new music -review page-

New Albion Rec. Evan Ziporyn : Typical Music (US,2005)***°'

I was especially interested to hear Evan Ziporyn’s piece of gamelan performed by Galak Tika together with a full orchestra. Evan for me had already proved he was capable of fusing very different worlds of ideas, like the essence of music on Indonesian gamelan well with other styles and instruments. This piece is the last track on the CD, an over 14 minute track. Before that are two series of compositions: piano music, and music performed by the Arden Trio. I thought at first that orchestrated tracks like the last one should make a full CD perhaps too expensive to make, but then it would also be impressively ambitious. Instead I think the combination of compositions might reveal more of Evan’s compositional skills, which it did. Especially some of the piano pieces reveal almost mathematical ideas mixed with different crossovers of ideas and sound exploration reduced into separate compositions, brilliantly performed by Sarah Cahill.

The first piano piece sounds for a large part like a rather contemporary version of a Middle Eastern theme on piano, a bit comparable to the last century’s Gurdjiev/De Hartman’s pieces, with a few romantic shifts. The second piece sounds like it is being built around with one prepared note and an improvisation around it, freeing itself on the rhythmical pulse of the note. This evolves to a jazzy-swinging melody mixed with a filmic theme, that when freed into its own melody in the end is able to leave this one note behind. Brilliant. The third piece could have been composed on guitar first, as one emphasized note on a string, and a chord slow strum of echoing strings with some playing around it (all played from inside the piano?). This piece builds up nicely with some variations around this theme, like meditative mathematics mixed with an experiment inspired from a musical ear to sounds. The last, longest piano piece is a rhythmically-clustered structural minimalism, dancing forward with pleasure. This is followed into orchestrated chamber-pieces led by piano ideas of which the arrangements of the chamber orchestra relate at first mostly to the piano composed melodies.

My favourite piece (although some piano pieces surprised me, and might win my enthusiasm after more listens) this still is the gamelan/orchestra track, “Ngaben”, which builds up with gamelan in an Indonesian scale, while an orchestrated tension (by strings and trumpet) builds up from underneath it. This unfolds further with certain contra-tensions, moving also its rhythmic space and more direct rhythmic tension, with higher pitched string led waves of harmonies, as well as bass lines of waves of orchestrations, until a violent break which was led by gamelan, creating a vibrating bombastic chaos that breaks the contra-tensions apart, and more filmic harmonies-driven orchestration unfolds, this time led by the orchestra, as the new lead voice (now when it’s tempered), with additional singing bowl-alike gamelan pitches, until this dies out moodily.

Audio : "Ngaben"

Homepage : http://www.ziporyn.com

Info : http://www.somnius.com/amn/2005/11/14/just-out-on-new-albion/

Label info : http://www.newalbion.com/NA_CDS/NA128/NA128.htm

Other review : http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=20226

& http://www.answers.com/topic/typical-music?cat=entertainment

New World Rec.

Evan Ziporyn & Gamelan Galak Tika (US,2000)****'

After studying Western composition at Yale University, having hung with jazz scene for a while, Evan Ziporyn continued searching for a world where he would feel comfortable in, to have a wide enough world of expressions. Coincidence led him to the gamelan ensemble in North California, Sekar Jaya, for which he became a member from 1988 and started to learn everything from Balinese music, until he was able to teach and perform well. After a process of understanding, he felt that the gamelan music would not be understood fully and directly by an American public within this ensemble, so he developed ideas how to make this bridge possible. After leaving Sekar Jaya, he established his own ensemble called the Galak Tika Ensemble (the name is Balinese for “passionate and wild”, a great name when it also becomes associated with the American SF-series of Star Trek and its spaceship “Battlestar Gallactica”). With this new group he records his compositions. First he collaborated with Balinese composer I Nyoman Windha (with two compositions, of which one is on next listed album).

Evan Ziporyn succeeds well to make this bridge. His whole range of previous cooperations, with the worlds he was in, clearly helped him to form his ideas and approach, which now nicely holds the middle between a heritage of Balinese traditional music, classical contemporary music and thoughtful avant-garde experimental new music on the edge of rock. There are small elements of subtle contra-attacking themes and dissonances, which become part of a more total harmonious composition, with attention to communicative overtones, played in a jazz-like improvisation with gamelan, a tonal instrument that remains most often a fundament, but not always. Some of the dialoguing themes are processed samplers which Mark Perlman brilliantly describes -(it “eats up the whole gamelan and spits it out again”,) it changing pitch and interacting like another instrument. Also similar instruments like gamelan are combined.

