Composer Andile Khumalo's music fuses influences from spectralism to the music of his home country to jazz, integrating literary sources and engaging with issues of concern in contemporary society. The dynamic results are heard here in energetic and committed performances by Ensemble Dal Niente, Argento Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and selected soloists and chamber musicians.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 72:21 | |||
| 01 | The Broken Mirrors of Time | The Broken Mirrors of Time | Argento Ensemble, Michel Galante, conductor, Mun-tzung Wong, piano | 10:24 |
| 02 | Bells Die Out | Bells Die Out | Wet Ink Ensemble, Carl Bettendorf, conductor | 8:10 |
| 03 | ISO[R] | ISO[R] | Mabel Kwan, piano, Constance Volk, flute, Juan Horie, cello | 9:22 |
| 04 | Wade Through Water | Wade Through Water | Cezarre Strydom, piano, Danré Strydom, clarinet | 3:20 |
| 05 | Tracing Hollow Traces | Tracing Hollow Traces | Carol McGonnell, clarinet | 4:36 |
Schau-fe[r]n-ster II |
||||
| Peter Cartwright, piano | ||||
| 06 | Movement 1 | Movement 1 | 1:29 | |
| 07 | Movement 2 | Movement 2 | 1:20 | |
| 08 | Movement 3 | Movement 3 | 5:14 | |
| 09 | Cry Out | Cry Out | Ammie Brod, viola, Andrew Nogal, oboe, Kyle Flens, marimba, Mabel Kwan, piano, Michael Lewanski, conductor | 9:12 |
| 10 | Shades of Words | Shades of Words | Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano, Ensemble Dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor | 6:47 |
| 11 | Beyond Her Mask | Beyond Her Mask | Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano, Ensemble Dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor | 12:27 |
South African composer Andile Khumalo stands at a pivotal intersection of dialogues in contemporary music. On one hand, Khumalo is deeply engaged with spectralist aesthetics, mining the timbral essence of instrumental sounds for anchors on which to build textures and large scale structures. Born in Durban, Khumalo studied at Columbia University in New York, immersing himself in spectralism, an approach closely associated with French modernism, representing one of the recent paths beyond the systematically generated pitch organization of the serialists. Concurrently, Khumalo has remained steadfastly connected to the music of his home continent, specifically the music of his home country, advocating for a pan-Africanism in his work and using his sensitivity to timbre as the prism from which to integrate these influences into his music. We can understand Andile Khumalo as an Afro-Diasporic composer who has returned home, absorbing tools that enhance his artistic voice. But Khumalo is also a composer who left home looking to reinforce an essential African connection to sound that he already perceived as a young composer, and found it embedded within a European academic aesthetic.
The album opens with The Broken Mirrors of Time performed by the Argento Ensemble, a work for large ensemble featuring piano that opens with a complex texture. The trumpet intones fanfare-like calls around which the piano dances and virtuosically embellishes, while the strings play charged tremolo and swell figures. The ensemble eventually coalesces on a luminous overtone series based chord from which emerges a dance-like syncopated section over a slower harmonic rhythm, briefly evocative of the intricate timbral and rhythmic counterpoint one might hear in various traditional African musics.
Bells Die Out, performed by the Wet Ink Ensemble with conductor Carl Bettendorf, dives into the exploration of hybrid ensemble textures immediately. Khumalo uses different instrumental characteristics as triggers for interwoven gestural ideas. The result is a multi-faceted ensemble unit whose parts are distinct but which moves together in fluid, unpredictable flights and forceful punctuations. In Bells Die Out, we hear a playful deconstruction of group cohesion as individual voices fracture away from the whole, only to rejoin the group for its disjunct game.
ISO[R] for piano, flute, and cello dives deep into Khumalo’s spectral fascination, opening with an earthy drone tremolo on the low strings of the piano. Extremes in register, timbre, and gesture remain the focus of this haunting, introspective piece that develops a series of organic sonic relationships between the three instruments.
