependency is a double-edged sword. It was rewarding to hear how she was finally able to move on emotionally.
From the music, Gookin clearly conquered those demons, even as they sometimes wafted to the surface, in a tightly wound, rather minimalist electroacoustic performance. With her own spoken-word between-song segues, it wasn’t always clear where one composition ended and another began. The first piece, by Pamela Z, was a blend of spoken word chopped and cuisinarted through a mixer while Gookin layered shivering, muted harmonics and subtle ambient textures.
Often Gookin would begin a piece or an interlude with the hum of singing bowls, or the creepy, music box-like timbres from a set of wind chimes. Gentle rainshower sonics dripped behind her spare, midrange cello washes as she spoke of a “body submerged in the cloud,” rising to a frenetic, chopping peak.
On a Jessie Montgomery composition, she slammed out a steady, hypnotic series of chords before veering into hazy harmonics and then an aching, microtonal cadenza where she finally veered off into a crazed cello-metal coda.
Throughout the rest of the night, stark octaves, fleeting harmonic accents, the occasional anxious wail and a crescendo into a fragmented evocation of madness figured in turn throughout works by Sarah Hennies, Camilia Agosto and Seong Ae Kim. A concluding piece by Inti Figgis-Vizueta included a paraphrase of I’m in the Mood for Love, simple chords and a spare, elegaic, spacious melody that grew more anthemic with glissandos, eerie trills and raga-like riffage.
The next concert at Roulette is quite similar if perhaps not as personally devastating. On April 12 at 8 PM, singer and sound artist Muyassar Kurdi leads an improvisational electroacoustic trio tracing the lineage of the Arab diaspora. You can get in for $25 in advance.
Colorful, Relentlessly Entertaining, Linguistically-Inspired New Compositions by Eric Nathan
One of the most deviously entertaining recent projects in new classical music is Eric Nathan‘s epic double album Missing Words, streaming at New Focus Recordings. The composer takes inspiration for this colorful collection of vignettes and longer pieces from Ben Schott‘s Schottenfreude, a philosophical satire of the German propensity for interminable compound nouns. In turn, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Brass Quintet, cellist Parry Karp and pianist Christopher Karp, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Neave Trio and finally, Hub New Music have as much fun playing this stuff as the composer obviously did writing it.
It’s a series of tableaux and character studies which range from the vividly cinematic to occasionally cartoonish. Sirens are a recurrent trope, as are pregnant pauses and trick endings. Some of the more otherworldly harmonies look back to Messiaen; the more circular passages echo Philip Glass. The series of miniatures at the end are more acerbic and somewhat less comedic – other than the obvious but irresistibly mangled Beethoven quotes.
The opening number, Eisenbahnscheinbewegung (Railway-Illusion-Motion) makes colorful use of dopplers and train-whistle sonics. Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen (Autumn-Foliage-Strike-Fun) has jaunty trombone flourishes echoed by violins. There’s balletesque bustle and a surprise ending in Fingerspitzentanz (Fingertips-Dance) and mini-fanfares grounded by diesel-engine low brass in Missing Words – what’s missing is the operative question.
Nathan spaciously and rather cautiously approaches the strangely intimate acrylic smell of a new car interior, i.e. Kraftfahrzeugsinnenausstattungsneugeruchsgenuss. Rollschleppe (Escalator-Schlep) is as persistently troubled as you would expect from a portrait of somebody who can’t take the stairs – and yet, the piece has a persistent determination. Life in the slow lane really is where all the action is!
Mundphantom (Mouth-Phantom) is a Scooby Doo conversation. Speaking of ghosts, the Straußmanöver (Ostrich-Maneuver) is performed by a seriously phantasmic bird. Schubladenbrief ((Desk-Drawer-Letter) seems to depict a letter stubbornly resisting an opener, but when the envelope finally get slit, its contents suggest its sender is recounting a wild ride.
Dreiecksumgleichung (Triangle-Reorganization) is built around a flashy violin solo and concludes with a lively flute-driven jig. By contrast, the wry, bracing dawn interlude Tageslichtspielschock (Daylight-Show-Shock) will resonate with any musician dreading a gig at an early hour.
Arguably the funniest piece here, Ludwigssyndrom (Ludwig’s-Syndrome) is a tongue-in-cheek, brief piano concerto with rapidfire, ostentatious cascades and a ridiculously good riff joke that’s too good to give away. The steady upward stride of the piano in Watzmannwahn (Watzmann-Delusion) is also pretty priceless.
