Composer Adam Mirza releases Partial Knowledge, a collection of chamber works written between 2006 and 2022. Featuring some of the new music world's most active ensembles, including loadbang, Mivos Quartet, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Bent Frequency Duo Project, Amorsima Trio, and members of International Contemporary Ensemble, Mirza experiments with the relationship between the part and the whole that is germane to the experience of chamber music. He employs strategies involving independent tempi, integration of field recordings, and live electronics to destabilize expectations and inject unpredictability into the essence of ensemble works.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 58:46 | |||
| 01 | Reading: (A Mish-Mash) / For a Man / I Will Never | Reading: (A Mish-Mash) / For a Man / I Will Never | loadbang | 8:01 |
| 02 | Triangles | Triangles | Alice Teyssier, flute, Josh Modney, violin, Cory Smythe, piano | 12:54 |
| 03 | Growth | Growth | Unheard-of//Ensemble | 5:25 |
| 04 | QXTR | QXTR | Mivos Quartet | 6:49 |
| 05 | Cracks | Cracks | Bent Frequency Duo Project | 8:11 |
| 06 | Shared | Shared | Amorsima Trio | 11:27 |
| 07 | Time Patterns | Time Patterns | Olivia De Prato, violin | 5:59 |
Composer Adam Mirza’s first solo portrait album, Partial Knowledge, features chamber works written between 2006 and 2022, in performances by loadbang, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Bent Frequency Duo Project, Amorsima Trio, Alice Teyssier, Josh Modney, Cory Smythe, and Olivia De Prato. In these pieces, Mirza explores the ways in which chamber works are reflective of the collective merging of individual perspectives, informed by their role in the whole, but in other ways shaped by their unique perspective. To further facilitate this paradigm, Mirza employs unsynchronized parts, removing form as an imposed, external force, and instead allowing it to unfold as a circumstantial manifestation of how the individual parts are executed. In some pieces, Mirza includes live electronics, field recordings, and spoken text as other elements that complicate and enrich the real time dialogue that occurs between various parameters in the music.
The first piece on the album is a setting of poems and prose of the American experimental poet Larry Eigner. Mirza describes Reading: (A Mish Mash)/For a Man/I Will Never, as a “city-like collage of poetry and experimental music.” It does take on the quality of an avant-garde spoken word performance with music; invariably the instrumental music communicates within a context of word-painting whether or not the specific simultaneities are intended. And yet, in Mirza’s assemblage of individual parts, proceeding at different speeds, he combines elements that are unified by a common expressive gestalt even in the passages where the moment to moment coordination is not fully prescribed. So the result, with the theatrical presentation resulting from the text, is a carefully curated work that possesses many local moments of serendipity despite strategically avoiding their explicit dictation.
Triangles was written for the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2012. In the compositional process Mirza focused on the characteristics of the individual instruments for which he was writing. While during most of the piece the players are unsynchronized, they do come together in the same timeline at key moments, giving the work structural pillars to rest upon. The violin and flute parts rely heavily on a fragile, gestural vocabulary of refined noise balanced with emerging pitch, while the piano plays liquid arpeggios, repeated notes, and stark, accented chords.
Growth for clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and live electronics is inspired by the city of Atlanta, and more specifically the composer’s experience growing up there only to return as an adult and a professional. Mirza captures the relentless speed of this center of the “New South” with a jump-cut collage approach to material, generated by the four performers armed with MIDI controllers that trigger live electronics. Taking the personification of the performer to another level, Mirza pits the members of the quartet against each other in a kind of futuristic Darwinist game, empowering them with the ability to process each other’s sound. Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport makes a series of cameos, with the sounds of landing planes symbolizing a fast-paced environment in which the four protagonists play out individual destinies.
The solo violin work Time Patterns and the string quartet QXTR are closely related, the latter being an extrapolation of the former across four independent parts. In Time Patterns, the solo violin score uses graphic notation in two staves (one for each hand) to chart evolving trajectories of different physical parameters of performance, including bow pressure, finger position, number of note-events per second, and the selection of which string is being played. Through the independent unfoldings of these “patterns” of performance, Mirza was interested in circumventing the strictures of traditional rhythmic and pitch material, instead endeavoring to facilitate a structured improvisation performance that found its way into the sounds “between the notes.” The result is a piece of focused intensity that is driven forward by the realization of fast changing sonic elements, as opposed to their execution in a fixed timeline. QXTR expands this notational strategy to the four players in a quartet. Here, in addition to the individual gestural interpretation of multi-layered graphic instructions, each player proceeds independently and desynchronized from the others. The resulting composite achieves its homogeneity from a similar vocabulary of sounds and its heterogeneity from the freedom afforded the players in their chosen pace.