The next three works filter Khumalo’s style through the lens of shorter forms. Wade Through Water for clarinet and piano unfolds freely at first, with the clarinet playing elastic passagework punctuated by the keyboard, and later a cyclical phrase in seven in the clarinet serves as the short work’s coda. The title work, performed by clarinetist Carol McGonnell, is a soliloquy incorporating fleet passagework that undergoes sonic modulations — fragile multiphonics, poignant trills, and slap tongues color the sound early in the piece and eventually become its focus. Schau-fe[r]n-ster II for piano solo is in three movements, the first two quite short, and the third longer than the other two combined. The opening movement features furtive, darting gestures, the second highlights a repeated high register pitch that activates the resonance of the instrument, and the final movement explores that resonance in depth, contrasting striking high accents with material spread across lower registers.
Like ISO[R], Cry Out defines its own timbral space, reveling in the poetry of exposed passages that feature silence and space as much as the delicate instrumental textures that are on display. Featuring members of Chicago based Ensemble Dal Niente, Cry Out navigates through a series of crystalline sound snapshots, rarefied sketches of combined instrumental color.
The final two works on the album are both works for voice featuring soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw with Ensemble Dal Niente. Khumalo scores Shades of Words for narrator, rich with mysterious word painting in the ensemble that matches Henneman’s captivating storytelling. In Beyond Her Mask, Khumalo addresses the epidemic of domestic violence against women in his native country. He personifies the suffering of persecuted women through the vocal part, pitted against the ensemble which represents oppressive forces. Khumalo did spectral analysis on two sounds to provide foundational material for the work — a lion’s roar and the cry of a human voice. The dramatic arc of Beyond Her Mask moves through narrated and sung text as well as wordless vocalise, focusing not directly on the perpetrated violence itself, but on the spiritual strength the victims draw on to face and overcome a societal pattern of abuse and destructive behavior.
Andile Khumalo’s music bridges musical worlds, pursuing seamless cohesion as opposed to transparent collage. His focus on the essential qualities of sound draws our ears beyond genre, engaging instead with how sonic concepts function in different musical contexts. Khumalo’s work points to a deeper kind of reconciliation, one which is based on musical understanding instead of superficial qualities. Tracing Hollow Traces is a valuable document of that work and of Khumalo’s invaluable collaborations with Ensemble Dal Niente, Argento Ensemble, and Wet Ink Ensemble, as well as his close individual performer colleagues, and points to many more exciting projects in the future.
– Dan Lippel
Executive Producers: Andile Khumalo, Daniel Lippel, Ben Melsky, Michael Lewanski
The Broken Mirrors of Time recorded August 16th, 2022, at Cary Hall, Dimenna Center, New York
Engineer: Caley Monahon-Ward
ISO[R], Cry Out, Shades of Words, and Beyond Her Mask recorded May 24th, 2021 at Holtschneider Performance Center, Gannon Concert Hall, DePaul University, Chicago, IL
Engineer: Dan Nichols from Aphorism Studios, assisted by Igor Santos
Wade Through Water recorded November 24th, 2021 at Odeion Hall, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Engineer: John Smith
Tracing Hollow Traces recorded December 14th, 2020, at Peter Rahe Studios
Engineer: Peter Rahe
Bells Die Out:
Wet Ink Large Ensemble:
Laura Cocks, flutes; Karisa Antonio, oboe; Alicia Lee, clarinet; Sycial Mathai, trumpet; William Lang, trombone; Alex Chin, horn; Ian Antonio, percussion; Laura Barger, piano; Josh Modney, violin; Olivia De Prato, violin; Victor Lowrie, viola; Mariel Roberts, cello; Gregory Chudzik, contrabass; Carl Christian Bettendorf, conductor
Schau-fe[r]n-ster II recorded March 18th, 2017, at Linder Auditorium in Johannesburg, South Africa
Engineer: Derrick Louw
Cover photo: © Marco Giugliarelli for Civitella Ranieri Foundation, 2023
Design & layout: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Andile Khumalo, a distinguished alumnus of George Lewis, Tristan Murail, Fabien Levy, and Marco Stroppa, hails from uMlazi in southwest Durban. He currently holds the position of a senior lecturer in music theory, orchestration, and composition at the prestigious University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. His compositions have earned him the reputation of being one of the most widely performed African composers, a testament to his profound understanding and mastery of music.
