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.
Revisiting a Macabre Little 21st Century Masterpiece by NOW Ensemble
Here’s something this blog missed over several years worth of adjacency to October-long Halloween celebrations of dark music: NOW Ensemble‘s 2019 recording of Yevgeniy Sharlat’s potently picturesque triptych Spare the Rod!, which is still streaming at Bandcamp. The theme is the pervasive child abuse lurking beneath the surface of classic European fables. This particular piece isn’t listed on the bill, but the unorthodox 21st century chamber ensemble are playing what could be equally provocative works by Sarah Kirkland Snider, Judd Greenstein, Sean Friar, Patrick Burke, and their own members tomorrow night, Dec 8 at 7 PM at the Brooklyn Public Library Grand Army Plaza branch. The concert is free and there are no restrictions.
The suite’s first part is Rise, which is as classic as horror film scores get and even has a great video. At first there’s a gleefully macabre, disquietingly syncopated intertwine from two custom-made Yuliya Lanina music boxes (ensemble guitarist Mark Dancigers gets credit for cranking them). Then there are brief gusts from the group, anxiously flitting little accents from Michael Mizrahi’s piano and more gremlin-like accents from Alex Sopp’s flute and the recorders played by bassist Logan Coale and clarinetist Alicia Lee.
A flash of dramatic art-rock is over in barely a few bars, then with characteristic wit from Sopp the group segue into part two, Play. The kazoo choir would be funny if it wasn’t so creepy; a brief detour into shrieking recorder glissandos borders on unlistenable. Again, Mizrahi and Dancigers hint at a majestic rock anthem.
The way Sharlat reintroduces the music box theme via Lee’s clarinet is an artful little touch. While the music boxes eventually cede to a zany little polka, it isn’t long before a morose, Messiaenic tidal pool seeps in.
The final sequence, aptly titled Dream, begins as a briskly pulsing canon of sorts, Dancigers’ lingering resonance in contrast with the bubbly interweave of the woodwinds Does the child at the center of this surreal fable – pictured screaming and possibly in tears on the album cover – escape unscathed? No spoilers! This testifies equally to the group’s sense of fun as well as their dead-serious side and makes an appropriate soundtrack for a day when deadly so-called “bivalent boosters” are rubberstamped by the FDA as being appropriate for six-month-olds.
The Incendiary Second Part of The Real Anthony Fauci Documentary Goes Live
“People don’t want to compare the Holocaust to anything else. Why?” asks Holocaust survivor and medical rights crusader Vera Sharav in the second part of Jeff Hays‘ stunning documentary The Real Anthony Fauci, which just went live about a day ago, hot on the heels of the first half. This latest installment is ostensibly going to VOD in two days, but you can watch it for free now – and you should, even if you’ve read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bestseller. The conclusion is only about an hour long, and if Hays is involved, there’s a good chance it’ll be up for viewing for longer…or will make a mysterious return to the web in a few days.
If you don’t have the time to watch this relatively brief movie, Sage Hana is cutting up part two into easily digestible excerpts just as she did with the first segment. If you see just one of her clips, your best bet is her second segment from part two. This is where the really juicy history kicks in.
Kennedy provides a shocking insider account of Operation Northwoods, the false flag CIA operation targeting American civilians, which served as the prototype for 9/11, and, arguably, the plandemic.
If there’s any doubt that Bill Gates has power over Presidents, the newly released footage here puts that to rest. The funniest of many blackly amusing moments is an artfully sequenced series of Anderson Cooper CNN clips, where a little Pfizer money seems to go a long way.
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny – one of the first physicians to speak out about the lethality of the Covid shot campaign – gets considerably more time in the spotlight in part two, succinctly tracing how deep state and big pharma laid the groundwork for a slow walk to fascism in 2020: “SARS, MERS, H1N1: same playbook, different virus.” In between, she touches on how the childhood vaccines were weaponized as a cash cow for big pharma: “When they vaccinate those kids, they basically become customers for life with their allergies, asthma, eczema. ADHD. diabetes.”
Kennedy, who also gets more screen time here than in part one, unpacks how the Pentagon turned to Fauci as a conduit for shady gain-of-function viral research. As he did in the first part of the film, Hays unflinchingly connects the dots between the 2001 anthrax attacks, 9/11, the military germ warfare establishment and the fateful rollout of the PREP act, which set up the Emergency Use Authorization for the lethal Covid injection scheme.
Dr. Robert Malone, the controversial mRNA researcher who is widely seen as controlled opposition, makes some chillingly revealing comments here that are too central to his role in the operation to spoil. You have to make up your own mind.
