Rebekah Heller: Metafagote

They say that if you live long enough, you’ll hear things you never imagined possible. This is one of them. Any preconceived notions you may have had about bassoon music are blown clear out the windows by this new release, for Rebekah Heller and her bad-ass bassoon (just look at her attitude on the cover!) are here to explode them.

The music is modern, challenging, and best of all, interesting. Four composers with a single directive, to write music for solo bassoon and electronics, all responded with different and very imaginative settings. I can’t say that any of this music is easy or accessible, for it is not. On the contrary, it’s rather forbidding; but it’s well constructed, interesting, and stretches the instrument to entirely new limits.

Rand Steiger’s Concatenation, which opens the recital, sets the bassoon in an echo chamber, occasionally using feedback, echo effects and distortion to propel his ideas. The composer has described this work as one where “a set of contrasting materials, any one of which could have been the subject of an etude, are laid out and interwoven into a continuous conversation. In this piece, there are seven different kinds of material,” and as each character is introduced the different kinds of material “begin an increasingly interwoven dialogue with each other.” My lone complaint was that, in the closing two minutes of the piece, it became so deconstructed that even I had some trouble following it.

Next up is Dai Fujikura’s Following. This is surprisingly lyrical, and in fact includes no electronics at all. It gives Heller a chance to show just how good she is on the bassoon; her tone is so pure here that most of the time it sounds like an alto saxophone, and a very fine one at that (think Johnny Hodges or Jimmy Dorsey). Although lyrical, the piece is also quite daring harmonically, but Fujikara never loses sight of the long line of the music and holds the listener’s interest from start to finish. There is also some real invention and development going on here, which makes the performance all the more interesting.

By contrast, Jason Eckardt’s A Compendium of Catskill Native Botanicals, Asarum canadense, “Wild Ginger” uses microtones and snippets of melody which simulate the feeling of ritual chanting. This, too, is played without any electronics or overdubs. In this piece, Heller’s tone surely does not resemble anything but a bassoon. The music also includes several surprising “dead stops” in which one assumes the music is over, yet it continues to go on and develop.

The last piece is perhaps the most complex. Felipe Lara layers seven bassoons in all, six of them pre-recorded, bookended by the sound of waves rushing up on the shore. Some of the pre-recorded bassoons are sped up in order to enhance the upper range of the instrument, and there are also some odd “knocking” sounds thrown in for good measure. Slithering, rising chromatics are heard just before the four-minute mark, enhancing an already strange musical experience. Later on, at about 6:30, a sort of reverb-echo effect is achieved by having the pre-recorded bassoons overlap sustained B-flats in almost a hocket style while the “live” bassoon plays stabbing figures in and around them. Later on the background bassoons play varying figures while the live one distorts tones and plays somewhat microtonally. Eventually the interaction becomes quite complex, the background bassoons almost sounding like a choir behind a vocal soloist. It’s a very odd piece, but also a very interesting one.

By and large, this is a fascinating release, and each piece is the world premiere recording. If nothing else, it should expand the minds of listeners and other composers as to the timbral and technical possibilities of the bassoon, and instrument that, too often, gets no respect.

—© Lynn René Bayley, Art Music Lounge, 12.8.2017

Bassoonist Rebekah Heller, a member of ICE, released Metafagote, her second solo album, in 2017 on Tundra. Featuring premiere recordings of four works written for Heller by Rand Steiger (Concatenation), Dai Fujikura (Following), Jason Eckardt (Wild Ginger), and the title composition by Felipe Lara, Megafagote supplies Heller with ample opportunities to demonstrate the bassoon’s entire bag of extended techniques, from multiphonics to microtonality, as well as various live electronic manipulations. That said, one never feels that the plethora of effects on display are mere showpieces; all four composers are working on extending the bounds of the instrument. There also is a significant interest demonstrated in spatiality which features in different ways in each of the pieces.

Steiger’s live electronics supply echoing canons and additional resonance to Heller’s bassoon. Following is a follow-up piece to the hard-driving Calling, written by Fujikura for Heller in 2011. This time around, angular melodies that span the compass of the instrument, beginning gently but picking up speed and energy over time, are hauntingly evocative. Eckhardt’s Wild Ginger employs many of the aforementioned extensions, but does so in a seamless way, using them to inflect asymmetrical groupings of melodic cells that variously congregate and concatenate i. Partway through, the interruption of rests and sustained pitches add other elements of tension, leading way to a low-register eruption that Heller unleashes with fulsome power. The closing section contrasts this with pitch bends and multiphonics in the bassoon’s upper register. It is a most persuasive piece.

Lara’s work is for live bassoon alongside a half-dozen pre-recorded bassoons. The chords and shrieking glissandos emitted from the tape part create an uneasy shadowing of a solo part that often departs from its prefabricated brethren on extended flights of fancy, but occasionally touches down to intone alongside them. Percussive articulation, wide pitch bends, trills, and a brusque gestural palette combine to make this a dramatic showpiece with which to end a compelling recording.

