A Giant Beside YouBen Verdery & Ulysses Quartet

A GIANT BESIDE YOU is the title of a new Re-Entrant release that features music by Bryce Dessner, Leonard Bernstein, Javier Farias, and guitarist and composer Ben Verdery, who is featured in each of the five compositions in the album in the company of the Ulysses Quartet.

The works in the album amply demonstrate Ben Verdery’s protean gifts as a player of the Classical acoustic guitar and the contemporary electric guitar. The artist excels in meeting the demands of Bryce Dessner’s 2018 Quintet for High Strings – composed for and dedicated to Ben Verdery – a single movement work that calls for enduring energy and brilliancy. Using a broad range of tempi and inventively rhythmic figures assigned to the solo guitar and to the members of the Ulysses Quartet- violinists Christina Bouey and Riannon Bannerdt, violist Colin Brookes, and cellist Grace Ho, Dessner’s compelling composition affords all five players fine opportunities to display technical prowess throughout its 18-minute duration.

In a charmingly told anecdote Ben Verdery makes clear the use of the title of the album when he talks about an encounter with the late Leonard Bernstein in 1981. Bernstein’s comfortable straddling of the classical and the popular made a lasting impression on Verdery, whom he thanks in his note “…all the musical giants that stood before us and continue to stand next to us.”

Leonard Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata, arranged for string quartet and guitar by Ben Verdery evidences Bernstein’s late career interest in atonal music, while Verdery’s About to Fall and A Giant Beside You – both very recently composed – are inventive works that reveal the composer’s pop roots and his sense of humor.

Javier Farias Andean Suite spans diverse emotions in its three movements: the unabashed joy of Yawar Fiesta, the lyrical sadness of Huayno, and the devilishly humorous Diablada. Ben Verdery brings a soulful sensitivity and a keen understanding of the music of the Chilean composer, drawing to a close a varied album of music for the guitar.

— Rafael de Acha, 7.27.2023

Guitarist and composer Ben Verdery recently released a new album in collaboration with the Ulysses Quartet. Titled "A Giant Beside You", the disc is bound together by a work written especially for Verdery — Bryce Dessner's Quintet for High Strings, which is scored for guitar and string quartet.

Guitarist and composer Bryce Dessner has written works for a number of leading contemporary-music ensembles, including the Kronos Quartet, ensemble intercontemporain, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He also plays guitar in rock band The National, alongside his brother Aaron. Dessner's close friendship with Ben Verdery lead him to integrate the soundworld of the guitar with that of the string quartet in this commissioned work.

Two of Verdery's own compositions also feature on the album. The titular work, A Giant Beside You, takes its compositional lead from a song by Sly and the Family Stones, titled “Stand!" You can hear the work below.

Verdery's second piece, About to Fall, is a tribute to his close friend, the late composer Ingram Marshall.

In addition, Verdery has arranged Leonard Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata for the guitar, sharing musical material from both the clarinet and piano parts around the guitar and string quartet. The album closes with Javier Farías's Andean Suite, a musical exploration of Peruvian folklore.

"[Quintet for High Strings] was composed for my dear friend, Ben Verdery, who has been a part of my life for nearly twenty-five years," said Bryce Dessner of his work. "This quintet brings me back to my primary instrument — the guitar — and my relationship with Ben, which was so formative in my development as a musician. In this new piece, I am exploring my relationship to the instrument in a new way."

The American Ben Verdery is at the center of this CD as an arranger and guitarist, but also as a composer. Bryce Dessner wrote his quintet for Verdery, replacing the low strings of the guitar with high ones, giving the instrument a more melodic role than usual. Leonard Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata is often found in arrangements, here also for the plucked instrument guitar and a string quartet, from the guitarist’s hand. For example, in passages with double forte he created violin and guitar playing in unison, low passages are paired with cello or viola. Piano passages could be easily transferred to the guitar.

Two of Verdery’s own works are in the middle of the CD. About to Fall is a tribute to Ingram Marshall. A Giant Beside You is a song by the group Sly and the Family Stone. Harmonic progression, funky riffs and hand clapping inspired it. Javier Faria’s Andean Suite features impressions of South America, specifically Peru, in three movements. A festival, the high plateau (Altiplano) and a carnival dance create atmospheric colors.

Ben Verdery identifies with all works and is able to express this in his playing. His guitar technique includes playing on both acoustic and electric guitar, depending on the genre called for in each composition. He can certainly express any musical character and make his part sound as sensitive acoustically as it is grippingly electrically.