The only one of the ensembles on the record who have a New York concert coming up are the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, who are Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall on April 15 at 8 PM, playing works by Andrew Norman, Lei Lang and Lisa Bielawa, the latter with the composer on vocals. The venue says you can get in for $21.
Novus NY Deliver an Auspicious Performance of New and 20th Century Classical Works
Back in the spring of 2017, there was a fantastic series of concerts of new classical music staged by Trinity Church at their smaller and older sister edifice, St. Paul’s Chapel a couple of blocks to the north. This blog covered several of those performances. Why would events from so far in the past be newsworthy now?
Considering that we lost three years of our lives in the time since, everything in the mirror seems closer than it is. But in keeping with what seems to be a very auspicious trend, there’s a similar and arguably even more ambitious festival going on at the chapel, with lunchtime shows continuing through May 4. At 1 PM, there’s jazz on Mondays, organ music on Tuesdays, Bach choral and instrumental works on Wednesdays and contemporary classical on Thursdays. This past Thursday, a subset of Novus NY treated a tiny audience to a diverse, sometimes spellbinding program that bodes well for what’s in store for the rest of the spring.
Flutist and ensemble leader Melissa Baker explained to the crowd that this year’s theme is empathy, something that the powers that be in this city did their best to crush beginning in March of 2020. It wasn’t clear how this was reflected in the music on the bill, which ranged from wary and harrowing to thoughtfully drifting.
The ensemble opened with the world premiere of Brad Balliett‘s Quintet For Piano and Winds. Gershwinesque swing with dissociative microtones from the lower reeds – the composer himself on bassoon, Benjamin Fingland on clarinet and Stuart Breczinski on oboe – quickly gave way to a tense muddle and then a rise from spacious floating motives to some jaunty pageantry where Baker and horn player Laura Weiner could flurry a little. There was a welcome payoff at the end of a long, anthemically swaying crescendo where pianist Daniel Schlosberg relished the chance to pounce on some icy, glittering, microtonally-tuned upper-register chords and nonchalantly breathtaking downward cascades. From there he continued with an disquieting, emphatic attack, the winds wafting a distant unease.
The quintet marched through persistently troubled trills to a lull punctuated by icepick piano accents and then a rather stern drive out that left no easy answers. What a breathtaking piece of music! As enjoyable as the rest of the program was, it was anticlimactic.
But there were plenty of rewarding moments. Two more contiguous partitas provided opportunities for the group to flex very diverse skillsets. In a small handful of Valerie Coleman‘s Portraits of Langston suite, for flute, clarinet and piano, Baker and Fingland playing dynamically shifting blues-inflected phrases over Schlosberg’s assertive chords and accents. The slow tectonic shifts and gentle Scheherezade whirls of Joan Tower’s Island Prelude made a moody contrast, at least until the wind-and-horn quartet kicked in with a series of animated flights and pulses.
And Louise Farrenc’s expansive, warmly Beethovenesque Sextet in C minor, Op. 40, with Schlosberg’s invitingly consonant melody rippling through nocturnal swells and the winds’ countermelodies, wound up the concert with a cocooning elegance.
A Colorful, Entertaining Solo Bass Album and a Chinatown Gig From Kyle Motl
At the risk of pushing the limits of esoterica, there’s an especially intriguing free jazz lineup on the 28th at Downtown Music Gallery. At 6:30 PM Gutbucket’s sometimes acerbic, sometimes way-out-there klezmer-influenced guitarist Ty Citerman teams up with Jen Baker on trombone and Shayna Dunkelman on bass. At 7:30 bassist Kyle Motl plays solo and then at 8:30 the Harmolodics with Ben Green on trumpet, Ben Wood on bass and David Ward on drums. It’s a pass-the-bucket situation.
Motl is one of the real draws on this bill (well, on a night that might pull two or three dozen people if the weather holds up). Not only does he play solo, he records solo. His latest solo album Hydra Nightingale – streaming at his music page – is a lot of fun if you’re open to strange and frequently amusing sounds, and pushes the envelope as far as solo bass can go. It’s a very diverse mix of solo compositions by a similarly eclectic lineup of composers.
First up is the title track, a Caroline Louise Miller composition that won the 2018 International Society of Bassists David Walter Solo Composition Competition. Motl opens it a shriek and a little coy bow-bouncing before setting up a conversation which in places is ridiculously funny. Using one extended-technique device after another, Motl gets his cartoon characters to scowl and flit around and peek out from around corners, and more. Yet, it’s more of a vintage New Yorker cartoon than Sunday morning Nickelodeon rerun.
