Prismatic Congruency - "Dreams: neurotic, naughty and nebulous" Virtual Concert

 Prismatic Congruency - "Dreams: neurotic, naughty and nebulous" Virtual Concert

Prismatic Congruency is a new music concert series presented by the Boston New Music Initiative. This year's series theme is "Dreams: neurotic, naughty and nebulous", with the first of three virtual concerts being released today (check out the dates/info for all concerts here). Today's concert features three solo pieces by three different composers (watch/listen to the YouTube premiere here).

Composer Lynn Blake John starts the program with her set of Whale Songs for solo bassoon. Benjamin Yingst of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra performs the five movements with a strong sense of lyricality. The Whale Songs are great examples of melodic, tonal etude-esque pieces for a low register instrument.

A Tale of My Native Land #4, an almost ten minute long work for solo piano, is second on the virtual concert. Composed by Charles Shadle, the work continues a series of previous pieces for piano. The musical language switches between Neo-Romantic and Semi-Impressionistic, but always remains simple enough to be grasped by a general audience. That being said, Shadle does not shy away from using the entire piano, creating simple-sounding music which is technically challenging for the pianist, Shalun Li.

This Prismatic Congruency virtual concert concludes with a short work for solo bass clarinet by Mats O. Hansson. Performed here by Stephanie Clark, ¿Wohin? has the performer traverse a literal maze of compressed musical ideas. A fun concept and score, I only wish that Clark spent more time in each section and became more comfortable with the piece beforehand, as her performance in parts is timid.

Be sure to check out the entire virtual concert, and then vote for your favorite piece in the online poll here!


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© 2023 Brutal New Music Reviews
originally written and published 21 January 2023

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