Jeremy HALADYNA
The Mayan Cycle (selections)
Areon Flutes, Jeremy Haladyna, Lisa-Maree Amos, Michele Forrest, Sergio Ortiz,
UCSB Young Artists String Quartet
Full track listing at end of review
rec. no details provided
INNOVA 754 [68:00]
Composer Jeremy Haladyna's teachers included William Kraft, Karl Korte, Joseph
Schwantner and Jacques Charpentier. Of these Charpentier's music makes the
closest (not very close!) link with the music of Haladyna who is now director
of UC Santa Barbara's Ensemble for Contemporary Music. Haladyna has been held
in thrall by Mayan culture over a twenty-plus year period during which he
has studied the long-distant culture and has channelled his studies, reactions
and artistic extrapolations and projections into the work he calls The
Mayan Cycle. The cycle comprises 26 pieces at last count. Details at www.mayancycle.com.
This disc presents selections from that cycle. While there are pieces for
natural instruments such as Precious First Rat for alto flute and celesta
there are others for electroacoustics, manipulations of electronic sounds,
for synthesised instruments, for ‘scratch turntables’, for mumbling or incantatory
voices.
Escalation, Borgia and Luubchords from Demon Zero are products of radiophonics
with hushing, sighing and soughing mingled with celesta and harpsichord sounds.
All this is in kaleidoscopic opposition and collaboration. These elements
are linked by a never-lost underlying rhythmic pulse. Luubchords is
awesome in its atmospheric effects with a sense of Quatermass or The
Stone Tapes. One feels teetering on the vertiginous edge of cataclysm.
Only armadillos they danced has the UCSB Young artists string quartet
with the composer on scratch turntable. The string quartet music finds its
roots and routes in Schoenberg and Bartók. Over and through it all the twigs
crackling, porcelain scratches and abrasions of the turntable sound out. Intelligent
Life on Other Flutes is for electroacoustics. This time the world is established
in avian chirrups and a quiet elysian gleam that suggests some remote planet.
There is no horror in this unlike in Luubchords. Snake Mountain
is from a much larger piece, Tollan. The extract is for oboe and
organ. Pieces for natural instruments alternate with those for electrically-sourced
sounds. The oboe sings its heart out against the mountainous eerieness of
the organ. It's all a bit melodramatic at times - the music for some expressionist
fantasy film - maybe Nosferatu or The Golem.
Even Precious First Rat uses breathy voices at one point, and the Areon
Flutes Ensemble (www.areonflutes.com) in Godpots (Ollas) include
breathy effects from the flutes, and exclamations from the players. Add to
this a quiver-full of flitters and spits, half shrieks and whistles.
Strange music - one aches to hear Haladyna’s full orchestral works from this
cycle. Until then here are substantial insights into the continuing work of
a modern obsessive. Potently atmospheric stuff.
Rob Barnett
Potently atmospheric stuff.
Full track listing:
Borgia (from Demon Zero) [5:37]
Jeremy Haladyna
Precious First Rat [3:57]
Jeremy Haladyna, Lisa-Maree Amos
Escalation (from Demon Zero) [3:57]
Jeremy Haladyna
Godpots (Ollas) [13:28]
Areon Flutes
Luubchords (from Demon Zero) [4:13]
Jeremy Haladyna
Only Armadillos They Danced [5:21]
UCSB Young Artists String Quartet
Intelligent Life on Other Flutes [7:01]
Jeremy Haladyna
Snake Mountain (from Tollan) [5:58]
Michele Forrest, Jeremy Haladyna
Puczikal Peten [18:06]
Sergio Ortiz