Heller’s advocacy for the bassoon, and her staunch commitment to expanding its repertoire, are laudable. Her playing is both detailed and thrilling throughout. Metafagote is one of my “Best-of” solo recordings of 2017.

- Christian Carey, christiancarey.com, 12.20.17

Bassoonist Rebekah Heller is committed to expanding the repertoire of solo and electro- acoustic works through close collaboration with composers interested in writing for the often-unsung instrument. Each composition on the album was written specifically for Heller between 2012 and 2015, and each work show- cases different facets of her virtuosity.

Rand Steiger’s Concatenation for bassoon and electronics opens the album with a declamation of the bassoon’s lowest register in the form of perpetual motion that morphs into six other rich and varied motivic areas. Composed in 2012, Steiger’s 16-minute work is a self-described ‘nested etude’ that exploits both Heller’s tech- nical dexterity and her sensitivity to phrasing. The electronics play an important role in differentiating each of the seven varieties of material, as each take a unique approach to sig- nal processing. Quivering tremolos are treated with echoes and spatialisation, slow, expressive glissandi excite resonant filters, rapid and suc- cinct motives are harmonised, and heavy, power- ful tones are fed into unexpected distortion. In Concatenation the processing serves to expand the bassoon’s timbral palette; true to the title of the album, Steiger and Heller create a ‘meta’ bassoon, rather than a case of acoustic solo and digital accompaniment.

Concatenation is an exhibition of Heller’s admirable performative agility. She moves seam- lessly between technically demanding etude-style material and beautifully phrased melodies, a jump that is not often heard in bassoon writing.

Heller’s emotive phrasing is on equal display in Dai Fujikura’s 2014 work for bassoon alone, Following. Heller worked with Fujikura on an earlier piece, Calling, that is featured on her first album, 100 Names. While Fujikura explored the bassoon’s multiphonic capabilities in Calling, he dials back the extended techniques in Following. The lack of novel sounds is quite refreshing; Fujikura allows the listener to devote one hundred per cent of her focus to the con- tours of the melody. Fujikura crafts his twisting and haunting melody to cover the full range of the bassoon in a brief and almost formless five minutes. Although Heller expertly shapes the energy flow of the melody, the dynamic remains fairly static throughout the work. For such a lyrical piece, it is a shame that the dynamic range was not wider. in the recording.

Jason Eckhardt’s A Compendium of Catskill Native Botanicals, Asarum canadense, “Wild Ginger” is similar to Following in length and instrumentation. Eckardt writes that the six minute solo piece is inspired by wild ginger, a ‘perennial whose delicate, dark-purple flower, often concealed by the plant’s leaves, is supported by branching rhizomes that grow underneath’. A Compendium begins with gestures that recall, in both shape and register, the famous bassoon solo opening of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. These gestures bloom into more elaborate shapes that slip into the spaces between half-steps and occasionally give way to extended periods of silence. The shapes continue to grow in complexity, becoming faster and more intricate, until the opening gesture returns at nearly two-thirds of the way through the piece. A final twisting gesture, this time in the lowest register, follows the recapitulation. The energy of this low register foray is broken by another extended silence that reveals a meditative final section of breathy long tones and fragile multiphonics.

The segue from A Compendium to the album’s final and most ambitious piece, Felipe Lara’s title track Metafagote (2015), is stark. The unadorned coda of Eckardt’s solo work gives way to Lara’s dense and driving piece for solo bassoon and six accompanying bassoons. Metafagote is flexible in its instrumentation; the piece can be performed live with either seven total bassoonists or one soloist and pre-recorded tape, similar to Steve Reich’s Counterpoint pieces. Supported by a New Music USA Project grant, Metafagote is the culmination of close collaboration between Heller and Lara. Their cooperation is easily heard throughout the work. Together, the musi- cians are able to exploit and transform the bas- soon’s idiosyncratic timbres, stretching the norms and expectations of bassoon repertoire. The multiple layers of bassoons often sound syn- thetic, causing the listener to question whether the source is acoustic or processed. Throughout the course of the 18-minute work the soloist moves in and out of focus, engaging with the accompanying layers in different ways: interlocutor, listener, instigator.

Heller’s technical virtuosity is on full display. Lara’s material covers the gamut of bassoon timbres, from dense multiphonics, screeching overtone sweeps, and frenetic bisbigliandi, to percussive slaps, breath tones and aching glissandi. The harmonic palette is fairly static throughout the long piece, but I did not find it bothersome. The energy flow comes from the changes in timbre and texture, not from changes in harmony. That said, there is an especially beautiful harmonic release at the 13:20 mark, accompanied by a contrabassoon pedal tone. This pedal tone continues as energy builds through more turbulent solo lines. Suddenly the accompaniment falls away and the solo bas- soon is left to articulate a final line, ending the work with sputtering slaps.

Heller’s admirable artistry is matched by her technical prowess on all the pieces of “Metafagote”. Composers interested in writing for the bassoon should take note of this album, as it showcases the true heterogeneity of the instrument’s colours.