Fauci the individual is subject to considerably more scrutiny than he was in part one, which is more of a history of how the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s was a soft launch for the plandemic. He comes off as part arrogant twit and part coldblooded sociopath. Without giving anything away, you could call this Kennedy and Hays’ Godfather 2. Commentary from investigative journalist Celia Farber and Dr. Pierre Kory, the ivermectin pioneer and hero of the early treatment movement, is witheringly funny and spot-on. Fauci’s whiteboard game with the other NAIAD functionaries is just plain creepy.
Whitney Webb adds important context on anthrax, as does UK doctor Tess Lawrie on how Fauci took remdesevir, a failed and terrifyingly lethal ebola drug, and repurposed it as a Covid “cure.” At the end of the film, we get a parade of familiar faces in the freedom movement, and a searing coda from Kennedy and Mark Crispin Miller, the world’s leading expert on propaganda. If you have to choose between seeing part one and part two, see part two (Sage’s clips will help). But you should really see them both while you can.
Musically, the first film has a better and more sparse score than the second, although it’s good to hear that uneasy string quartet theme again as the credits roll for the final time.
Pianist Éric Le Sage and a Colorful Ensemble Explore the Lesser-Known Side of a Film Music Icon
Although Nino Rota is best known for his evocative and often profound Fellini film scores, his other compositions share those sensibilities. On his most recent release Nino Rota: Chamber Music – streaming at Spotify – pianist Éric Le Sage and an inspired cast who’ve joined him before the lockdown at the Salon de Provence Festival air out a series of Rota works that deserve to be much better known. This is a colorful, very entertaining record: if you haven’t yet discovered Rota’s music that wasn’t intended for the silver screen, it might as well have been, and these performances bear that out.
They open with the Trio For Flute, Violin and Piano, shifting in a split-second between a rather furtive, lickety-split. chromatically-fueled romp and flickers of suspenseful calm. Le Sage holds the center somewhat mutedly as flutist Emmanuel Pahud and violinist Daishin Kashimoto cut loose with increasing agitation and then coalesce into an uneasy march. The noir atmosphere lingers and then reaches fever pitch in the coda: what a way to kick off the album!
There’s balletesque, bubbly woodwind-driven pageantry alongside hints at an underlying mystery which rise memorably to the surface, along with clarinet-driven nocturnal lustre (and a devious Moussorgsky quote) in the full group’s dynamically rich take of Rota’s Piccola Offerta Musicale, an early work. In Rota’s Nonet, from the peak of his career in Fellini film, the group parses heroic symphonic drama along with a similarly waltzing jubilation and a subtle turn toward unease before the good guys win: this is the fountains in the good part of Rome.
There’s a return to bustling disquiet and understatedly waltzing furtiveness of the Trio For Clarinet, Cello and Piano. The hauntingly elegant contrapuntal exchange between clarinet and cello in the second movement is an unexpected high point amid such lively, electric music.
Le Sage also indulges in cleverly rapidfire, light-fingered, music box-like phantasmagoria for solo piano.
Mafalda Minnozzi Reinvents Classic Italian Film Music on Her New Album
Singer Mafalda Minnozzi‘s career spans the worlds of jazz, tropicalia and Mediterranean balladry. Her new album Cinema City: Jazz Scenes From Italian Film – streaming at Bandcamp – is a perfect vehicle for her since the collection underscores the close affinity between Italian film music from the 50s onward, and bossa nova. With her expressive high soprano, Minnozzi brings a cinematic swath of emotions to life: she also has a puckish sense of humor. Although she sings most of these tracks in the original Italian, she also shows off a strong command of English.
Skip the opening number, a playful and coyly amusing take of La Dolce Vita ruined by a break for whistling. Track two, Loss of Love is an aptly muted, poignant, steady theme lowlit by Tiago Costa’s piano and Paul Ricci’s guitar over bassist Sidiel Vieira and drummer Ricardo Mosca’s slow, sotto-voce swing.
Minnozzi and the band bring a gentle, velvety approach to the tiptoeing bossa Metti una Cera a Cena. Special guest Dave Liebman’s soprano sax spirals joyously in Nino Rota’s Cinema Paradiso love theme over glittering piano clusters and a tight triplet groove.
Art Hirahara takes a rare turn on organ, flickering throughout a hazy, delicately swinging reinvention of the thinly veiled druggy cha-cha Amapola. The pensive, tango-inflected Amici Mei title theme is a feature for Graham Haynes, who takes an understatedly gritty turn on flugelhorn.
Hirahara returns for a bittersweetly shuffling take of Anonino Veneziano and then a more immersive, expansive version of Bruno Martino’s E La Chiamano Estate, a prime example of the Italian/Brazilian connection.
