Some of the greatest pleasure to be had reviewing for this
site is when a disc creeps up on you and charms and fascinates
in the most unexpected way. I cannot say that the shelves of
my collection groan under the sheer number of discs of contemporary
music for piano and percussion so I cannot claim any huge expertise.
However, I have been thoroughly beguiled by every aspect of
this disc from packaging and production to performance and repertoire.
A big congratulations to Luminescence Records for producing
such a fine disc.
The performers here are a percussion and piano duet called ‘Strike’
featuring Jefferey Meyer on piano and Paul Vaillancourt on multiple
percussion. These are exceptionally fine players individually
and in tandem. As with any recital of works by five different
composers there will always be pieces that an individual responds
to more than others but the programme here is beautifully assembled
to show off the rich diversity of music that has been arranged
and composed for this duo. Many of the sounds and textures conjured
here are ravishing and the mood of the music ranges from gently
reflective and spiritual to boisterously muscular and good humoured.
It would be quite unfair on any of the music to single out one
work or another as ‘better’ so I will comment on them in the
order they appear on the disc. The China West Suite by
Chen Yi is a series of four movements written for marimba and
piano. Originally composed in 2007 for 2 pianos Dr Yi – she
now teaches at the University of Missouri – adapted the work
for this duo for this recording. In this form it is stunning.
Yi has taken her inspiration from the folk music of Western
China – a fact immediately apparent in the lyrical pentatonicism
of much of the music. Try around 3:20 into track 2 Meng Songs;
the piano part is doubled by gentle marimba trills on the same
melodic line creating an extraordinary aural halo and ambience.
Credit here as elsewhere to both players and engineers who succeed
in achieving a beautifully subtle balance in a lovely natural
acoustic – this oozes quality. In the following movement – Zang
Songs – Meyer’s playing is a model of neat articulacy around
and above flutters Vaillancourt’s beautiful marimba sounding
miraculously even and effortless – listen to how the movements
evaporates like the morning mist. All the more effective for
the bracing energy of the Miao Dances that complete the
suite – a rousing end to an excellent work
Brooke Joyce’s Sacred Trees is more overtly contemporary.
The inspiration for the six movement work comes from the trees
found growing at ancient Native American burial mounds which,
as the composer writes in the liner-notes, led him to “reflect
on my own sense of ritual memory and spirituality”. Certainly
there is a haunted and hugely atmospheric quality to the work.
Vaillancourt’s instrumentation is expanded – judging by production
stills in the liner – to include multiple gongs, vibraphone,
wind chimes, various suspended cymbals and roto-drums and crotales
amongst others. Apologies if I have mis-named any of these instruments
– as I mentioned before – this is not an area of great expertise!
Again, the abiding impression is the skill with which the timbres
of the multiple instruments are combined. Unlike the four clearly
defined movements of Yi’s work Joyce allows the various sections
to overlap. The overall character of the work is reflective
and inward-looking. Perhaps it less immediate appeal than some
of the other music recorded here but I suspect, indeed expect,
that this is one of the compositions that will reveal the most
with greater familiarity.
After the repose and spirituality of that work Marc Mellits’
three movement Tight Sweater Remix explodes onto your
consciousness as an edgy urban wise-guy virtuoso work. I love
a good title so I’m a sucker for any piece whose three movements
are called Exposed Zipper, Trans Fatty Acid’s Rein, and
Mechanically Separated Chicken Parts. Mellits in his
liner-note makes no explanation of these titles but I’m guessing
its some reaction against po-faced contemporary composers who
call their work Construction VI or even Symphony X
(when it isn’t!). An example of the kind of care and attention
to detail lavished on this disc is the fact that this work was
recorded separately from the others with quite a different set-up.
Initially this might sound rather studio-bound and airless compared
to the other works. But then it struck me that this is exactly
the kind of recording that you used to get on many older jazz
recordings. And it is that kind of contemporary/jazz/fusion/hyper-active
minimalism that you get here. I love the way both players toss
off their complex and demanding parts with cool virtuosity.
The three movements have been extracted from a larger work which
included a cello but again there is no sense of ‘loss’ at all.
Again this is scored for just marimba and piano and although
the left hand of the piano does provide a propulsive harmonic
energy the sense of the work is as a kind of brilliant latter-day
study in two part contrapuntal writing. The interweaving and
overlaying of musical lines is simply superb. At times I was
reminded of the recordings made by Chick Corea and Gary Burton.
