Michael Berkowitz - "Amuse Bouche"

 Michael Berkowitz - Amuse Bouche

The beauty does not last very long, and is soon overcome with cacophonous flutter-tonguing and multiphonics.

Amuse Bouche is a five-minute unaccompanied work premiered by saxophonist Stephen Tamas during New Music Mosaic's "Timbre Vol. 1: Growth/Decay" virtual concert. Michael Berkowitz gives the piece a fitting title, as an amuse-bouche is a single, bite-sized hors d'œuvre. In the same way, Amuse Bouche opens the "Decay" half of the concert with an individual 'bite' of solo saxophone (watch the recording here).

Berkowitz begins Amuse Bouche with a hauntingly decadent melody, immediately grabbing our attention with gestating half-steps. It is in this opening where Tamas is able to bring out his superb sense of musicality. His intense and exaggerated phrasing add to Berkowitz's intention. Unfortunately, the beauty does not last very long, and is soon overcome with cacophonous flutter-tonguing and multiphonics, dichotomized between unbearably loud and uncomfortably silent. From then on, with the exception of the ending, Amuse Bouche fills itself out with the common 'bleep-bloop' clichés of new music. Overall the music is engaging and incredibly well-performed, but I hope that in the future Berkowitz is brave enough to be proud of his melodic sensibilities, rather than attempt to hide them behind nonsensical extended techniques.  

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© 2022 Brutal New Music Reviews
originally written and published 10 January 2022

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