Brutal New Music Reviews

   Portland Percussion Group -  Patterns & Form Their first album out on New Focus Recordings,   Portland Percussion Group 's Patterns & Form  showcases their technical skills and aesthetic range as an ensemble dedicated to percussion chamber music. The three works included on the album were all written with a direct connection to the ensemble. Each approaches different stereotypes associated with percussion music, which tracks as all three composers are either also percussionists or heavily involved in the world of percussion music.  The titular work, Alejandro Viñao's Patterns & Form , is presented in three movements and takes up a little more than half the album. It is by far the strongest of the three pieces presented here, both compositionally and in performance.  Viñao's  work is composed for eight percussionists and piano, with this recording featuring guest pianist Yoko Greeney. The recording and mixing on this piece is in...

  Ensemble Dal Niente - portrait RE / Flux / Pacific Time Ensemble Dal Niente 's recent album features three composers, each of whom have a history of collaboration with the group. The commissioned works all have their own unique approach to Dal Niente's expertise with experimental music. As a whole, the album is an incredible example of how successful new works can be when there is a strong relationship between composers and the ensemble. Igor Santos' portrait R E  opens the album. T he sixteen-minute work for sampler and large ensemble immediately creates a grand sense of atmosphere with electronic white noise and ambient-sounding swells in the ensemble. Pretty quickly, the sampler sounds Santos chooses come across as cliché and the computer start-ups noises gimmicky . Despite this, Santos incorporates some incredible moments of beauty throughout the piece. His use of the recording of Paulo Freire and dec onstructing it with the low instruments in the ensemble is both eng...

 Peter Paulsen - Shanghaied Paisano album review The audience is a floating spectator, journeying across Paulsen's interpretation of Ferlinghetti's poetic documentary. In his latest album, Peter Paulsen , composer and bassist, expands upon his previous chamber jazz output, moving closer to a contemporary third stream. Shanghaied Paisano combines the talents of Paulsen's TurksHeadKnot contemporary trio with the Latin-influenced  Dalí String Quartet . The album, released August 2023 via Navona Records , comprises of the titular, large-scale four-movement work inspired by the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and closes off with a rousing arrangement of Jobim's Chega de saudade .  Shanghaied Paisano 's opening movement, "And Then Went", starts the audience off with a dissonant chorale led by Chris Bacas on soprano saxophone. Paulsen's clean voicings make the chords approachable and give off a clearly distinguishable melody within the dense harmonies. The re...

 David Biedenbender - All We Are Given We Cannot Hold  album It has taken these weighing emotions and transformed them into pure beauty in the form of art song. With his first monographic album, David Biedenbender continues to prove himself as an chamber music composer while showcasing his delicate text setting ability. Distributed by Blue Griffin Recording , All We Are Given We Cannot Hold  juxtaposes two works for voice and ensemble using text by poet  Robert Fanning  with two older instrumental pieces featuring the Garth Newel Piano Quartet . Overall, album takes the listener on an emotional journey, rapidly swinging between parental worries and pondering natural monolithic beauty. Shell and Wing , a two-part work for soprano and ensemble, establishes a sense of unease from the first fluttering note. Setting newly-written text by Fanning, both the music and poetry contemplate parents' personal fears when sending their children out into the modern world ...

 Constellation Men's Ensemble - Man Up / Man Down Constellation's impeccable blend and intonation brings out a resonant beauty for the duration of the album. After ten years, Constellation Men's Ensemble  has released their debut album, Man Up / Man Down  on the Sono Luminus label. The album's longer and intense titular work is bookended by two shorter bursts of peaceful reflection, Home and manifesto . Constellation's impeccable blend and intonation brings out a resonant beauty for the duration of the album, and are becoming a prominent force within the new music vocal community. Jeffrey Derus ' Home , setting text by Carl Sandburg, opens the album with beauty and tonal simplicity. Derus' music is drawn from his personal experience with choirs, resulting in Constellation creating a beautiful resonance with stellar intonation. Home is in a traditional three-part form, with the middle section in a pulsating quintuple meter. Derus' repetitive text setting...

 Pathos Trio - Polarity album review Polarity  is such a highly polished example of how rewarding it can be to merge contemporary classical music with electronica. Released September 15th on the Imaginary Animals label, Polarity wedges itself in a specific niche between contemporary classical music and electronica. The collaborative album combines the performance capabilities of  Pathos Trio with six composers, all of whom have written pieces specifically for the trio, and Four/Ten Media , which is creating accompanying music videos for each track. With the only unifying feature being the implementation of electronics, it is quite impressive how the six new works form such a cohesive collection. Pathos Trio, made up of two percussionists and a pianist, completely reimagines the idiom of the chamber ensemble, embracing the possibilities of electronic integration within live performance. For many non-classical audiences, these instruments and setup may already be com...