The group Galak Tika also performed with groups like Kronos Quartet, Bang On A Can, Wu Man, and so on..

Evan Ziporyn also is a bass clarinettist and composer for Bang On A Can All-Stars (reviews of Bang On A Can related releases on next & next page). He worked with Glenn Branca, Nick Didkovsky (some album is reviewed on next page), Arnold Dreyblatt, Brian Eno, Louis Andriessen, Henry Threadgill, Hermeto Pasoal, and Ralph Shapey, and is a soloist with Steve Reich. He also is a conductor for Ensemble Modern. He also recorded with many artists (ranging from Paul Simon to Tony Scott).

Audio : "Amok part 6", "Tire Fire part 5" & with info on http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=69

video of Gamelan Galak Tika (not from this album) here

Intro Gamelan Galak Tika : http://web.mit.edu/mta/www/music/performance/gamelan.html

Homepage composer : http://www.ziporyn.com & with audio : http://www.myspace.com/evanziporyn

with info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Ziporyn

& http://www.bmop.org/musicians/composer_bio.aspx?cid=126

& http://www.globalrhythm.net/WorldMusicFeatures/EvanZiporyn.cfm

Homepage group : http://www.galaktika.org & with audio : http://www.myspace.com/gamelangalaktika

with info : http://www.bostonmusicians.org/musicians/gamelan_galak_tika/

& with different cooperation : http://www.wgbh.org/pages/artcloseup/ontv/content/0404/index.html

Label description : http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=80565

& http://www.newworldrecords.org/linernotes/80565.pdf

Descriptions : http://www.bangonacan.org/store/product/15 & on http://www.jr.com/...

& on http://www.forcedexposure.com/artists/ziporyn.evan.html

Article : http://www.sixtyonesixtyeight.com/sonofile/index.php?p=33&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Other review : http://www.devasp.com/store/shop62/pdB00004TV6H/Books_and_Software/

Locust Music

Gamelan Son Of Lion : Metal Notes (US,2007)***°

Gamelan is one of the most remarkable and most typical ethnic musical instruments, associated with Indonesia/Java. It’s sound is close to gongs, steelpan and chimes. Gamelan Son Of Lion (since 1974/1976) is a contemporary classical music community group of composers from New York (13 in total on this recording, performed by Livingston College Gamelan Performing Ensemble with three extra guest performers) who write new music for instruments which are tuned in the scales of pelog (7-note) and slendro (5-note) scale of Java. In this early stage of the group (the recording is from 1983 ; the compositions are from 1979-1982) they used gongs and metallophones (xylophones with resonators) with oil-drum and Chinese tam-tam for the lowest gongs, and with some junkyard hubcaps to make the range of sounds complete. The David Demnitz track used church bells. “Keith Rays”, an elegy for an old friend by Denise Rightmire-Womelsdorf has a Javan flavour with sad melancholic flute. While people from Java have their rich tradition and experiences with the gamelan, the approach of these western composers is differently orientated. They partly studied their music, but they also have other rich backgrounds (in avant-garde, Fluxus, minimalism, new music,..) that through their interest in gamelan show a specific interest in harmonies and sounds. Their approach is also more minimal, and often a meditation in sound with compositions based upon reflexes of harmonies in the colours from the chosen instruments.

- I have another, later album by the group, called "New Gamelan / New York" (1995)**°' ; compared to the more recent album, this older reviewed recording sounds much more like a meditative adventure.-

Just the last two tracks, "Hear the sound of random numbers" and "random chords" might be a bit more challenging to some, even when the meditative aspect surely is there. In these tracks it is interesting to hear how self-organization can participate in a composition and performance. I must say that the creative role of the composer here was really dangerously minimalized, but also this still works for me.

A very special release, only published on tape before.

Audio fragments on http://www.cduniverse.com/... or http://gofish.about.com/...