Andile Khumalo's music is a testament to his exploration of diverse African traditions, transcending his native region of Southern Africa. His unique approach to pan-Africanism, with timbre as the core structure of his music, sets him apart. His compositions are deeply personal, reflecting his social context and his vision for an inclusive reimagination of African music in the 21st century. Khumalo's music, with its interplay between silence and resonated silence, is a captivating journey that challenges, inspires, and ignites the imagination, fostering a profound sense of inclusive listening that celebrates unity in diversity.
https://music.columbia.edu/bios/andile-khumaloArgento Ensemble is one of New York City’s premiere virtuoso chamber ensembles dedicated both to innovative contemporary composition and reframing the traditional classical repertoire in terms of new contextual literacies. Argento has built an international reputation since its founding in 2000, having forged long-term artistic relationships with ground-breaking composers such as Pierre Boulez, Beat Furrer, Georg Friedrich Haas, Bernhard Lang, and Fabien Lévy. These collaborations have culminated in recordings of Philippe Hurel, Fred Lerdahl, Katerina Rosen- berg, and Alexandre Lunsqui. Their debut album Winter Fragments with music of Tristan Murail was awarded Japan’s Record Geijutsu Academy Award in 2010.
Composer/conductor Michel Galante is the founder and artistic director of the Argento New Music Project. He earned a DMA in musical composition from Columbia University and has since guest conducted the Royal Irish Academy of Music, St. Petersburg Symphony, St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, Moscow Symphony, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony, Janáček Philharmonic, Artes National Orchestra, Decoda Ensemble, Ergo Ensemble, Ensemble Courage, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, TACTUS, Cornell University Chorus, Dessoff Choir, and Monday Evening Concerts Ensemble, amongst many other ensembles.
The Wet Ink Ensemble is a collective of composers, performers and improvisers dedicated to adventurous music-making. Named “The Best Classical Music Ensemble of 2018” by The New York Times, Wet Ink’s work is rooted in an ethos of innovation through collaboration, extending from the music and the unique performance practice developed in Wet Ink’s core octet of composer-performers, to committed performances of music by young and underrepresented composers, from today’s most promising emerging voices to the next generation of artists. Hailed for “sublimely exploratory” (The Chicago Reader) and “dense, wild, yet artfully controlled” (The New York Times) performances and for “uncompromisingly original music by its members, and unflagging belief in the power of collaboration” (The New Yorker), Wet Ink has been presenting concerts of new music at the highest level in New York City and around the world for over 20 years.
Carl Christian Bettendorf is a New York-based composer/conductor. Born in Hamburg, Germany, he studied composition with Hans-Jürgen von Bose and Wolfgang Rihm in Munich and Karlsruhe before moving to New York, where he received his doctorate in Composition at Columbia University. As a conductor, Bettendorf has worked closely with ensembles in New York (Wet Ink, counter)induction, Talea Ensemble) and Europe (piano possibile in Germany, Ostravská banda in the Czech Republic) and is currently Director of the Manhattanville College Community Orchestra. He has conducted operas at Bard College (USA) and at the Opéra national de Montpellier (France), where he led the French premiere of Elliott Carter’s What Next?. Bettendorf has recorded for the Albany, ArtVoice, Carrier, Cybele, Hat Hut, and Tzadik labels.
Pianist Mabel Kwan is a founding member of Ensemble Dal Niente. Kwan is a 2018 High Concept Labs Artist and 2017 3Arts Awardee and has performed solo and collaboratively at the Palacio de Belles Artes, Museo Nacional del Arte, MusicArte Festival (Panama City), Guangzhou Symphony New Music Project, Sonic Fusion Festival (Edinburgh), No Hay Banda (Montreal), among many others. Along with several solo albums—such as One Poetic Switch (Milk Factory Productions) and Inventions (Parlour Tapes+)—Kwan released the premiere recording of the complete Trois Hommages (New Focus) by Georg Friedrich Haas. She also performs on Ensemble Dal Niente’s albums Balter/ Saunier (New Amsterdam) with rock band Deerhoof, and the George Lewis portrait album Assemblage (New World).