Luca Aquino guests on flugelhorn, intertwining with Ricci’s intricate picking in a raptly emotive performance of Nella Fantasia, which has special resonance for Minnozzi considering that it was her wedding song. Lingering guitar over flickering organ and a steady backbeat make Cappuntamento (from the film A Beiro do Caminho) one of the album’s most memorable moments.
She rescues Arrivederci Roma from Rat Pack cheesiness, imbuing it with gravitas but also defiant energy, grounded by trombonist Jorginho Neto. Se, from the Cinema Paradiso soundtrack, gets a spare, tender interpretation, followed by a soaring, organ-and-vocalese-fueled Deborah’s Theme. Minnozzi winds up the album with a final Cinema Paradiso number, Maturity, evoking a visceral sense of longing amid Costa’s turbulent phrasing. Count this as one of the most strikingly original releases of 2021.
Roberto Prosseda Brings Rare Morricone Solo Piano Music to Life
Ennio Morricone is best remembered for his film scores, notably his Sergio Leone spaghetti western soundtracks, where he built the foundation for what would become known as the southwestern gothic genre. Although Morricone was a pianist, he didn’t write a lot of solo piano music, and much of that material remains obscure. On his latest album, pianist Roberto Prosseda has unearthed some of those works along with some better-known title themes, courageously recorded in Sacile, Italy last spring and streaming at Spotify.
He opens with a starry, spare, neoromantic miniature, The Legend of 1900 theme and closes with the jarringly polyrhythmic modernism of the conclusion of the Four Studies For Pedal Piano. In between, Prosseda has grimly precise fun with the carnivalesque, Lynchian strut of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion: the way Morricone shifts the melody from righthand to left is a typically artful move. It’s fascinating to hear how the composer hides a border-rock melody just beneath the surface of Love Circle, and somewhat deeper in The Tartar Desert.
Prosseda brings a spacious, bittersweet rapture to the Cinema Paradiso theme and a striking dynamic range to the broodingly immersive, Satie-esque minimalism of the First Study For Piano and then the steadier White Dog.
Other works on the program here include the saturnine, rather wistful The Two Stages of Life; the Second Study for Piano, where Prosseda works a startling-versus-calm dichotomy; and the absolutely gorgeous Angels of Power, shifting between a love theme and a moody, baroque-tinged melody.
There’s also a bounding invention, a boldly crescendoing processional, and an altered canon that bring to mind the work of Vincent Persichetti. Morricone was a lyrical composer and excelled at capturing a vast expanse of moods. Doctrinaire Second Viennese School atonality was not his thing.
Magically Diverse Solo Harp Improvisations From Jacqueline Kerrod
Jacqueline Kerrod was Robert Paterson’s not-so-secret weapon on his lusciously noir album Star Crossing, and also his contrastingly sparkling Book of Goddesses. But she’s probably better known for her time as the New York City Opera’s principal harpist…and for playing with a rapper who, if his improbable Presidential run had vaulted him into the Oval Office, would be a more lucid presence than what we have at the present moment.
Yet Kerrod’s arguably most foundational collaboration was with Anthony Braxton. Inspired by touring as a duo with the Tri-Centric icon, she made the best of 2020 lockdown time and recorded an often mesmerizing album of solo improvisations, 17 Days in December. streaming at Bandcamp. It’s unlike any other harp record you will ever hear. Jazz harpists are an individualistic bunch to begin with: Zeena Parkins, with her blend of acerbity and atmosphere; Alice Coltrane and her melodic rapture; Dorothy Ashby, who shifted the paradigm by employing everything but harp voicings, and to an extent, Brandee Younger following in her wake. Kerrod is a welcome member of that rare, celestial body.
The chilling, menacing opening tableau, titled Trill to Begin, no doubt reflects the dire circumstances under which Kerrod made it, almost exactly a year ago. It’s a series of eerie modal phrases against a tremolo-picked pedal note, punctuated by low funereal bell accents and otherworldly close harmonies. What a way to kick off the project!
The squiggly web she builds on her electric harp on the second track is 180 degrees from that. She returns to ominous portents, but more spaciously, in a short piece she calls Gentle Jangle. Jazz guitar-like voicings give way to disquietly circling phrases and icy deep-sky sparkle in An Impression, then Kerrod breaks out her electric harp again for the woozily skronky Sugar Up.
Likewise, Glare is a sunbaked, resonant piece that could be mistaken for an ebow guitar soundscape. After that, she assembles an echoey lattice that brings to mind Robert Fripp’s early 80s work. Kerrod employs a glass bowl to enhance the shimmering, steel pan-like microtones in Glassy Fingers. then takes it toward vortical Pink Floyd gloom.
