modern composition
Track: Mischa Blanos – ‘Innervision’: Bucharest composer twines solo piano composition and club euphoria
MISCHA BLANOS is a Romanian pianist and electronic producer who found himself becalmed in Bucharest when the lockdown bit and, with time on his hands as we all had, began to consider the city as a thing, and how we as humans who created them, interact and are altered by them. With the Romanian lockdown …
See: Ben Seretan – ‘Rain & Cicadas’: the piano in meshed susurration with the Appalachian rain
A FEW weeks ago we blissed into Sunday with New York songwriter and composer Ben Seretan’s absolutely luscious “Fog Rolls Out Rabun Gap”, the hero and protagonist of the piece at the piano and very much also in the world, his environment at the artist’s residency he was undertaking in the small community of that …
EP review: Francesca Ter-Berg – In Eynem: an exploratory cello EP that makes a deep connection
YOU MAY recognise the name Francesca Ter-Berg as the cello side of the leftfield folk classical improv duo Fran and Flora that turned heads a while ago, from Café Oto to Women’s Hour, with their electrifying rejuvenation of Eastern European traditional sounds. That vibrant partnership with violinist Flora Curzon released the impeccably imaginative Unfurl in …
See: Neil Cowley – ‘I Choose The Mountain’: solo compositional delicacy with love to Wim Wenders
BRITISH pianist Neil Cowley, who released a septet of albums sitting astride the point where jazz begins to shade into modern composition and ‘tronica over a period of ten years from 2006, has been on something of a musical journey. Having dissolved his previous combo, the Neil Cowley Trio, he’d seemingly fallen out of love …
Track: Laura Masotto – ‘Blue Marble’: the pain and the bite of the pandemic lockdown for layered solo violin
LAURA MASOTTO is an Italian composer and violinist and composer who loves to create and architecture of sound by looping up her violin to strengthen, harmonise, lend support and bite and drama to the thrust and core of her work. She’s set to release her second album on 7K! near to midsummer – 7K! of …
See: The video for Matt Emery’s ‘Raindrops And Blood Spurts’: the scarlet fire of battle as reimagined for solo cello
THE EXCELLENT Surrey composer Matt Emery, a leading light over at Injazero Records for four years or so now working at the more deliciously experimental edges of modern composition, is launching an EP project entitled the Spotlight Series, in which he looks to investigate and put the spotlight on an instrument in turn, really explore …
Track: Portico Quartet’s gliding ‘Terrain II (edit)’ unveils a three-part suite of a new album in late May
PORTICO QUARTET, whose Jack Wyllie we last encountered in these pages at the end of last summer with his exhilarating Afro-ambient project, Paradise Cinema, reconvened at their East London base during lockdown, the events that swathe us necessarily informing the new music they began to fashion. The world we all suddenly precipitated into necessitated a …
Album review: Christine Ott – ‘Time To Die’: French composer returns to Gizeh for a modern compositional masterclass
Without a doubt one of the most potent voices in modern composition today, Christine Ott is as happy to push right out into dark, even industrial-infused experimenta as she is to play a straight bat with absolute confidence in the deeper classical tradition and the wider avant-garde palette; she can do it all, if she chooses, and when she breathes the ondes Martenot into life; there really is no one to touch her
See: Theo Alexander’s ‘Bright-Eyed Hunger’: London composer targets the dream state with his dazzling minimalism
LONDON pianist Theo Alexander likes to loop, to evoke the dreamstate, to explore the beauty of harmony and melody and repetition. He’s an album coming up on Toronto’s lovely Arts & Crafts imprint in late May that looks to seal his reputation as one of the most interesting people working in the minimalist end of …
Album review: Balmorhea – ‘The Wind’: Texas post-classical duo present a lovely set for Deutsche Grammophon
Balmorhea draw a line back in the tradition to the much-missed Louisville, KY outfit Rachel’s, who opted to take an idea and use whichever instrumental mix they found brought out the best of what they wished to convey. And The Wind roams freely and with precision across a spectrum from formal classical through a more pastoral take on the form and all the way out to ambient experimentalism, spoken word, found sound, with a unity and cohesion. It’s just a lovely, thoughtful record; complex in its simplicity