Constance Volk is a flutist, vocalist and visual artist. She is a founding member of the Dal Niente ensemble and has performed with Lookingglass Theatre Company, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, Chicago Wind Project, Musical Bridges to Memory, and Vicarious Tool Tribute. Volk has collaborated with Ensemble Adapter, Alarm Will Sound, distractfold, Spokane Symphony, sympathy for Astronauts, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Spektral Quartet. She was awarded the Ella Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Vocalist at the Essentially Ellington Competition, and also won the concerto competition at Musicfest Northwest.
Juan Horie is a Venezuelan/American cellist trained in Venezuela’s acclaimed SISTEMA, studying modern cello in the Academia Latinoamericana de Violoncello and baroque cello with Manuel Hernandez at the Latin American Academy of Ancient Music. His international engagements as member of the Teresa Carreño Youth Symphony Orchestra include the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, Salzburg Festspiele, Teatro Alla Scala of Milan, Berlin Philharmonie, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In 2015, Horie won a chair in the cello section of the Teresa Carreno Symphony Orchestra, and now resides in Chicago, working as the Associate String Conductor in the Lake County Nucleo of Sistema Ravinia as well as performing solo and with the Dal Niente Ensemble.
Cezarre Strydom is a well-known South African pianist who has performed in the the United States of America, Mexico, Germany, Belgium, Namibia, and South Africa. Strydom is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Interlochen Arts Academy in the USA. Though he has presented several solo recitals, he is deeply committed to chamber music settings, where he has partnered with several musicians, including his sister, Dr. Danre Strydom, with whom he presents a duet for clarinet and piano in this recording. Strydom is a piano instructor, currently holding the position of Head of Music at Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch.
Danré Strydom has established herself as one of the leading South African clarinetists of the 21st century. Strydom holds a Ph.D. from the University of the Free State and is a graduate of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music (USA) and the Royal Conservatory at Ghent University (Belgium). She is a frequent guest performer in several concert halls worldwide as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral member. Between 2009 and 2013, she was the resident artist with the award- winning Brussels Philharmonic before she took up the position of a principal clarinet with the Free State Symphony Orchestra and a woodwind lecturer position at the University of Free State’s Odeion School of Music, South Africa.
Dublin-born clarinetist Carol McGonnell is a founding member of the Argento Chamber Ensemble. Hailed as “an extraordinary clarinetist” by the New York Times and “elastic, exacting, stupendous” by the LA Times, McGonnell has been broadcast on RTE, Lyric FM, BBC, WQXR, and NPR. She has been involved in commissioning over 100 new works, ranging from solo pieces to clarinet concerti. She has been on the chamber music faculty of the American Academy at Fontainebleau, the Aaron Copland School of Music at CUNY, and is auxiliary faculty for contrabass clarinet at the Juilliard School.
The South African pianist Peter Cartwright has performed at numerous music festivals in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. He is committed to exploring the works of South African composers. His recordings include works by Carlo Mombelli, Musa Nkuna, Alexander Johnson, and Merryl Neille. Cartwright is currently a piano lecturer in the Wits School of Arts Music Department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He holds a PhD from the same university, where he studied with Prof Malcolm Nay and Pauline Nossel.
Ammie Brod is a violist who holds a B.M. from the University of Arizona, where she studied with HongMei Xiao, and an M.M. from Northwestern University with Roland Vamos. Brod, a southwest native, is a member of Dal Niente, and has worked with composers such as Chaya Czernowin, Mark Andre, Kaija Saariaho, Hans Thomalla, Marcos Balter, and Augusta Reed Thomas. In addition to her work with Dal Niente, Brod has made appearances with Quince Vocal Ensemble, the Omaha Under the Radar Festival, and Project Incubator at the University of Chicago.
Oboist Andrew Nogal is an acclaimed orchestral performer, chamber musician, and interpreter of contemporary music. Nogal performs regularly with the CSO MusicNOW ensemble, Contempo, and as a substitute with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Oregon Symphony. Nogal has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the Great Lakes Chamber Music, Ojai, Astoria, Peninsula, and Ravinia Festivals. In 2015, he made his Asian recital debut at the International Double Reed Society conference in Tokyo. Since 2011, he has been the instructor of oboe at Loyola University Chicago, and lectures in the Music Studies program of the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.
