December 31, 2011
No. 1 Matt Haimovitz and Christopher O’Riley, Shuffle.Play.Listen/Todd Reynolds, Outerborough: Tied because they are so closely related and so very fine. There are musical and stylistic differences, but the underlying values are shared, making these ideal companions and, most of all, discs you should own.
Reynolds’ release is a disc of him playing his own compositions and another where he plays music written for him by Michael Gordon, David Lang, Phil Kline, David T. Little, Nick Zammuto, Paul de Jong, Ken Thomson, Michael Lowenstern and Paula Matthusen. As a solo player, Reynold’s works with the looping, structuring and processing features of tools like Ableton Live and Max/MSP, and the works written for him make creative use of electronic means as well, building multi-tracked parts, rhythms and electronic sounds. The overall sensibility is at the pinnacle of pop-inflected Post-Minimalism, from Phil Kline’s gorgeous, intense “Needle Pulling Fred” to the chattering flow of de Jong’s “Inward Bound” to the thrashing crunch of Lang’s “Killer,” a piece that combines the best of Bang on a Can classics “Industry” and “Lying, Chearting, Stealing.” It’s fundamentally all Reynolds, the playing and the view. It’s his ecumenical view and smart, refined taste that brings the pieces together, and it’s his tremendous musicianship that is at the core. Across both discs, there is a sense of freedom and spontaneity that come out of his skill and expression as a musician and that gives everything the feeling that it is unfinished in the best sense, that when you hit the repeat button (and you will) you will hear something you didn’t the last play.
Outerborough is the best example of the restless, creative relationship between composition and pop music going on in contemporary classical, as is Shuffle.Play.Listen. Where Reynolds is pioneering original work, Christopher O’Riley and Matt Haimovitz are mixing together a wide range of superb modern classical music with O’Riley’s transformative arrangements of current pop music. The result is densely packed with great sounds.
The first of the two CDs is structured through a suite of music from Bernard Herrmann’s exceptional score for the movie “Vertigo.” In between movements, there is Janacek’s “Fairy Tale,” Martinu’s “Variations on a Slovak Folksong,” Stravinsky’s “Suite Italienne,” (a reduction of his ballet Pulcinella), and “Le grand tango” from Astor Piazzolla. The playing is voluptuously fabulous, chamber music-making of the highest order. O’Riley has great touch and is a sensitive accompanist, while Haimovitz brings his unique ability to vocalize melodic lines to each piece, and everything sings, even the non-vocal compositions. The sequencing of the music is fascinating and rich.
The second CD traverses Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Cocteau Twins, Blond Redhead, A Perfect Circle and Mahavishnu Orchestra-era John McLaughlin. Like with Reynolds, O’Riley and Haimovitz accept as a given the quality of the songs and the play the shit out of them. Haimovitz’s ability to shape lines with the types of catches, fall-offs and the illusion of breathing that comes from the voice pushes these to an urgency of expression that makes the originals all sound a little cooler, and little more withdrawn. “The Pyramid Song” is haunting and plangent, “Melody” is ravishing, “Heaven or Las Vegas” is a flowing pastoral. The exception to this fullness they add to the pop music is the refined focus they give to “The Dance of Maya,” in a superb arrangement. The original is crushingly intense, here it’s quieter but just as provocatively obsessive. This great recording closes with “A Lotus on Irish Streams,” in a beautiful improvisation that rounds off all the music but leaves, like Outerborough, tendrils of questions and possibilities that will have you playing the music all over again.
by gtra1n
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