Spatial considerations figured prominently in the conception behind Cracks, written for the Bent Frequency Duo Project. In the premiere, and by design, the two performers were positioned antiphonally in the hall on opposite balconies. For subsequent performances in less resonant spaces, Mirza created a fixed media electronic part that evoked sounds of moving within a space, such as the creaking or groaning of floor boards. Slithering saxophone runs and shimmering percussion textures come together for punctuated arrivals before retreating to their respective corners.
Shared, written for the Amorsima Trio, is a deconstruction of different kinds of chamber music behaviors. Mirza creates interactive zones that highlight various ways that instruments (and instrumentalists) interact with each other. We hear imitation, continuity, discontinuity, complementary textures, and textures in opposition. By focusing on the manner of play instead of the material, Mirza calls our attention to fascinating depth and variety intrinsic to a time-tested string trio instrumentation.
Adam Mirza’s curiosity as a composer shines through each one of his pieces in this collection. He is an artist who is invested in digging deeper, beyond an expected template, to discover new possibilities that reveal something about the way performances take on a life of their own and the way in which we as listeners are participants in the creative experience. Each work, in its own way, challenges norms of notation and performance practice, but nevertheless preserves a cohesive quality. Moreover, by taking an individual approach to conceptualizing each piece, Mirza invites us to listen in multiple ways, both to the resultant work as well as the unfolding process as it occurs.
– Dan Lippel
Reading: (A Mish-Mash) / For a Man / I Will Never recorded at Futura Productions, Boston, MA, May 16, 2023
Recording engineer: John Weston
Triangles recorded at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY, May 22, 2022
Recording engineer: Ryan Streber
Growth recorded at Skillman Music, Brooklyn, NY, February 18, 2023
Recording engineer: Wei Wang
QXTR recorded at Fieldnotes Studio, Brooklyn, NY, May 19, 2022
Recording Engineer: Mike Tierney
Cracks recorded at Emory University Performing Arts Studio, Atlanta, GA, December 12, 2022 Shared recorded at Texas Woman’s University Margo Jones Performance Hall, November 26, 2023
Time Patterns recorded at Emory University Performing Arts Studio, Atlanta, GA, January 31, 2022
Recording engineer: Adam Mirza
Editing and mixing: Adam Mirza
Mastering: Ryan Streber
Liner Notes: Adam Mirza
Proofreading and Editing: Akiva Zamcheck
Cover image: Jazmin Quaynor (Unsplash)
Design, layout & typography: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Adam Mirza is a composer and sound artist who works with various media, including acoustic and electronic music as well as sound at the intersection of video, theater and installation. His compositional approach involves the re-configuration and abstraction of bodily gestures and politically charged or otherwise culturally resonant sonic media. The roots of his musical practice are in chamber music, working with contemporary music ensembles including Argento Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Jack Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Loadbang, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, and Timetable Percussion. His current electronic and multimedia projects include Naegleria Fowleri, a cycle of audio-video poems on texts by a Romanian/Palestinian scholar and artist, Rimona Afana, and Fake Radiolab, a live electronic performance project with Akiva Zamcheck. Adam is an Assistant Professor of Composition at Emory University.
New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, ‘an extra-cool new music group’ and ‘exhilarating’ by the Baltimore Sun, ‘inventive’ by the New York Times and called a 'formidable new-music force' by TimeOutNY. Their unique lung-powered instrumentation has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today. In New York City, they have been recently presented by and performed at Miller Theater, Symphony Space, MATA and the Avant Music Festival; on American tours at Da Camera of Houston, Rothko Chapel, and the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University; and internationally at Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), China-ASEAN Music Week (China) and Shanghai Symphony Hall (China).
