Great projections into known and unknown realms
scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 07/30/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Elodie Lauten's music is based on the time honored tradition of improvisation, and here the choice of materials, a scale, Mixolydian G,B,C,D,F, actually a chord,depending how one perceives it, this is quite powerful and seemingly endless in the sheer amount of variation one , a pianist or composer or whomever can summon, and coax out of it. Within the confines of Americana it has been widely used, old Terry Riley's 'A Rainbow in Curved Air" and currently from quite a different market concocted perspective John Adams in his 'Lollapolooza'for orchestra, gives this tarnished durable scale a run for its money. Lauten gave Svard a tape of her improvisations, in which she produced the score to perform from. The results are kinda mixed. You sense the rhythmic freedom of improvisation here and also the situation that some moments in the music are bridges, filler moments waiting to see what's around the corner.The frame of variations should have gone through more paces,unless the work is open ended where any performance is simply one realization of a countless number,like entering a labyrinth of expression. That's the price you pay in improvisation. Theodor Adorno said we all pay some price in art, no matter what level of experimentation.Hopefully these 'filler' moments sink into the welter, the beauty of what this chord can summon, or scale can produce.In quite a different context, I've heard this chord as wind chimes-like slowly being caressed with a gentle breeze. La Monte Young's "Well Tuned Piano" an hours( 8 or 9 hour) long work for the piano pummeled through the strictures of 'just intonation', the real way we should be hearing anyway, also has similar like utilizations. 'Phase 1' is the most spirited,uplifting, and clean, later Lauten introduces chromatic intervals, minor timbre, then dance like gestures. But it didn't seem to amount to much after the initial beauty first hits you, much was arbitrary. Perhaps I should hear a live performance.Jerry Hunt has the pianist here use wrist bells with tremoli, that's where your hand goes, reiterates back 'n forth between either two tones,or three or more, depending on one's strength,or each hand alternating as fast as possible,like beating a drum.Great sheets of sound can be produced this way, which is what happens hear. Hunt has worked in theatre, so the effect is quite spellbinding. Gann's 'Desert Sonata' is a real tour de force. He's been working with the imagery and rituals,the culture of Native American Indians and their music for quite some time. Part Indian himself the work framed in two large movements about ten minutes each,has a dialogue between primitive,primordial like gestures, and for want of a better description "civilized" music, music unfolding itself into patterns as dances.Gann utilizes like a passacaglia from Conlon Nancarrow, from his 'Studies for Player Piano'. So the section here is in 41/16 time.Time seems to be what kills everyone here,for Gann I had wished he would have allowed his quite evocative opening to drift a little longer to summon even more the power of his image of the Desert. The first 'Wind', utilized the mysterious powerful timbre of the lower piano depths,with gentle, delicate interruptions in the tickly upper registers, like some percussion instrument introduced. Erasing the middle register,using not much of it here is great, so we clearly hear the beauty of the bass, making it work its own magical charms. Then also a melody is heard 'Going Home' from a Hopi Elk Dance.It is quite evocative,with these rhythmic punctuations. Gann knows the mysteries of piano timbre quite well, I hear Busoni hovering some place here,more than the apparent frame of Beethoven's Opus 111; pleased with the pure simplicity of the piano timbre and its projection.But Gann has his own voice here.'Night' is simply denser music less expansive,more utilizing rhythmic focus of the Hopi dance again only buried within the texture of things, the lines. Svard, is quite a sensitive player to all this new expressions,or ones where there's not much precedent."
Track Listings (7) - Disc #1