Anqi Liu‘s Light Beams Through Dusts, Through a Mist of Moistures is the big epic here and could be described as more vigorous than the title would imply. These shafts of light filter down steadily on the wings of Motl’s gritty harmonics, a march of drones into the shadows lightened with dust-devil flickers until the truck engine turns over and then rumbles away. It’s a treat for fans of low-register sounds.
Motl’s one composition here is Phosphene (the phosphorus illumination one sees with eyes closed after looking at a very bright object). At first it’s wispy and whispery but then Motl goes on a jagged tear with his bow, building a roman candle of harmonics and then coming up with a tastily haphazard arrangement for them.
Nachklang, by Jessie Cox, is the album’s most evocative, poltergeist-ish piece, with the creaking doors and pregnant pauses you would expect from the title. The final work is Asher Tobin Chodos‘ Trickle Town, referencing to the dubious Reagan-era back-of-the-napkin economic theory via samples of that decade’s senile chief executive, plus shivers, slides and more fingerwork than on the rest of the record. It’s an irresistibly funny way to bring everything full circle.
A Deviously Entertaining Avant Garde Archival Treat by Pauline Oliveros and James Ilgenfritz
One of the most irresistibly fun sonic explorations released this year so far is Altamirage, a collection of late-period duo recordings by Pauline Oliveros with bassist James Ilgenfritz, part of which is streaming at Bandcamp. Oliveros sadly went to the great deep listening well in the sky in 2016, but she left behind one of the most individualistic bodies of work of any composer, ever. On this one she plays a duo with Ilgenfritz on two extended tracks from a collection of relatively rare works from the early 1960s. Much of this, as you would expect, is a feast of strange textures and timbres. Ilgenfritz has a gig coming up that she would no doubt approve of, improvising with guitarist Sandy Ewen and saxophonist Michael Foster at Downtown Music Gallery on Feb 11 at 6 PM.
The first piece on the record, Outline for Flute, Percussion and String Bass is classic longscale Oliveros (or put another way, classic Bernard Herrmann) with its sepulchral flickers and sudden bursts of phantasmagoria from flutist Martha Cargo and percussionist Chris Nappi. But it’s equal part cartoon score. Try listening all the way through without at least grinning a little: it’s a lost cause.
Oliveros’ tart electric accordion accents contrast with Ilgenfritz’s exuberance and frequent buffoonery (via some meticulously goofy harmonics) in part one of the album’s title suite. The album concludes with parts five, four and and three, in order. Ilgenfritz bows starkly and lighting into a sleek glissando or two in number five as Oliveros airs out the gremlins in various electronic patches.
Part four is an unexpectedly steady, rhythmic, practically swinging pitch-and-follow sequence. The last on the list is the most distinctly ambient yet allusively melodic, and in that sense disquieting number here.
The Trio For Trumpet, Accordion and String Bass appears uninterrupted, Ilgenfritz joined by Stephanie Richards and Nathan Koci in a playful five-part suite of miniatures. Subtle dopplers, low drones, spritely wisps and the occasional chirpy hint of a fanfare all figure into the mix.
A Magical Microtonal Album and a Lower East Side Gig With Violin Innovators String Noise
The 2020 lockdown didn’t stop violin duo String Noise. Over the past couple of years, avant garde violin luminaries Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris have been releasing albums at an epic pace. Serendipitously, they’re back to playing live again. The duo’s next appearance is a somewhat unusual but aptly wintry one, on Feb 4 at 8 PM at the Clemente Soto Velez communithy center at 107 Suffolk St off Rivington. It’s a collaboration with singer/sound artist Stine Janvin and composer Cory Arcangel, where the two violinists will play scores to accompany an audiovisual performance based on the knitting patterns for traditional Norwegian sweaters. Which might mean cozy, or abrasive – or both. Cover is $20; take the F/J/M to Delancey.
The group’s latest album, Way, comprises a trio of texturally delicious microtonal works, streaming at New Focus Recordings. They open with Alex Mincek‘s magically disquieting, microtonal suite, referencing an enigmatic Antonio Machado poem whose central road metaphor could be either liberation or a huis clos. Interestingly, the composer quotes Samuel Beckett in the liner notes.
They begin with muted puffing white noise, up to a steady stride with increasingly acidic microtones and harmonics as the music reaches toward horror. Artful approximations of a minor chord and a tritone shift ever so slightly. Slowly, the two voices begin to diverge and follow separate paths, the harmonies growing warmer and more diverse. There’s a second movement that starts with an approximation of a drifting snowstorm, which builds momentum even as the music becomes more spacious, the steps spaced further apart along with the harmonies. The slow procession eventually reaches an ending that may take you by surprise. It’s as entrancing as it is hypnotic: what a way to open the record!