loadbang has premiered more than 250 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today's leading composers. Their repertoire includes works by Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Charles Wuorinen; Rome Prize winners Andy Akiho and Paula Matthusen; and Guggenheim Fellow Alex Mincek. Not content to dwell solely in the realm of notated music, loadbang is known for its searing and unpredictable improvisations, exploring the edges of instrumental and vocal timbre and technique, and blurring the line between composed and extemporaneous music. To this end, they have embarked on a project to record improvisations and improvised works written by members of the ensemble. These recordings are designed, fabricated, and released in hand-made limited editions. loadbang can also be heard on a 2012 release of the music by John Cage on Avant Media Records, a 2013 release of the music of loadbang member Andy Kozar titled 'On the end...' on ANALOG Arts Records which was called ‘virtuosic’ by The New Yorker, a 2014 release on ANALOG Arts Records titled Monodramas, a 2015 release on New Focus Recordings titled LUNGPOWERED which was called ‘new, confident, and weird’ by I Care If You Listen and 'an album of quietly complex emotions' by The New Yorker, and a 2017 Bridge Records release titled Charles Wuorinen, Vol. 3, featuring the music of Charles Wuorinen.
loadbang is dedicated to education and cultivation of an enthusiasm for new music. They have worked with students ranging from elementary schoolers in the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids Program to college aged student composers at institutions including Columbia University, Cornell University, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Peabody Conservatory, Princeton University, University of Buffalo, and Yale University. They are in residence at the Charlotte New Music Festival, the Longy School of Music's summer program Divergent Studio, and all four members are on the instrumental and chamber music faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston.
http://www.loadbang.comFlutist, soprano and sound artist Alice Teyssier brings “something new, something fresh, but also something uncommonly beautiful” (UT San Diego) to her performances. Hailed as possessing an “ethereal and riveting” (The Flute View) voice with “unusual depth” (Badische Zeitung), Alice’s mission is to share lesser-known masterpieces and develop a rich and vibrant repertoire that reflects our era. As a complement to her activities as “a virtuosic soloist” (SF Chronicle) with a variety of ensembles, Alice is a core ensemble player with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Since 2018, much of Alice’s creative life has been fueled by her transformed role as a mother. Through her Thresholds project, she composes, devises and collaborates around themes of life transitions. In 2021, she joined forces with several other artist mothers in founding MATRICALIS, a project and community hub that reflects on the impact of motherhood on individual musicians, provid- ing them with resources, open forums and advocacy.
Josh Modney is a violinist devoted to creative music making. A “new-music luminary,” “superb violinist” (The New York Times), and “multitasking virtuoso” (The New Yorker) hailed for “brash, energetic performances” (The New York Times), Modney collaborates with a wide array of renowned ensembles and artists as part of a broad scene of adventurous music that exists at the nexus of composition, improvisation, and interpretation.
Modney is violinist and Executive Director of the Wet Ink Ensemble and a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). His fresh and versatile approach to the violin and uniquely dynamic performance practice has made him a highly sought-after collaborator. Modney performed internationally with the Mivos Quartet for eight years, a new-music string quartet he co-founded in 2008.
Modney’s playing has been featured on a wide variety of outstanding recordings, including titles on Carrier Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Sound American, hat[now]ART, Nonesuch, and Tzadik Records. Recent highlights include Alex Mincek’s Torrent (Sound American), which features a series of duos written for Modney, and was selected as one of the “Best Albums of 2017” by The New York Times and The Nation; Steve Reich’s Pulse/Quartet (Nonesuch), lauded for “pitch perfect performances” (The Guardian); Scott Wollschleger’s Soft Aberration (New Focus), selected as a “Notable Recording of 2017” by The New Yorker; and Sam Pluta’s Broken Symmetries (Carrier), which features Modney as soloist on the title track. Modney’s 2017 release of improvised chamber music with guitarist Patrick Higgins (ZS), EVRLY MVSIC, earned praise for its “clairvoyant connection and sheer instrumental prowess” (The Quietus).
Modney has a passion for large-scale performance projects, including recitals of J.S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin in Just Intonation, and evening-length chamber works including Mathias Spahlinger’s extension for violin and piano (with Eric Wubbels), Wolfgang Rihm’s Musik für Drei Streicher (with ICE), and Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit (with Wet Ink), praised by Alex Ross as "comprehensively astounding .... a twenty-first century masterpiece” (The New Yorker). Upcoming highlights include the premiere of Eric Wubbels’s piano trio, written for Josh Modney and cellist Mariel Roberts, and the release of the Wet Ink Large Ensemble’s debut album, featuring Modney as soloist on Sam Pluta’s violin concerto Portraits/Self-Portraits.