Obviously this is composed in a way the Corea/Burton is not
but there is a similar spirit of alliance and good-natured musical
jousting. There’s a rather lovely photograph from the sessions
of Meyer grinning from ear to ear and this sense of happy collaboration
is no-where better illustrated than in this work. But there
are moments of real beauty too – try the end of track 12. The
nightmarishly hard shifting rhythmic patterns of the closing
Mechanically Separated Chicken Parts – I just wanted
to write that title again – are performed with total ease and
assurance. These guys are good! If you have any
interest in any kind of minimalist/jazz fusion the disc is worth
buying for this piece alone – a life-enhancing work.
Another marvellous shift of mood takes us onto Daniel Koontz’s
Soft Stillness and the Night. This title comes from the
same passage in The Merchant of Venice that Vaughan Williams
set as part of his glorious Serenade to Music. This work
was commissioned by and is dedicated to the players here. Vaillancourt
uses a range of instruments although the marimba features strongly.
Koontz describes it as “arising from sonic fantasies of night
and dawn”. Certainly the atmosphere the six brief movements
evoke is of the witching hour in the depth of the night with
half awake thoughts and sounds scurrying through mainly empty
textures. Prepared piano and random marimba notes drip like
a leaky tap. I’m not sure Koontz’s night is a very comforting
place to be, there’s a gently disturbing quality to the music
that is very compelling and all the more effective after the
neon-bright certainties of the previous work. A totally different
interpretation of the text from the sensual languor of the Vaughan
Williams too. We are back to the original recording set up here
and again I was struck by the sheer beauty of the sounds being
made. The control of dynamics and texture in the many quiet
passages is little short of perfection.
The care in the planning of this CD programme is again shown
in the choice of the final work. In essence the music has alternated
between athletic and reflective so it is logical that this closing
piece should be a kind of fusion of the two. Jim David’s Duo
Toccata subdivides into two movements; Campanello d’allarme
and Aula di tribunale. David’s idea is to focus on different
aspects of ‘touch’ – a literal approach to the meaning of toccata
– in each of the movements. So the opening section deals with
repeated resonating tones from the gongs and bells and piano.
The closing movement is more overtly rhythmic based, the composer
states, on Afro-Cuban rhythms. The percussion part here has
much more of a feel of kit playing – apart from one brief xylophone
interlude over a striding piano line - with jazz-influenced
keyboard writing throughout.
I mentioned earlier the packaging of the CD. I do like the way
Luminescence have broken away from the fragile jewel case format.
Somehow the style they have chosen harks back to an age when
opening the gatefold of an LP and devouring every little morsel
of information was a very important part of the home-listening
experience – something else the download will never replace.
The cream-coloured heavy card sleeve, once freed from its own
clear yellow belt, is covered with wonderfully technical and
utterly incomprehensible detailed diagrams of the hammer mechanism
of a piano and the correct way to hold a percussion mallet.
On the reverse are three unexplained circles with figures and
inside a patented wiring circuit. It’s all wonderfully obtuse
– I loved it. The CD tucks snugly into a pocket under the wiring
circuit and pasted to the left-hand page of the wallet is a
brief but beautifully produced booklet. This includes a couple
of quite beautiful close-ups of a piano – genuinely artistic
pictures - together with quirky composer photographs, biographies
and brief descriptions of the works by the composers and session
pictures. All of this is prefaced by a kind of ‘testament’ from
the two performers. I would like to quote part of what they
write; “We could not have been more inspired by the creations
[compositions]; the results are diverse in style and character,
each with a unique sense of place, time and space, all demanding
great creativity on the part of the performers and offering
the listener a wide spectrum of experience”. Just so. I do hope
this disc achieves as wide a dissemination as possible. The
dedication and quality it displays deserves no less. This is
not the comfy-chair school of contemporary mogadon-music that
I personally loathe; this is serious and significant music all
composed and performed with exceptional skill and musicality
and no little wit. A disc worth taking a chance on if only to
have a piece in your collection called Mechanically Separated
Chicken Parts – there, I’ve done it again.
Nick Barnard
Strike (Jefferey Meyer (piano); Paul Vaillancourt (percussion))