Kyle Flens, is a Chicago-based percussionist and drummer. Flens is a member of the chamber music collective Ensemble Dal Niente, one half of the Flannau Duo, and a collaborator with the interdisciplinary percussion group Beyond This Point. Concert highlights include Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), the Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enriquez (Mexico City), the MetLiveArts concert series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the LA Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight Festival at Walt Disney Concert Hall, The São Paulo Contemporary Composers Festival (Brazil), and the Phillips Collection concert series (Washington DC). Flens’ recordings are heard on Innova, National Sawdust Tracks, and New Focus among other labels.
Conductor, educator, and writer Michael Lewanski was born in Savannah, Georgia, and is a champion of new and old music. Based in Chicago, he is conductor of Ensemble Dal Niente and Associate Professor of instrumental ensembles at the DePaul University School of Music. He is Curatorial Director of Ear Taxi Festival 2021, a festival of 21st century Chicago music. His wide-ranging guest-conducting has included work with Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW Series, the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, the Composers Conference, the National Symphony Orchestra of Turkmenistan, Ensamble CEPROMUSIC (Centro de Experimentación y Producción de Música Contemporánea, Mexico City), and Mocrep, among many others.
Carrie Henneman Shaw is based in Seattle and Chicago. Shaw earned degrees in English and Vocal Performance from Lawrence University and completed a doctorate at the University of Minnesota. She is a member of Ensemble Dal Niente, Pesedjet, and Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. Shaw is a McKnight Performing Musician Fellow and has performed and created a number of live-music-for-dance projects, including Jocelyn Hagen’s Slippery Fish, and her Wright Brothers dance-opera Test Pilot. Shaw has been variously praised in the New York Times “as graceful vocally as she was in her movements”, “and as a “cool, precise soprano” (Chicago Tribune). She currently teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Ensemble Dal Niente performs new and experimental chamber music with dedication, virtuosity, and an exploratory spirit. Dal Niente’s roster of 23 musicians presents an uncommonly broad range of contemporary music, guiding listeners towards music that transforms existing ideas and subverts convention. Audiences coming to Dal Niente shows can expect distinctive productions—from fully staged operas to multimedia spectacles to intimate solo performances—that are curated to pique curiosity and connect art, culture, and people.
Now in its second decade, Ensemble Dal Niente has performed concerts across Europe and the Americas, including appearances at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC; The Foro Internacional de Música Nueva in Mexico City; MusicArte Festival in Panama City; The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Darmstadt Summer Courses in Germany, where it was the first-ever ensemble to win the Kranichstein prize for interpretation in 2012.
The group has recordings available on the New World, New Amsterdam, New Focus, Navona, Parlour Tapes+, and Carrier labels; has held residencies at The University of Chicago, Harvard University, Stanford University, Brown University, Brandeis University, and Northwestern University, among others; and collaborated with a wide range of composers, from Enno Poppe to George Lewis to Erin Gee to Greg Saunier and Deerhoof.
The ensemble's name, Dal Niente ("from nothing" in Italian), is a tribute to Helmut Lachenmann's Dal niente (Interieur III), a work that upended traditional conceptions of instrumental technique; and also a reference to the group’s humble beginnings.
http://dalniente.com/This invaluable recording offers the first substantial portrait of the bold South African composer Andile Khumalo, a figure who’s managed unlikely fusions of spectralism and indigenous styles of his homeland, situated within classical forms—more or less. The originality and bite of his writing arrive straight away in The Broken Mirrors of Time, a large ensemble piece crisply tackled by the Argento Ensemble. Richly detailed phrases voiced by brass, strings, and tuned percussion unleash a variety of memorable motifs, but the spectralist harmonic cast—in which musical materials are mathematically analyzed to generate into a graphic spectrum of sound—injects the music with adroit tension, opening up unusual and unexpected harmonies that lend the melodic figures greater interest. Many of the pieces apply such approaches within a more familiar compositional structure, which both adds an expansive aura to the music while making what might appear to be radical techniques more approachable. The title composition is a piece for solo clarinet masterfully tackled by Carol McGonnell—a four-and-half-minute marvel that compresses elegant form and visceral sonic effects. Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente recorded the composer’s haunting Beyond Her Mask on its 2021 album confined. speak., and it’s reprised here; but the group and its members also tackle three other pieces, including the wonderfully stark ISO[R], where Mabel Kwan’s opening piano suggests the rumbling of gong before reverting to a more commonplace sound, engaged in a agile, spry dance with the flute of Constance Volk and cello of Juan Horie. The tightly coiled quartet piece Cry Out finds four Dal Niente members articulating a slew of motifs put through the ringer, reshaped, redirected, and revoiced endlessly over the course of nine fraught minutes.