Pianist Cory Smythe has worked closely with pioneering artists in new, improvisatory, and classical music, including saxophonist-composer Ingrid Laubrock, violinist Hilary Hahn, and multidisciplinary composers from Anthony Braxton to Zosha Di Castri. His own music “dissolves the lines between composition and improvisation with rigor” (Chicago Reader), and his first record was praised by Jason Moran as “hands down one of the best solo recordings I’ve ever heard.” Smythe has been featured at the Newport Jazz, Wien Modern, Trondheim Chamber Music, Nordic Music Days, Approximation, Concorso Busoni, and Darmstadt festivals, as well as at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival, where he was recently invited to premiere new work created in collaboration with Peter Evans and Craig Taborn.
Ford Fourqurean (clarinet), Matheus Souza (violin), Iva Casian-Lakoš (cello), and Daniel Anastasio (piano) form the core of Unheard-of//Ensemble, a contemporary chamber ensemble dedicated to connecting new music to communities across the United States through the development and performance of adventurous programs, using technology and interactive multimedia. Unheard-of is committed to the idea that new music belongs in every community, and implements this mission through concerts and educational workshops throughout New York, as well as across the United States through touring. Unheard-of’s scope and impact has grown dramatically since forming in 2014, now a nation-wide community across multiple artistic genres. With an approach that is open and welcoming of all voices, Unheard-of strives to be a vehicle for imaginative voices novel and experienced, experimental and traditional, uncomfortable and accessible.
https://www.unheard-ofensemble.com/The Mivos Quartet, “one of America’s most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles” (The Chicago Reader), is devoted to performing works of contemporary composers and presenting diverse new music to international audiences. The quartet, founded in New York City in 2008, commissions and premieres new repertoire for string quartet, and is dedicated to creative collaborations with a wide variety of artists. Mivos maintains an active international performance schedule, with regular appearances at festivals including Lucerne Festival, Wien Modern, June in Buffalo, Shanghai New Music Week, Darmstadt Summer Institute and VIPA Festival. Mivos takes part in many educational residencies at universities and summer festivals, working with young performers and composers to develop their skills. Their most recent album includes all the Steve Reich String Quartets on Deutsche Grammophon (2023). The members of Mivos are violinists Olivia De Prato and Maya Bennardo, violist Victor Lowrie Tafoya and cellist T.J. Borden.
Saxophonist Jan Berry Baker and percussionist Stuart Gerber are the Bent Frequency Duo Project. As an offshoot of Atlanta-based Bent Frequency, for which Jan and Stuart are Co-Artistic Directors, the BF Duo Project has commissioned over 50 new works since 2013 and have given numerous performances across the US, Mexico, and Europe. They have been guest ensemble in residence at the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), MATA Festival in Oaxaca, Mexico, the Tage aktueller musik festival in Nuremberg, Germany, Charlotte New Music Festival, and New Music on the Point. Their debut CD, Diamorpha, is available on Centaur Records.
Texas-based Amorsima Trio was founded with a passion for new music and a commitment to expanding the string trio repertoire through collaborations with living composers. Recent projects include the premiere of 21 miniatures in response to Beethoven’s 250th anniversary and performances as a featured ensemble at the University of Louisville New Music Festival, Mise-en Music Festival, and New Music on the Bayou. The name “Amorsima,” which means “that which does not come from fate,” was inspired by the Xenakis work Morsima-Amorsima and symbolizes their pursuit to redefine the traditional expectations of the string trio.
Internationally recognized as a soloist as well as a chamber musician, Austro-Italian violinist Olivia De Prato has been described as “flamboyant ... convincing” (The New York Times) and an “enchanting violinist” (Messaggero Veneto, Italy). She has established herself as a passionate performer of contemporary and improvised music, breaking boundaries of the traditional violin repertoire and regularly performs in Europe, South America, China and the United States.
Her solo and chamber music activities include appearances at the Wien Modern Festival, la Biennale di Venezia, the Lucerne Festival,, the Ensemble Modern Festival, June in Buffalo, the Bang on a Can Festival, the Shanghai New Music Week, and Lincoln Center Festival with Steve Reich and Brad Lubman. In 2010 and 2011 she toured Europe and South Africa with Grammy-award winner Esperanza Spalding and the Chamber Music Society ensemble on violin and viola.
De Prato is a member of the new music ensemble Signal and ensemble XXI Jahundert and is the co-founder and first violinist of the Mivos Quartet founded in 2008, which focuses on the performance of contemporary string quartets.