Up next is Lou Bunk’s five-part suite, Field. The first movement has spritely microtonal flickers that build, fall away and drift delicately into the ether, only to spring back into action, finally up to a slashing peak and then gracefully back down. The duo end it with a series of gently sirening glissandos.
Movement two is more wispy and sepulchral; the next more spacious and surprising, with the occasional doppler effect. The violinists follow a tightly spiraling interweave in the fourth movement and wrap it up with a brief coda that flits by almost imperceptibly.
The album’s final work is (In) Tone, by Catherine Lamb. Uneasy, slow tectonic shifts drift through the sonic frame and diverge like a raga at one-tenth speed. Notwithstanding the glacial pace, the wary atmosphere seldom lifts; likewise, the shimmering harmonics and otherworldly close harmonies. Fans of music that defies the western scale have a feast to sink their ears into here.
Stunning, Haunting New Compositions by One of New York’s Most Adventurous Bassists
Good bass players are like good singers: they get enlisted for a wider range of projects than most musicians. Bassist Max Johnson is probably as well known for his work in Americana as he is with jazz. He’s playing the latter, leading an intriguing trio with tenor saxophonist Neta Ranaan and drummer Jason Nazary on Jan 28 at 7:30 PM at the Django; cover is $25.
But Johnson has another side, as a composer of new classical music. On his latest album When the Streets Were Quiet – a reference to The Trial, by Kafka – he appears only as a conductor, leading a chamber ensemble of violinist Lauren Cauley, violist Carrie Frey, cellist Maria Hadge, clarinetist Lucy Hatem and pianist Fifi Zhang.
The opening number on the album – streaming at New Focus Recordings – is Minerva, for clarinet, violin, cello and piano. After a spacious introductory reference to Messiaen’s Quartet For the End of Time, the ensemble work a simple, increasingly emphatic, steadily acidic counterpoint. Quartet for the Beginning of Time, maybe?
Johnson switches out piano for viola for the quartet on the title track. Hatem’s clarinet moves broodingly over an uneasy, close-harmonied, organ-like sustain from the strings. A couple of shivers and subtle swells further indicate that trouble is brewing. Frey leads the strings deeper into otherworldly microtonal territory, as minutely modulated tremolo effects signal the clarinet’s mournful return and a solemn, slowly drifting procession out. Franz Kafka would be proud to have inspired music this spellbinding.
Next up is Johnson’s String Trio for violin, viola and cello. The more somber, sustained moments of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 spring to mind, Cauley leading a slow but ineluctable upward trajectory toward horror. Hadge leads the group into more calming terrain, with distant echoes of what could be a Britfolk ballad mingled within the unease. The trio take their time moving between a jaunty bounce and portentous swells on the way out.
Hatem, Frey and Zhang play the final piece, Echoes of a Memory, again echoing Messiaen at his sparest. Pianissimo highs against stygian lows give way to a cautious, icy pavane of sorts, part Federico Mompou, part Bernard Herrmann. This doesn’t sound anything like what Johnson will likely be playing with the jazz trio on the 28th but it’s often transcendent. Is it fair to be talking about one of the best albums of the year when we’re not even done with January yet?
A Playful, Entertaining, Dynamic New Album of Genre-Busting String Music From the PubliQuartet
You could debate whether the PubliQuartet’s latest album What Is American – streaming at Bandcamp – is punk classical, or the avant garde, or string jazz, or oldtimey string band music. You’d be right on all counts. The foursome of violinists Curtis Stewart and Nick Revel, violist Jannina Norpoth and cellist Hamilton Berry have a great time reinventing an iconic classical quartet, a couple of famous jazz numbers, and unveil a handful of world premieres that defy category. The central theme is exploring the many threads that make up what we might call American music. While it’s a lot of fun and eclectic to the extreme, the group also don’t shy away from themes of segregation or discrimination: again, highly relevant in the wake of the March 2020 global takeover attempt.
The group intersperse their own miniatures in between several of the pieces, taking turns narrating an Oliver Wendell Holmes text. “Down, down with the traitor” – powerful words for 2023!
The first work on the album is improvisations on Dvořák’s “American” String Quartet, No. 12, Op. 96. Movement one sets the stage: this is punk classical. spiked with slashes, slow drifting tones and percussive extended technique within a straightforward proto-Gershwin march. While the group blend several unembellished themes from the original, their reinterpretation is more brief.
They put a lively pizzicato swing beat to the lento second movement, when they’re not adding flitting, ghostly harmonics to the rustic oldtime gospel theme. Interestingly, the molto vivace third movement is a lot more circumspect and spacious in places. The quartet punch in hard with a march on the final movement, then back away with a hazy, contrapuntal chorale over loopy, jagged harmonics: if they recorded this live, it’s all the more impressive how they handled this polyrhythmic maze.
