Meanwhile

This album of contemporary classical music from four young composers and two well-known seniors are as varied as any given moment, which perhaps is why the album's creators adopted one of the featured work's wonderful title, Meanwhile, and the graphic artist provided the perfect cover image of doors, one open to white light and its comprised spectrum. This music is witty, challenging, noisy, surprising, clever, narrow, global, and even soothing: a box of Forrest Gump's chocolates. Such a concept album comes from the mind of Eighth Blackbird, a fine ensemble of forward-looking musicians who convincingly perform some wild music. The album is not for the musically timid but a fair listening will bring rewards.The first piece, by Missy Mazzoli, deals with paradox. Still Life with Avalanche commences with a developing harmonica- or sho-like drone from which many various folkloric melodies and rhythms, clarinet wailing, gamelan metallophone flourishes, percussive bombs, and a twisted Spanish bolero spin out. It is a chaos with harmonic familiarity, a funhouse dream. Philippe Hurel's piece for sextet, à mesure, must be apprehended by its underlying progressive pattern, not the superficial tunes (or lack thereof). It begins with an explosion of every-instrument-for-itself that suddenly drops into silence. A new outburst comes but different in form and it too drops away. A third seemingly haphazard flow ensues but now slowly collapses. The fourth entry is more rhythmic with machine-like repetition that just before it seems to fade increases and develops scherzolike. Eventually, the final explosive cycle turns into a nebulous, mysterious cloud leading to a long pulsing percussive chord of bell and piano. The first of two sections of Roshanne Etezady's 4-part work, Damaged Goods, is next in the program. It serves to rest the ear with a gentle dawning of piano bass chords, arising pastoral of strings and woodwinds, and a quick return to sleep. The six sections of Stephen Hartke's Meanwhile: Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays are Asian influenced, and the instruments are adjusted toward that sound and fexatones (the equivalent to the singing saw) add color. There are hints of Indonesian gamelan (shadow puppets are a major theatric form there) and Japanese minimalism (referencing bunraku puppetry) as well as an East European hora and a Stravinsky flute. Other sections seem to tell a story. There is a somber church motet, a country dance, a satyr's pavane...at least to me. The enjoyable theatrical music allows the listener's imagination to flow. Philip Glass offers a meditation, which as in a mantra every apparent repetition is actually different. His trademark pulsing minimalism becomes a spinning dance, its risings and fallings of crosscurrent waves soon become a machine that refuses to quit its churning; then from various instrumental combinations it evolves into a Southeast Asian dance with metallophones, ending abruptly. Catch, Thomas Adès' piece for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano is performed dramatically with the clarinetist, the outsider to the usual piano trio, desperately wanting 'in.' He darts around the piano until finally accepted at the last few notes of the composition. Musically, it is largely a noisy affair with pizzicato strings, piano bass rumblings, slapping cello, glissandos. It shifts into dreamlike snatches of tunes and styles, familiar yet indefinite. The album closes with the second piece of Etezady. It is a fast, loud, propulsive flurry with a marimba and string middle section. Its title is Eleventh Hour and we feel the frantic attempt to meet the deadline. The album amazes, and Eighth Blackbird performs the very difficult works in exemplary fashion.

Everything I hoped it would be. Makes the imagination run wild. Sounds a bit different every time through, because you notice different things. Love it!

In a mixed rep of contemporary music for small string group, this is a great CD, I will listen many more times.

Chicago based eighth blackbird is by all accounts one of contemporary music's finest and most respected ensembles. Each member of this superb sextet is a new music specialist of sorts. These musicians have made modern American music their calling card and to continued great success. Further, each of their albums has a theme or concept to it; this one being no exception.As the well done booklet notes explain, the collection imagines eighth blackbird "wander(ing) through an unfamiliar house. With each new track a new door is opened releasing unexpected sounds and dramas". The album title, "Meanwhile" also bears a sort of untold mystery given in a tantalizing introduction to the program notes. The story or theme is clearly up to the listener but the music itself is fascinating and holds many wonderful discoveries.For example, Still Life with Avalance by Missy Mazzoli is a rhythmic, propulsive but somewhat ominous excursion filled with jazz and minimalist inspired licks and ending quite eerily, with an element of the unresolved. Mazzoli was a new name for me but a terrific discovery. This young New York composer is a find and I am anxious to hear more of her music. The mysterious end of the "Avalanche" gives way to a jolt in Frenchman Philippe Hurtel's ...a mesure, the title coming from a French expression for "little by little." This is a frantic, sudden and unpredictable work that slows down gradually, only to become very steady and then ... unpredictable. This music is amazing in its highly structured faux chaos and sounds like it would be quite difficult to perform!There are movements, at strategic program points, of Roshane Etezady's Damaged Goods. Etezady claims an early influence by the music of Philip Glass and is presently a Chicago native working with eighth blackbird as well as other groups. Two movements of Damaged Goods are shared here: About Time and Eleventh Hour. The work has a hidden drama to it that implies something about the title. Etezady explains that the music and the title will hold different meaning for different people but it is compelling. There is a melancholy to each movement that is most attractive. I would like to hear the whole.Stephen Hartke's Meanwhile: Incidental music to imaginary puppet plays is - in many ways - just what is says. Hartke has been influenced by Javanese shadow puppets and their relatives in Japanese Bunraku for awhile and this fascination has shown up in other works. This is a very picturesque six movement work that relies on prepared piano, retuned strings and some very creative use of percussion. The sounds of what might be a live puppet show are clear and the music suggests actions, mysteries and dramas in the mind's eye. The work is also a technical tour-de- force and each member in eighth blackbird is quite busy herein!The inclusion of Philip Glass' Music in Similar Motion may seem just a little out of place were it not for its ground-breaking hypnotic quality and the insistent use of traditional major-minor arpeggiations and triadic harmonies that made Glass and his music a true maverick - and a bit of a mystery - to the academic world of contemporary music as it was in the late 1960s. Music in Similar Motion is one of Glass' first and most renowned works that helped to define "minimalism."Thomas Ades' Catch is based on the many different versions of the classic children's playground game (Catch, Monkey in the Middle, Keep Away, etc) familiar to nearly everyone in America or the UK. Musically, the work is - like much of Ades' music - incredibly difficult and sounds far more random than it actually is. Each instrument almost literally plays "catch" (or "keep away"...) with each other in a wild array of pointillism, waltzes, chaconne-like passages and repeated burst. Most notably, the clarinetist in live performance must move all over the stage; circling the piano, dashing across the stage (sometimes playing coy little musical children's taunts like the minor third based "monkey in the mid-dle...") This is an odd and somewhat wild work, somewhat like Ades' style in general but just like most of his music; the end result is disturbing yet pensive.I am a big fan of anything eighth blackbird comes up with but mostly for their incredible talent for finding and utilizing works that are a bit off the beaten path and constructing fascinating concept programs such as this. In addition they are superb musicians and this album should be on your "must hear" list. Kudos to Cedille Records for again providing a sonically clean and lively recording as well!