As a guest artist, she has presented solo and chamber music masterclasses for young musicians and composers at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, UC San Diego, Princeton University, New York University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, and internationally at Universidad Eafit (Colombia), Shanghai Conservatory (China), Universidad Salvador (Brazil), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), and MIAM University (Turkey).
De Prato has collaborated closely with composers such as Pierre Boulez, Anthony Braxton, Chaya Czernowin, Peter Eötvös, Luca Francesconi, Beat Furrer, Dai Fujikura, Michael Gordon, Helmut Lachenman, David Lang, George Lewis, Brad Lubman, Philippe Manoury, Benedict Mason, Meredith Monk, Krystof Penderecki, Bernard Rands, Steve Reich, Ned Rothenberg, Julia Wolfe, and Georg Friedrich Haas. At the Lucerne Festival Academy 2007 she worked closely with composer Peter Eötvös on his new Violin Concerto “Seven” conducted by Pierre Boulez.
Her discography includes recordings on Tzadik, New Amsterdam Records, Sunnyside Records, New Focus Recordings, Mode, Cantaloupe, Porter Records, and Harmonia Mundi. In 2018 Olivia released her debut solo album “Streya” on New Focus recordings and one of the works was nominated for a grammy 2019.
In 2019 she received the Dwight und Ursula Mamlok Prize for ‘Interpretation of contemporary music' with the Mivos String Quartet.
Olivia De Prato studied at the University of Music and Arts in Vienna and received her Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from the Eastman School of Music. She received her Master of Music as a member of the first graduating class from the Contemporary Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music.
She is currently based in Vienna and New York City.
http://www.oliviadeprato.com/A strong interest avant-garde music-making in the 21st century is de rigueur for appreciation of the works of Adam Mirza on a New Focus Recordings release featuring pieces written between 2006 and 2022. Mirza is avowedly devoted to experimental music, electronic and otherwise, as his handling of vocal material makes abundantly clear. The deliberately peculiarly titled Reading: (A Mish-Mash) For a Man/I Will Never includes a vocal portion of, yes, reading, with wide-ranging exclamatory bits and pieces of musical notes tossed about by members of the no-capital-letters ensemble loadbang (trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice). The piece might make an interesting theatrical exercise – perhaps the spoken words could be projected on a screen as the various parts proceed at their different speeds – but as a recording, it simply seems discordant and disconnected (which, of course, may be part of its point). The six remaining works here, all with much shorter if not inherently more intelligible titles, go beyond the vocal realm entirely. Triangles (played by Alice Teyssier on flute, Josh Modney on violin, and Cory Smythe on piano) is the longest piece on the CD, lasting nearly 13 minutes, and focuses on individuation of the instruments rather than any ensemble playing that might make this seem like a more-conventional trio. Growth is for clarinet, violin, cello, piano and electronics and is performed by a group calling itself Unheard-of/Ensemble. An early clarinet exclamation bears a passing resemblance to something from Gershwin’s An American in Paris, which may even be intentional, since the piece is intended as a collage expressing the spirit of Atlanta, where Mirza grew up. There are real-world sounds such as airplane noise throughout, often electronically modified, and here as in other works for multiple players, Mirza seems mainly interested in keeping the performers separate and having them mingle rarely, if at all. QXTR is a brief string quartet (played by the Mivos Quartet) in which the musicians endeavor with some success to sound like electronics rather than performers on acoustic instruments. Cracks uses two players (the Bent Frequency Duo Project) in what is intended as stereo (antiphonal) positioning for theatrical purposes, with the version heard here focusing on wind and percussion exclamations that remain mostly separate – as is clearly common in Mirza’s music – while occasionally coming together long enough to clash. Shared for string trio (the Amorsima Trio) features a wide variety of performance techniques with essentially no musical content, as if the players’ objective is to show the ways in which they can perform on their instruments – whose sound is continually pushed beyond the norm – while not actually engaging, singly or together, in the presentation of any organized aural material at all. And Time Patterns for solo violin (Olivia de Prato), which concludes the disc, takes a similar approach to a single stringed instrument: there are skitterings and stutters, martellato and legato elements, creation of extreme notes designed to sound electronic, and other characteristics that Mirza likes to bring forward as if to indicate that musique concrète is not only alive and well but also omnipresent. Mirza’s emphatic devotion to avant-garde sounds and to assertion of non-melodic, non-rhythmic aural exclamations by all instruments makes this disc strictly an offering for the like-minded and for those interested in sonic production, by voices and instruments alike, that is independent of the usual forms of engagement and continuity with which composers have traditionally sought to reach out to audiences.