The ensemble build Rhiannon Giddens‘ At the Purchaser’s Option from stark oldtime blues-flavored trip-hop to a mighty anthem. Likewise, they turn Fats Waller’s Honeysuckle Rose into shivery indie classical and jaunty ragtime, with a voiceover by A’Lelia Bundles. In a diptych of Ornette Coleman’s Law Years, they veer from anthemic intensity to flickering disquiet and jaggedly dissociative blues.
The opening movement of the world premiere of Vijay Iyer‘s relatively brief string quartet Dig the Say is Carry the Ball. a jauntily swaying, riffy theme over hypnotic, rhythmic pedalpoint. The second movement, This Thing Together is equally hypnotic, but in a hazily drifting way. Movement three, Up From the Ground is bouncy and has handclaps; the final movement, To Live Tomorrow wraps it up with a jaggedly opaque edge. Iyer’s milieu may be jazz, and a lot more expansive than this, but this is a triumph of tight, genre-resistant tunesmithing.
Another world premiere, Roscoe Mitchell’s CARDS 11-11-2020 is the most ambient, minimalist and astringent work here, punctuated by echo effects and plucky pizzicato before an unexpectedly lively, acerbic coda.
The ensemble wind up the record with a medley of four covers from the worlds of soul and blues. They reinvent Tina Turner’s Black Coffee as a quasi-spiritual in 6/8 time, then bring a biting blues edge and slithery extended technique to They Say I’m Different, by Betty Davis. The driftiest, most sepulchral piece here is Alice Coltrane’s Er Ra, although the group can’t resist rising with a triumphant if whispery lattice of harmonics. They close by digging triumphantly into a determinedly swinging take of Ida Cox’s Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues.
The PubliQuartet don’t have any New York gigs coming up, but Giddens is playing an intriguing show on Jan 12 at 7 PM at the Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she’s joined by pianist Howard Watkins and a cast of singers in a salute to the thirty thousand slaves who escaped captivity prior to the Civil War. You can get in for $35.
A Colorful, Edgy New Album and a Deep Brooklyn Gig From the Bergamot Quartet
The all-female Bergamot Quartet specialize in new music and 20th century repertoire. The ensemble – violinists Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violist Amy Huimei Tan and cellist Irène Han – have adventurous taste in both material and where they play it. The program at their next New York gig – on Dec 15 at 8 PM at the Owl – features their own works as well as a collaboration with percussionist Eli Greenhoe. The venue suggests a $12 contribution to the tip bucket.
The group had to go upstate to record their debut full-length album, In the Brink, in 2021. But this dynamic collection of premieres – streaming at New Focus Recordings – was worth the trip. They open with Paul Wiancko’s Ode on a Broken Loom, a verdant, galloping theme with fresh, raw close harmonies and rhythms that range from insistent hints of a waltz to eager syncopation and a calmer, balletesque divergence into and out of counterpoint. The group bounce through some plucky pizzicato and wind up with a steady, emphatic, immersive chordal attack and a devious surprise ending. It’s a strong showcase for their collective skills.
Next up is a Tania León triptych, Esencia. In part one, Agua de Florida, the group shift seamlessly between a lively contrapuntal intro, a steady, acerbically dancing theme, sepulchral flickers over layers of resonance and an insistent return to the dance.
In part 2, Agua de Rosas, the group nimbly negotiate between steady triplet figures, punchy rhythmic accents and sailing atmospherics. The final segment, Agua de Manantial has more of a triumphant pulse juxtaposed with gentle exchanges of reflective calm.
Bracing, insectile figures and wry glissandos permeate Suzanne Farrin‘s Undecim, up to a rising, immersive, allusively chromatic intensity. The album’s final number is the title track, a playfully surreal, rather psychedelic four-part suite by Finck. The first movement, Lost, is a brief, briskly strolling, bustling theme with some deliciously uneasy close harmonies and deadpan vocals throughout the group.
Drummer Terry Sweeney joins the ensemble for the second movement, Flood of Ashes, alternating between a jaunty strut and spare flickers.
As Finck seems to see it, part three, Human Nature is pretty irrepressible and rises from a handful of jokes to a boiling point. Sign of the times, maybe? The quartet close it with sparse, spacious, fleeting riffs, a colorful little waterfall and then a goofy little percussive ping-ponging. “We hold each other in the brink of all our questions,” is the final line; the big coda appropriately leaves a lot unresolved.
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