— Peter Margasak, 8.29.2024
Andile Khumalo est un compositeur sud-africain dont l’expression musicale hyper détaillée, d’une précision instrumentale nanométrique en plus d’être texturalement frémissante, est à placer dans la lignée du spectralisme français. Héritier, donc, de Tristan Murail ou Gérard Grisey, il serait superficiel, cela dit, de déduire que cet artiste noir est un ‘’déraciné’’ musical, s’abreuvant à une source colonialiste blanche. On entend d’ici ce genre de commentaires simplistes. Des commentaires auxquels Khumalo lui-même tordrait le cou. En effet, prenez la peine de lire les notes de programme écrites par le compositeur et vous découvrirez des références très riches au contrepoint étroitement imbriqué du mbira dza vadzimu des Shona du Zimbabwe, au tissage hétérophonique des ensembles de cornes des Banda Linda de la République centrafricaine, ou encore aux motifs fantômes produits par les ensembles de cornemuses des Nyungwe du Mozambique. Ajoutons le jeu multiphonique complexe des musiques umrhubhe et uhadi du peuple isiXhosa d’Afrique du Sud, que Khumalo appelle le « spectralisme africain ».
Tracing Hollow Traces s’avère donc une leçon d’humilité et une fantastique occasion d’ouverture et de compréhension de la nature très savante des musiques traditionnelles d’Afrique noire, un fait largement sous-estimé par les Occidentaux.
Les neuf compositions présentées sur cet album bellement capté, pour de très diverses formations (du grand orchestre de chambre au piano solo), constituent une proposition des plus fascinante qui vient bonifier brillamment l’univers parfois rigide de la musique atonale stricte. Certes, il s’agit d’une musique exigeante, réclamant une attention précise et soutenue pour être pleinement appréciée. Ses textures pointraitistes abstraites ne souffrent aucune déférence envers la facilité ‘’néoclassique’’ /pop actuelle, mais le foisonnement de couleurs suggérées et le dynamisme actif de l’écriture en feront certainement une expérience d’écoute stimulante pour les mélomanes qui carburant à la curiosité.
Du très haut niveau d’écriture et de jeu musical, trempé dans une cérébralité vivifiante.
Translation:
Andile Khumalo is a South African composer whose hyper-detailed musical expression, with his nanometric instrumental precision as well as its textural quivering, is to be placed in the tradition of French spectralism. Heir, then, to Tristan Murail or Gérard Grisey, it would be superficial, that said, to deduce that this black artist is a musical “rootless”, drinking from a white colonialist source. We can hear such simplistic comments from here. Comments that Khumalo himself would deny. Indeed, take the trouble to read the program notes written by the composer and you’ll discover rich references to the tightly interwoven counterpoint of the mbira dza vadzimu of the Shona of Zimbabwe, to the heterophonic weaving of the horn ensembles of the Banda Linda horn ensembles of the Central African Republic, or the ghostly motifs produced by the Nyungwe bagpipe ensembles of Mozambique. Add to this the complex multiphonic interplay of the umrhubhe and uhadi music of South Africa’s isiXhosa people, which Khumalo calls “African spectralism”.
Tracing Hollow Traces is therefore a humbling experience and a fantastic opportunity to open up and understand the highly learned nature of traditional Black African music, a fact largely underestimated by Westerners.
The nine compositions presented on this beautifully captured album, for a wide variety of formations (from large chamber orchestra to solo piano), constitute a most fascinating proposition that brilliantly enhances the sometimes rigid universe of strict atonal music. Admittedly, this is demanding music, requiring precise, sustained attention to be fully appreciated. Its abstract portraitist textures suffer no deference to the current neoclassical/pop facility, but the abundance of suggested colors and the active dynamism of the writing will certainly make it a stimulating listening experience for music lovers who are fuelled by curiosity.