— Mark Estren, 11.07.2024
Can barely organized chaos turn into musical forms on its own? This seems to be the presumption lying behind the experimental style of Adam Mirza in these seven chamber works gathered under the title Partial Knowledge; they span the years from 2006 to 2022. I’m not clear how much of each piece is scored, as opposed to improvised, and the description provided at New Focus’s website doesn’t provide a clear answer, although I think it aims to: “Mirza employs unsynchronized parts, removing form as an imposed, external force, and instead allowing it to unfold as a circumstantial manifestation of how the individual parts are executed.” Mirza’s music is obdurate about being explained without jargon, so the best course is to experience it.
In all but a few pieces, such as Time Patterns, scored for solo violin, he employs live electronics, field recordings, or spoken text to enrich the dialog between instruments. (No texts are provided.) The opening work, Reading: (A Mish-Mash) / For a Man / I Will Never, is in fact a frenetic reading, by baritone Ty Bouque, who rapidly recites lines by experimental poet Larry Eigner. As background or in the form of instrumental interludes, the other members of loadbang on bass clarinet, trombone, and trumpet rousingly deliver their separate interjections. Everyone is a skilled New Music veteran, and the result effectively creates a shared mood. In Mirza’s aesthetics, this is a way of uniting a disparate group through “a common expressive gestalt.”
There’s a lot of busyness and plenty of color in this collection. One of the purely acoustic pieces, Triangles is scored as a flute trio with violin and piano, which might deceptively suggest pastels and Impressionism. Instead, Mirza uses his method of unsynchronized parts to go in all directions. The three instruments come together at times, providing “pillars of structure,” although that seems like an overstatement. The piece by and large consists of fragmentary sounds exploiting as many unexpected noises as flute, violin, and piano can make (tap, whisper, clang, screech), sometimes aggressively, sometimes fragilely. The fact that explosive bursts jump out at the listener like an angry Jack-in-the-box makes Triangles hard to listen to without feeling tense.
Live electronics enter in Growth, a mixed quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. The electronics are produced by MIDI controllers accessed by each performer, creating what is termed a “jump-cut collage.” The music describes the helter-skelter of downtown Atlanta as an emblem of the New South; Mirza grew up in Atlanta. Ambient sounds form a part of the piece’s urban feel. The texture is jumpy and abrupt, like sliding a radio dial from channel to channel at high speed, assuming that all the stations specialize in the avant-garde.
The experimental side of New Music turns physical when the production of sound becomes of primary interest, as it is in Time Patterns, written for solo violin or just as suitably for viola or cello. The score presents in graphic form the sequences, or time patterns, that the performer is asked to freely improvise on. The only constraints are physical, as explained by Mirza: “The score presents several physical parameters of bowed string instrument performance (bow position, bow pressure, finger position, string, rate of change),” and the performer is confronted with the “crisis” of turning these parameters into a piece of music, which violinist Olivia De Prato accomplishes with verve and excitement. The violin emits a wild array of unexpected noises without apparent organization, but the piece has a flair of its own. Taking the same technique multiplied by four is the basis for QXTR, energetically tackled by the Mivos Quartet, of which De Prato is first violin.
Despite the variety of color, texture, and aggregate noises, I must confess that the vast majority of the time I was hearing the same unsynchronized gestures being repeated, namely, acoustic instruments emitting random snatches of notes while the extra-musical sounds did their thing. Chaos isn’t foreign in New Music and can serve an aesthetic purpose, as it does here, but so little is coherent that to appreciate Partial Knowledge meaningfully as a listener is problematic.
That leaves two options, I’d say: either to accept the intellectual foundation of “circumstantial manifestations” or to give in to sound as sound. The experience of hearing “individual parts proceeding at different speeds” is salient in all these pieces. I could appreciate the shared gestalt that Mirza is aiming for, but only one or two works at a time. There is no doubt that he has mastered his own individual style, which I’d call an heir to the aleatory music of the 1950s and 1960s avant-garde, which also depended on random chance, setting each performer free to go where the spirit moved. This can sound like a sonic jumble sale or else a radical experiment. I don’t find myself certain about either.
— Huntley Dent, 11.29.2024
New Focus Recordings is an artist led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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