This collection of works by four American composers all centers around the inclusion of one of the principals' instruments and pitch system. Harry Partch, whose "Castor and Pollux" from 1952 opens this album, invented a 43 tone per octave tuning system, which is at the heart of every recording on this set, so gorgeously and bravely performed by the New Band and conductor/composer Dean Drummond. The other two composers featured, Anne LeBaron and Elizabeth Brown, have grafted Partch's system and fixtures onto the use of ...
Read More
This collection of works by four American composers all centers around the inclusion of one of the principals' instruments and pitch system. Harry Partch, whose "Castor and Pollux" from 1952 opens this album, invented a 43 tone per octave tuning system, which is at the heart of every recording on this set, so gorgeously and bravely performed by the New Band and conductor/composer Dean Drummond. The other two composers featured, Anne LeBaron and Elizabeth Brown, have grafted Partch's system and fixtures onto the use of Western instruments in their tributes to the late maestro. The opening work by Partch employs his bell-like diamond marimba and the huge, deep, bass marimba, as well as his cloud temple bowls and various stringed kitharas. Unusual microtonal patterns emerge from "Castor and Pollux," offering a hyper-extended use of rhythm as melody, and the inverse setting of stringed instruments becoming accompaniment to percussion instruments. It's a hypnotic, haunting, repetitive work that foreshadows the current obsession (in the 21st century) with microtonalism. In Guggenheim Fellow LeBaron's "Southern Ephemera," she employs flute, alto flute, and cello with Partch's surrogate kithara and harmonic canon, and employs the 43 tone per octave scale to create fragmentary, interwoven passages of memory and song styles indigenous to the South, from gospel hymns to the music of Stephen Foster to deep Delta blues. As her music moves from one phase to the next, the familiar becomes something new, as that which is truly new becomes inextricably linked to the past. Brown's "Archipelago" uses the bell-like zoomoomaphone (two of them), the diamond marimba, and surrogate kithara with flutes, cello, and synthesizer to create a somber, ethereal swell of strings, percussion, and microtonal wind and bell sounds that sweeps past lonely vistas of sound and evokes large empty spaces. Finally, Drummond's own "Dance of the Seven Veils," which employs no less than 20 of Partch's instruments, along with a cello and a flute, creates a wild, ever-changing soundscape of tonal ambience and striking melodic suggestion that opens the door onto a hidden world of sound, texture, and color, evoking the suspension of time and space while inside his composition. The New Band finds all of the material compelling, and there isn't a staid performance in the bunch. This music, created and inspired by and in tribute to him, is still very much a part of the musical future, not only in America, but also throughout the world. Never has there been a musical document that so completely charts as well as reveals his influence. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi
Read Less