— Heather Stebbins, 10.2017, Tempo

Rebekah Heller is an American virtuoso on the bassoon, and we've come across her on Tyshawn Sorey's album,"Josephine Baker: A Portrait, on which Heller performs as a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

In many languages, the bassoon is called "fagot" or "fagote", as here in Portuguese in the title.

On 'Metafagote', she performs compositions by Jason Eckardt, Felipe Lara, Rand Steiger, and Dai Fujikura, all composed specifically for her. Some of the compositions include overdubs and electronics, making the sound richer and denser than with a true solo performance. The title track, by Felipe Lara, offers a performance played over six pre-recorded bassoons.

On Dai Fujikura's composition, Following, the instrument can be heard in its natural sound, which in my opinion still gives the best idea of the artist's skills. The same can be said by Jason Eckardt's Compendium of Catskill Native Botanicals, Asarum canadense, “Wild Ginger”, a strange meditative piece that starts quite distant, but becomes more intimate as the music evolves.

For readers looking for something new, this might be of interest: the music is surprising and fascinating, adventurous and exploratory, and Heller's performance is nothing short of stunning, complex, precise, daring and sensitive at the same time.

-Stef Gjissels, 10.1.2018, The Free Jazz Collective

For this listener, traversing contemporary music concerts in the 1980s there appeared a trend to modify the traditional look of classical performers. The first striking example I can recall is the venerable Kronos Quartet performing all in tight black leather outfits. And there are performers who have an intentionally different look such as violinist Nigel Kennedy or Kathleen Supove whose look is decidedly unconventional. Focusing on attire could conceivably detract from a musical performance but the previously mentioned performers have in common with the performer on this disc both virtuosity and a distinctly different look which seems integral to their performance delivering decidedly unconventional music. The photography by Corrie Schneider creates a striking and evocative cover image giving her a sort of superhero ambiance. Why not?

Rebekah Heller, of course, is also one of the members of the wonderful ICE Ensemble, one of the finest working chamber groups focusing on contemporary music. ICE has in common with groups like Bang on a Can, Alarm Will Sound, ACME, and others the fact that they are populated by some of the finest young musicians who seem to be able to meet any challenge…er, commission thrown at them. In addition many of the musicians in these groups are also interesting composers. The others have a profound interest in new music that match their skills and passions oh so well.

In Metafagote Rebekah Heller presents 4 works on 4 tracks. Rand Steiger (1957- ) is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and Cal Arts. Steiger has been at UC San Diego since He is a 2015 Guggenheim Award recipient and though his discography is adequate this writer sees his name, hears his music too infrequently.

Steiger’s work opens this disc with Concatenation (2012) for bassoon and live electronics. Steiger is skilled in writing for both conventional instruments and for high tech electronics including spatialization, live processing. Steiger’s work is assertive, pretty much freely atonal, and packs a punch emotionally if memory serves. There was a vinyl record (this composer is younger than me by one year and I’m guessing still hoards at least a selection of LPs. The work was Hexadecathlon: “A New Slain Knight” (1984), basically a horn concerto for horn with chamber ensemble. It burns in my brain still, wonderful 6 minute cadenza at the end too.

Back to Concatenation, it is a sort of all consuming experience, a sound bath if you will. The timbres achieved with the combination of bassoon with electronics creates some grand, almost orchestral textures.

The second work is by one Jason Eckhardt (1971- ), a name vaguely familiar but his work is new to me. Eckhardt earned a B.A. from Berklee in 1992 followed by an M.A. (1994) and a D.M.A. (1998). He has studied with James Dillon, Jonathan Kramer, Milton Babbitt, Brian Ferneyhough, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. That provenance gives one an idea of what to expect…complexity. And he dishes that out for solo bassoon. Heller is up to the challenge in this piece, Wild Ginger (2014) from a series of pieces based on native plants in the Catskills. Again, why not?

The third track contains, Following (2014) for solo bassoon from a composer whose inspiration also sometimes comes from plants. Dai Fujikura (1977- ) is a prolific Japanese composer who also comes from a legacy of complexity having studied with the likes of Boulez, Taketmitsu, and Ligeti. Fujikura’s music may be complex but his music tends to have a softer edge, more like Takemitsu than Boulez. Again Heller demonstrates her technical skills that rise to meet the challenges posed here.

Last but not least is a piece as large and encompassing as the Steiger. Felipe Lara(1979- ) is an accomplished Brazilian composer. He is represented here by, Metafagote (2015), the most recent of the compositions here. It is scored for bassoon and 6 pre-recorded tracks. One is naturally put in the mind of Steve Reich’s counterpoint series for soloist playing against multiple pre-recorded similar instruments. The piece also can, and has been, performed by a soloist with 6 other bassoonists.

While the Reich notion is not the worst place to start, this piece is anything but minimalist. Rather it is distinctively modernist. It is a virtuosic exploration of some fascinating possibilities of the lowly bassoon. Lara owes more to free jazz at times in this epic, almost a concerto, piece.

I don’t know how many bassoon fanciers are out there but if you like new and experimental music of a virtuosic nature this is a great bet.

-Allan J. Cronin, 1.29.19, New Music Buff