Homepage : http://www.gamelan.org/sonoflion/

Label info : http://www.locustmusic.com/gamelansonoflion.html

Review with two audio tracks : http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=21111

Other reviews : http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/review_detail.php?id=1383

die Schachtel

Prima Materia : The Tail of the Tiger (I,1974-1976)*****

I know of only a handful of successful new music releases that are a thoughtful consideration of meditative music, compared to such a powerful recording like that of a Tibetan Monks Tantric ritual. Stockhausen’s second version of his “Stimmung” performed by Singcircle (Hyperion, CDA66115) uses vowels and consonants of Gods and deities, which are related with the 7 days of the week, and repeats them in certain patterns in that way they gently flow into each other. This album, in combination with experimental singer Tamia’s first private release was used and appreciated as an introduction for my radio show for the last 10 years without much change. It is not so related with overtones, but still has other ideas which are equally interesting and brilliant as a performance.

The second example of Prima Materia comes closer to a comparable idea I could eventually describe as a kind of western raga/raag form of the coming to deeper concentration “Om…” (this “Om” in our Western world section with new music and electronic music could easily be replaced by “Ohm”, if you wish, like the great organisation ‘Sound Ohm’ did, of which I think the label Die Schachtel is a section.

Italian born Roberto Laneri graduated as a composer at the University of California with a thesis on ‘sound as the vehicle of altered states of consciousnesses'. His so called “extended vocal techniques” were since 1972 at first developed at the University of California, with the help of an organist Susanne Hendricks, and, once in Italy, was performed by various vocalists (Gianni Nebbiosi, Claudio Ricciardi, Alvin Curran, Michiko Hirayama, Maria Monti, Nicola Bernardini, and others). Since 1974 the group began touring with performances in Berlin, Köln, Zagreb, Rome, and Paris. One 33’30” performance was recorded for a private pressing LP in 1977. Two of the other live recordings (Berlin in 1974, a recording of about 16 minutes (other than almost half an hour, as indicated), and Rome, 1976, a performance of nearly 14 minutes) are included here on this cd reissue too. The musicians individually researched and developed vocal techniques which were originally used in Tantric rituals around the Himalaya, and were based upon the use of overtones expressed in a state of deeper concentration, a state which is necessary to achieve this technical inner control. Furthermore Laneri says that non-sound as well as sound here have an equal role, like breathing and a time spanning fluidity with conscious inner communications making a better synthesis to all the participating aspects, creating thus a sound with a great portion of a more collective and inner strength.

The LP recording sounds like a very consciously performed and built up sphere. With at first, each individual voice distinguishable, it evolves and becomes its own organic interactive soundsystem. There are parts where individual ideas merge, with a few unexpected extra sounds, which are at times a bit amusing within a respectful way and still having enough power to drag your attention back into the wholeness of the performance. We hear varied techniques, from bass to flute-like overtones as well as combinations from notes. On the second part, the group becomes more like a multi-harmonic wave of energy, something which I think could be achieved even better or with slightly different effect with somewhat bigger groups. The Berlin performance has its own deep concentration towards a certain vocal and living overtone harmony. But also here are strange and even truly weird vocal adapted experiments; sounding like new music and a few times like somewhat odd ideas surely when at first only just one person starts to adapt them. A great bonus inclusion to the original LP recording. Also the Rome recording is not just another performance but has again different, interesting perhaps even somewhat coincidentally achieved harmonies by improvisation. It builds up from more obviously harmonizing tones to unexpected changes through deeper concentration into other, broader sound perspectives.

The CD reissue is done with great respect and has a booklet with info and pictures and there’s another art booklet with colour prints of mantra-like forms in nature and in ethnical art, printed on half transparent paper, a beautiful work on its own. Highly recommended !

Another great composer who made very thoughtful compositions with overtones is the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, who worked also with one-note compositions with overtones (Quattro Pezzi per Orchestra). Scelsi in 1978 wrote a letter to Laneri after having read an article on the group, with some extra appreciating thoughts on the project, which is included in the booklet together with some remaks from Marius Schneider (writer of "Meaning of Music", "Cosmic Music",..) and Terry Riley (in C, and his minimalist music based upon one note).