Next, she coalesces toward a warped music-box theme, following with Fluttering Alberti, where she works a hypnotic/spiky dichotomy. Can-Can is not a latin number but a return to steady, sinister mode. In the album’s longest improvisation, Kerrod sprinkles spare incisions over a gritty low drone which she plays with a bow.
The album’s concluding tracks range from playful electronics, to a ghostly National Steel guitar-like miniature, a gently insistent, Debussy-esque interlude and a cheerily ornamented electric harp finale.
Distantly Melancholy, Catchy, Profoundly Relevant New Symphonic Themes From Max Richter
Although pianist and composer Max Richter’s new album Exiles – streaming at Spotify – is built around a suite that reflects on the trans-Mediterranean refugee crisis which reached horror pitch starting in the mid-teens, not all of it is dark. And when it is, it’s distantly melancholic rather than outright morbid. He supplies the piano and keys here, joined with elegance and lushness by the Baltic Sea Philharmonic under the baton of Kristjan Järvi.
Richter’s themes are as translucent as they are lush – he knows that even reduced to most succinct terms, a hook is still a hook and this album is full of hum-alongs. Henryk Gorecki is a persistent influence here, as is Steve Reich in places. Yann Tiersen‘s more ambitious work also comes to mind frequently as well.
The Haunted Ocean serves as a brief curtain-lifter with its ominously atmospheric, shifting sheets. Infra 5 strongly evokes Gorecki’s iconic Symphony No.3, although this comes across as more of a study in wave motion than a cavatina, as the orchestra follow a long upward trajectory. It ends suddenly and completely unresolved – just like the refugee crisis?
Flowers of Herself, written to reflect a Mrs. Dalloway-like bustle, has a brightly circling, Reichian atmosphere. On the Nature of Daylight comes across as a more incisive variation on the album’s second piece, a resolute violin leading an understated, subtle counterpoint.
Richter plays a simple, chiming four-chord sequence to open the album’s title suite, the strings drifting behind him at a much slower pace. Where one refugee goes, so goes the world, just more slowly? Let that sink in for a moment. Calmly and airily, with an increasingly defiant, striding rhythm, Richter does that at symphonic proportions.
Clever, Deviously Picturesque Themes and an Upper West Side Album Release Show by the Daniel Bennett Group
One icy Sunday in Manhattan about six months ago, the Daniel Bennett Group were busking on the sidewalk, out in front of a shuttered computer repair store and a vacant barbershop.
It was about ten in the morning.
That’s a typical kind of stunt for Bennett. Why play later and compete with the likes of Jeremy Pelt or Chris Potter? All of them elite jazz musicians who appear at major venues and festivals. All reduced to playing on the street or in the park for spare change at one point or another this past fifteen months.
That’s what happens when live music is criminalized.
Being one of the great wits in jazz no doubt helped Bennett stay sane through the lockdown. He emerged with a characteristically sly new album, New York Nerve, streaming at Bandcamp. He also has – gasp – a real-life album release show this June 26 at 7 PM at the Triad Theatre, 158 W 72nd St. between Broadway and Amsterdam. Cover is $20; be aware that the venue has a two-drink minimum as well.
The album is a suite, a theme and variations. The opening number is titled Television. It’s a steady, suspiciously cheery, motorik rock tune, percolating over an endless series of gritty guitar changes, Bennett driving it forward with his steady alto sax and then clarinet. It sets the stage for the rest of the record.
The Town Supervisor, as Bennett sees him, is a folksy, wistful kind of guy, bassist Kevin Hailey and drummer Koko Bermejo maintaining a muted 6/8 beat as guitarist Assaf Kehati jangles and bubbles and exchanges verses with Bennett’s alto.
The group return to the brisk pulse of the opening track in Gold Star Mufflers, Bennett’s keening organ fueling an increasingly subtle disquiet beneath the busy pulse and occasional cartoonish touch. Likewise, Human Playback is a subtly altered reprise of the opening theme, Kehati hitting his distortion pedal for a sunbaked, resonant solo, Bennett’s electric piano tinkling and rippling. Then he shifts back to sax for a surreal, floating, spacy outro.
Bennett and Kehati burble and intertwine arrythmically over a deadpan, steady beat as Rattlesnake gets underway, sax pulling the theme together with a catchy, biting minor-key intensity. The group go back to pastoralia to wind up the album with The County Clerk, who comes across as more brooding than his boss (presumably that’s the Town Supervisor). The humor in Bennett’s songs without words always comes across most strongly onstage: these guys are probably jumping out of their shoes to be able to play indoors again without having to do it clandestinely.
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