A very high level of musical writing and playing, soaked in an invigorating cerebrality.
— Frédéric Cardin, 10.08.2024
It’s fair to say that spectral music is an obscure category for general listeners, although there is a vague perception that the idiom is dominated by sound and timbre. The resonance, overtones, and interference patterns created by musical notes are the basic materials of spectral composers like the South African Andile Khumalo in this collection of diverse chamber works. The listener is meant to appreciate the possibilities in a “sound spectrum” rather than traditional harmony, melody, development, etc. In my experience spectral music, although very different from Minimalism, aims at a kind of total aural immersion; stasis moves into motion through the chosen spectrum rather than rhythm or momentum.
My thumbnail sketch greatly simplifies the technical preoccupations of spectral music and its scientific bent, which typically employs “sonographic representations and mathematical analysis.” The result can’t help but be abstract, and the challenge is to add an alluring dimension, which can be hard to achieve. Khumalo reaches out to the listener very effectively, however, in a vocal work with acoustic ensemble, Beyond Her Mask, which begins with a low noise elicited by rubbing a mallet over a bass drum. Rising from near-silence, a complex texture develops around a text with spiritual dimensions, spoken and sung by soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw—she utters a kind of mystical exhortation pointing to God. The strikingly theatrical instrumental part, performed by Ensemble Dal Niente, is riveting, everything aided by the excellence of both singer and instrumentalists.
Sometimes I get the feeling from spectral devotees of a smug coterie wagging a finger at us who aren’t in the know; the dense program notes occasionally strike that pose. Fortunately, Khumalo has the talent to hold a listener’s attention without regard to proselytizing. Two keys to his success are color and mood. Broken Mirrors of Time uses 13 acoustic instruments, a cross-section of an entire orchestra, to paint shimmering, diaphanous sounds that have a lovely translucent quality: Any ear that appreciates Debussy can connect with this music. The effect is more like viewing a bright mural than following a consecutive musical argument. Consonance and dissonance become quick, pointillist spots of color dabbed in. Traditional chords help anchor many passages, the total result being an entirely accessible experience.
Robbed of mood and color, the solo piano work, Schau-fe[r]n-ster II, is as impenetrable as its title. The three short movements sound like disorganized sound held together by a theoretical template we aren’t privy to. The other solo work here, Tracing Hollow Traces for clarinet, seems like an odd choice for the album’s title. It consists of four minutes of twiddling with a focus on extended performance techniques, lacking much else to notice. The soloist, Carol McGonnell, is undeniably gifted at producing every sonic gesture, including multiphonics, called for. She carries the day, in fact.
Khumalo shows how adroitly he can enter into the New Music game of creating novel sound worlds in ISO[R], a trio for piano, flute, and cello. The low, gong-like piano tremolos at the start are eerily subterranean, and it takes a while, given so many extended techniques, before you recognize the familiarity of each instrument. After a few minutes, though, the piece seems like only a demonstration of novel sounds.
I was far more attracted to larger ensemble works like the two mentioned above. Three outstanding groups—Wet Ink Ensemble, Argento Ensemble, and Ensemble Dal Niente—all New Music specialists, give impressive performances under their respective conductors; everything is captured in state-of-the-art sound for this digital release. Wet Ink Ensemble performs Bells Die Out, and the rich overtone series of church bells points toward spectral music’s foundations. Once again the instrumentation covers a cross-section of a full orchestra, and colorist gestures fly by at high speed. I felt confirmed in my impression that Khumalo’s strength lies in color and mood. Despite the title, there are no bell effects from either piano or percussion.
Spectral music has evolved beyond its technical roots, and general listeners with adventurous ears need to know nothing about the movement’s theories to appreciate the best pieces here. My favorite is Beyond Her Mask, and I wish that a text had been supplied. The same applies to the other vocal work on the program, Shades of Words, in which Shaw reappears as the passionate narrator of an obscure text about the nature of words (“The ink soars, the ink stings”), accompanied by seven instrumentalists. Fortunately, her crystal-clear diction is a great help, not to mention the superb execution all around.
— Huntley Dent, 11.27.2024
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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