Audio : "The Tail Of The Tiger LP Version"(or here or here), "Roma, January 17, 1976" (or here),

"Berlin, Oct. 19th, 1974 Metamusik Festival"

Info on the original LP : http://www.soundohm.com/primamateria.htm

and on this release : http://www.die-schachtel.com/html/ds10.htm

Other reviews : http://www.die-schachtel.com/html/ds10_reviews.htm

PS. If interested in deeper consciously built harmony spheres should check out the DNA music from Susan Alexjander : Sequencia reviewed on http://psychevanhetfolk.homestead.com/DNA.html

1. Palace Of Lights Gregory Taylor : Amalgam : Aluminium / Hydrogen (US,2007)****°

Trained in a field of curiosities in visual art and later new music art, Gregory Taylor studied Indonesian and electroacoustic music in the U.S. and the Netherlands. This new music interest led him to a radioshow called "RTQE", leading to a few occasional criticisms. He was active in the cassette-culture movement during the late 70s and 80s of independently produced electronic music, performed various concerts, and did some occasional remixing before in addition to his work in what he called 'recombinant noise alignment'. This is Gregory’s third release (after "Voiceband Jilt" on c74, followed by an online label release of live recordings through the Palace of Lights label as a part of their "Flood" series), his second concentrated conceptual piece on CD.

I must admit this album contains some surprising visions. Although the whole album musically works very much like one concept, in one listen, it is especially the opening track which gives the listener the full surprise. While most attempts to use the gamelan sounds for electronic music use two different worlds interacting, this sounds like a completely new music, contemporary music, which is a perfect mix of the true nature of the gamelan into manipulated music, keeping each aspect of it intact but making more from it, through sound manipulation, electronic configuration and so on, making the idea or origins of computer, electronica and gamelan into one new composition instrument, a brilliant opening piece, which is acoustic, electrocaoustic and electronic at the same time, into a wider scope field of expression possibilities. Part two sounds like a reverb electronic music version of it, becoming a click and run melodic, more modern piece. This leads to more changing variations with multi-layered loops of sounds and melodies. More noisy sounds are mixed with the more clear keyboards sounds. Reverbed melodies are mixed in structures of layers with droning organ keyboards, and more bells/chime-like sounds, turning back to the gamelan sound itself. Near the end weirder, darker sounds are added, with echoing, pulsating, and vibrating sounds, noise and clarity, reverbs and clicks, with a bit of ambient darkness intruding. A special album of new electronic/electrocacoustic music, but near the end also just a bit of ambient.

Also planned for the future, but not confirmed, is a release of free improvisational work with several different ensembles.

Audio : "Bem" (zipped file for private use only)

& with info http://cdbaby.com/cd/taylorgregory

& on http://musicishere.com/

Info : http://www.palaceoflights.com/commerce/index.html

& http://www.palaceoflights.com/gtaylor/index.html

& http://www.palaceoflights.com/gtaylor/Gregory_Taylor_Amalgam.pdf

Homepage : http://www.rtqe.net/

with radioshow blogspot : http://rtqe.blogspot.com/

Biography : http://condor.depaul.edu/~gbarker/Gtaylor.html

Review : http://www.earlabs.org/text/review.asp?reviewID=591

2. Palace Of Light Steve Peters : Occasional Music (US,2007)***°

While Steve Peters made sounds for many site-specific art installations, he also composed lots of occasional project-related music from the last 25 years. This album is an overview of this work, which never has been compiled before. Even when coming from so many different occasions, the album sounds like a deliberate compilation of well fitting tracks, of varied ambient/new music, ranging from minimalism to ethnical inspirations over electro-acoustic sound improvisations. The main factor is that all compositions breathe calmly and gently, out of nothing, of space and silence or tends to dissolve back into it. There’s some improvisation involved, also with some co-operators, so that some tracks tend to fall back just a little on minimalism and repetition in its pulses, but luckily without any annoying effect. It gives more the impression of sound meditations, adapting composition, improvisation, and other musical factors by need of occasion.

