Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022

Adam Roberts – Bell Threads
andPlay; Hannah Lash; Bearthoven; Erik
Behr; JACK Quartet
New Focus Recordings FCR312
(newfocusrecordings.com)
! American
composer Adam
Roberts delivers
a selection of his
chamber music
demonstrating an
expressive compositional
voice and
creating engaging
instrumental
spaces. Roberts’ approach is focused with a
brave sense of acoustic adventurousness and,
using top-notch ensembles and soloists, this
release enraptures ear and mind. Whether
through timbral exploration or enchanting
stasis, Roberts has a propensity to secure his
structures with a continuous and recognizable
motif while shifting focus toward other
musical narratives. The result is one of clever
design and intent: the music unfolds with
an initial sense of random moments, but is
grounded by carefully constructed and recognizable
gestural frameworks.
The disc begins with Shift Differential,
an excited and energetic duet for violin and
viola performed by andPlay. Roberts experiments
with many successful timbral spaces
that create momentum through constantly
evolving, almost improvisatory, passages.
Next, the Oboe Quartet performed by soloist
Erik Behr and the JACK Quartet, shows
Roberts’ more lyrical side in a work that is
decidedly classical in its fast-slow-fast form.
The gem on the disc is a piece titled Rounds
for solo harp, performed by Hannah Lash.
Cascading apparitions of sound permeate
amid gentle clusters and multi-layered auras.
Lash’s performance is stunning, with a musicality
that is rare and captivating. Happy/
Angry Music, a trio performed by Bearthoven,
draws upon polystylistic material and utilizes
repetition to propel the music forward. Lastly,
Bell Threads, a work for solo viola performed
by Hannah Levinson, produces a sinuous
and mysterious soundworld that is unique
on the disc. This haunting work is the perfect
bookend to a truly impressive collection of
chamber works.
Adam Scime
Forward Music Project 2.0 – in this skin
Amanda Gookin
Bright Shiny Things BSTC 0156
(brightshiny.ninja)
! Having enjoyed
the first release
of cellist Amanda
Gookin’s Forward
Music Project 1.0, I
was richly rewarded
by its sequel. From
the front cover, with
a photo of Gookin perilously close to cutting
her own tongue with a pair of scissors, we
know this CD means business. “… in this
visceral journey towards radical expression…
This flesh is where we live… We are powerful
in this skin.”
In this second installment of FMP, four
more composers are invited, not as guests, but
as the key tellers of the layers and complexities
of women’s stories, each in their own
way. Gookin takes each one as a precious gift,
playing them with perfection and ferocity
that makes clear her undeniable belief and
dedication to every word. Translated sonically
through her cello and her own vocals,
with occasional added voices and electronics,
there is simply no track to be missed. Paola
Perstini’s To Tell A Story was in itself a fascinating
journey of how the power of storytelling
can be misused and appropriated, with sound
artist Sxip Shirey’s backdrop of an 1983 interview
with Susan Sontag creating brilliant
sonic graffiti.
Not only executed with stunning prowess,
Gookin’s dedication to each composer’s voice
channels the direct, hard-hitting messages
of the compositions, her virtuosity powerfully
propelling them even further, reminding
us that these are all our stories to be told. She
delivers them with authenticity, never taking
over. This is not an ego project. This is cello
playing at its height; delivering art.
Forward Music Project is an undertaking
that continues to leave me breathless.
Cheryl Ockrant
Wild At Heart
Pauline Kim Harris
Sono Luminus DSL-92253
(sonoluminus.com)
! The second
release in Pauline
Harris’ Chaconne
Project, this album
explores interconnections
between time, individual
worlds and
music. According to
Harris, each commissioned composition is a
reincarnation of J.S. Bach’s Chaconne for solo
violin and each composer has expressed their
unique individual connection to this piece.
The music on this album is wild in the
best sense of the word – an uninhibited
violin wonderland of extended techniques,
powerful, ingenious and enterprising. There
are no memorable melodies here but instead
a universe made of fragments, textures and
gestures, all centered around Chaconne. The
depth of sound is astonishing and Harris’
violin is so sonorous that one feels an incredible
sense of expansion listening to this
album. Harris has impeccable command
of her instrument. She is an artist with a
wild imagination, great stamina and extraordinary
control.
The opening piece, Yoon-Ji Lee’s Shakonn,
is a volcano of sound and energy built over
a held bass note, pulling Chaconne apart
and transforming it. Morsels by Elizabeth
Hoffman follows, a web of lovely harmonics
that create both the rhythms and textures.
Sequences of single gestures are juxtaposed
with empty spaces, forming delicate
balances. Annie Gosfield’s Long Waves and
Random Pulses has a powerful energy and
occasional Gypsy flavour. Using extensive
research of jammed radio signals as a foundation,
Gosfield alternates whirls of notes with a
ghostly noise to build the mystery.
The album closes with a grand C-H-A-C-O-
N-N-E, John King’s composition that explores
the form to the extreme through sequences
that move from complex to simple. An
imaginative and highly recommended album.
Ivana Popovic
Richard Bissill – Panoply
Artists from the Guildhall School of Music
& Drama
Three Worlds Records TWR0011 (threeworlds-records.com)
! The opening
two-minute
Philharmonic
Fanfare for brass
and percussion,
commissioned
by the London
Philharmonic
Orchestra, boisterously heralds this CD’s
many forthcoming pleasures. Richard Bissill,
former LPO principal horn and longtime
professor at London’s Guildhall School of
Music and Drama, enlisted students and
fellow faculty members to perform the
music recorded here, all composed between
2001 and 2016.
Bissill himself appears in his eight-minute
Trio for horn, violin and piano, two warmly
lyrical sections embracing a graceful, lively
scherzando. Episodically varying tempi and
moods make the nine-minute Twisted Elegy
for flute, viola and harp much more “twisted”
than “elegiac.” Bissill’s ten-minute Sirens for
violin and piano vividly evokes the mythical
temptresses with music that’s playful,
sensuous and urgently seductive.
There are two 15-minute, three-movement
pieces. The jazz-tinted Triangulation achieves
heightened impact through its unusual
textures – dense and gritty – produced by
seven bassoons and one contrabassoon.
Panoply for flute and piano, with its quicksilver
first movement, languid, Debussyinflected
central movement and theatrical
finale, is a fresh, delectable addition to the
flute repertoire.
The 12-minute The Magnificent Seventh for
eight horns, piano, bass and drums, based on
the interval of a minor seventh, moves from
fanfares and busy syncopations to a slow,
bluesy middle section before the piece, and
the CD, ends in a burst of triumph.
Bissill’s inventively varied, thoroughly
48 | February 2022 thewholenote.com