“Paris, Once” is a simple piano piece, which is introduced by the label as a Satie-esque piano étude, referring to the quiet evolution in it. “Ancestral Memory” consists of drone-like slower and stretched playing of accordions with overtone harmonies, mixed with some minimalist accordion oscillations, and rhythmic clicks of percussion. “Planctus” is a beautiful elegy or inspiration on Balinese music played with Javanese gamelan and flute, respectful in essence to its origins. “Courtship Rituals” is played by two trumpets, one of them in the cornet-kind of sounds we almost too automatically associate with Miles Davis, mixed with steam-like rhythmic whistles, other space-filling background sounds from what I assume are tubes, voice intermission, and breathing trumpet experiments. Of course this is one of the cooperative works and improvisations. “Suspended Sentence” is an absorbed by space extreme minimalist one note piano piece, mixed with cosmic organ/electronic keyboards drones and harmonies. This continues in a second part, of the former piano with added bass space percussion on “Auto Da Fe”. Hereto are added electro-acoustic crispery and somewhat silent millstone like sounds, and lots of whispering mouth sounds improvisations (by several participators). Then also something that sounds like pigeons make the whispery sound rhythms with percussion a very complete awareness. “Unchained”, possibly from the same session, starts with a pulsating like machine bass drone pulse, mixed with other industrial background sounds. Over this is an improvisation with the always Sufi-associated sounds of some ethnic flute (don’t think it’s a ney, because it’s more bass toned). The whirling loop sounds confirm this idea of a meditative hypnosis. Also hand shakers and Middle Eastern percussive instruments played in a calm breathing tempo add to the impressions of a desert meditative quietness. The track tends to find itself repeated a bit after a while, and becomes minimal and circular a bit, as if falling back for a short while on its found pattern itself. “Circular Lullaby” sounds like it is an arranged piece from sampled voices, pulsating harmonies into the air, and finding each other in being a voice, of an abstract world. “Two Rivers” does something comparable, creating a touching meeting point for overtone-rich tones, overlapping quietly, finding a breathy communal shape.

Participators are pianist Robin Holcomb, saxophonist Tom Guralnick, trumpeter Jonathan Baldwin, percussionist Steven M.Miller and John Bartlit.

Audio : http://www.myspace.com/stevepeters & http://cdbaby.com/cd/stevepeters

Homepage : http://steve-peters.blogspot.com/

Info : http://www.palaceoflights.com/speters/occasional_tracks.html

Other review : http://www.earlabs.org/text/review.asp?reviewID=705

Hopefully more links can be added later

New World Rec. V.A. : American Works for Balinese Gamelan Orchestra (US,1993)****'

This is a compilation of Northern American composers who were involved with Balinese music and gamelan. In the case of the first composition of Evan Ziporyn with Nyoman Windha, “Kekembangan”, this is real traditional gamelan music combined with, at early stages at times slightly disharmonious jazz but which becomes slightly Ethiopian jazz-flavoured in following certain melody harmonies and themes. It is a really interesting composition, which shows Evan Ziporyn not only as a composer, but also his vision as a sax player (he plays along too), as a jazz composer, making with this composition some convincing crossover bridge. His other composition, called “Aneh Tapi Nyata” is a bit more searching and yearning to find more deeper lying communications, something which for the deeper unknown elements still leaves us with certain uncomfortable elements and intentions attempting but not reaching the whole goal he wishes to achieve. This communicative struggle is expressed well. The composition starts at first with the use of a somewhat folkish sounding melodic theme, adding a few stranger harmonies too, balancing the equilibrium for a while. Then a strange song part appears, sung in Balinese language. It includes the lyrics “I open my suitcase; all my problems come for the ride. Strange but true: a western song accompanied by this mixture. Gather together until forced apart, a momentary fusion, sweet or bitter, it’s up to you.” You can feel the attempts happening of western classical composition trying to reach hands, with gamelan & Balinese rhythmic drives, some guitar and so on. It is slightly rocking, but the feeling remains of both worlds not fully understand each other well yet, and were forced into a rather odd combination, an uncomfortable situation of fusion.

The other compositions sound closer to traditional Balinese music. Michael Tenzer’s first composition “Banyuari” developed a way to introduce some evolutions into the restricted gamelan playing, by way of some South Indian rhythmic devices and themes. The composition by Wayne Vitale is a dedication to the Balinese composer I Gusti Bagus Suarsana and his group Abdi Budaya. It is composed in the Baminese ‘kreasi baru’ (new creations) form, and is a fantasy in a more common for Western standards, rhythm of 3/4th.

For me especially the first two compositions on the compilation, “Kekembangan” and “Banyuari” I think are the most recommended listens, but also “Aneh Tapi Nyati” I found rewarding. I can’t say much more about the other tracks.

Audio : http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?r=1&EAN=93228043027

Label description : http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=80565

& http://www.newworldrecords.org/linernotes/80430.pdf

Other review : http://www.rootsworld.com/rw/feature/indonesia.html

American composers for gamelan : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gamelan_ensembles_in_the_United_States

Book on Balinese music in America : http://links.jstor.org/...

next Zvan Ziporyn release ->