The Ulysses Quartet adds the string parts with a light and relaxed sounding hand. They act texturally versatile according to the works, maintaining the chemistry of their ensemble without seeming academically austere. Together with Ben Verdery, they offer new listening sensations, as guitar quintets are a rare lineup.

— Uwe Krusch, 6.19.2023

Those interested can fast-forward to another comparatively short CD (55 minutes) for a strong contrast between string use in Tudor times and in contemporary music. The focus of this ReEntrant disc is guitarist Ben Verdery, who was intimately involved in all the musical creations except for one piece. Verdery wrote two of the works on the disc himself, arranged the one by Leonard Bernstein, and is the person for whom Bryce Dessner (born 1976) wrote his piece, Quintet for High Strings, in 2018. Dessner’s quintet is an extended (18-minute) work that uses a guitar – which is, after all, a string instrument – that has been restrung with special strings that lead to sounds an octave or even two octaves above where they would normally appear. It is not a particularly engaging work – once the ear adjusts to the experimental nature of the re-stringing, the musical material is not especially attractive. The piece’s three movements are played attacca, and there are some differences among them, but their sound is not overly attractive, despite the skill with which Verdery and the Ulysses Quartet present everything. More interesting, if perhaps rather wrongheaded, is Verdery’s arrangement of Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata, the composer-conductor’s first published piece (1942). In it, Bernstein showed a considerable amount of sensitivity to the sound and sensibilities of the clarinet and the ways in which it can interact with the piano. The clarinet part does not translate directly to the guitar, although it can work on some other instruments (there is an intriguing cello arrangement, for example). Verdery (born 1955) comes up with clever ways to overcome the difficulties of this adaptation, but the sound is never quite satisfactory, and the first movement certainly does not come across as Grazioso here. The Bernstein work is followed on the disc by two written by Verdery himself. About to Fall (2022) uses an electric guitar and a volume pedal, starting with a series of swells and progressing into a very slow section that seems to be striving toward an unnamed and unreached climax. A Giant Beside You (2021-2022) also features electric guitar, and here the sound is that of electroacoustic music, with a good deal of bounce and use of a number of pop-music techniques. It is more fun than About to Falland makes a better overall impression, but at almost seven minutes, it continues long after it has made its points. The final work on the disc is the three-movement Andean Suite (2017) by Javier Farias (born 1973). This is the most variegated and rhythmically intriguing piece on the CD. Each movement seeks to capture the spirit and sound of ceremonies and music of the Andean region. The first, Yawar Fiesta,represents a bloody fight between animals staged annually in Peru. The second, Huayno, is slow and sad, filled with a kind of tearful lyricism reflected in all the instruments and showcasing the guitar’s emotive capabilities. The third, Diablada, is an interpretation of a Bolivian dance with strong rhythms and a driving pace. The use of strings on this CD is about as far from that of William Whyte as one would expect from the long-separated musical eras – but it is fascinating to hear in how many ways, despite their obvious differences, the works on these two discs use small-ensemble string music to reach out colorfully and often effectively to a suitably receptive audience.

— Mark Estren, 8.03.2023

https://www.wwfm.org/show/cadenza-with-david-osenberg

— David Osenberg, 8.26.2023

Many years have passed since guitarist Ben Verdery's (b. 1955) first experience playing with a string quartet—Vivaldi's Concerto for lute in D major as a student—which makes his collaborative release with Ulysses Quartet (Christina Bouey and Rhiannon Banerdt, violins; Colin Brookes, viola; Grace Ho, cello) all the more special, for Verdery and listener alike. Rare are recordings coupling guitar and strings; rarer still are ones featuring world premieres of recently composed material, in this case pieces by Bryce Dessner (b. 1976) and Verdery. Adding to the release's appeal, the guitarist has included his own arrangement of Leonard Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata and a rendition of the South American-flavoured Andean Suite by Chilean composer Javier Farias (b. 1973), his the only non-world premiere recording on the disc. A Giant Beside You also stands out for featuring Verdery on classical guitar and, on his own About To Fall and A Giant Beside You, electric. While some listeners might find the latter a less soothing sound (in the titular work, specifically), its presence broadens the album's scope plus brings a different dimension to this eclectic project.

For 2018's Quintet for High Strings, Dessner uses a scordatura that involves tuning four guitar strings an octave higher than normal. That move dramatically reconfigures the sonic character of the performance when arpeggio patterns and bass notes intone at a higher pitch; it also amplifies the ornamental quality of the guitar (in its repetitive strums it even sometimes resembles a dulcimer). Eighteen minutes in total, the work progresses without pause through three movements, the animated first setting the scene with intricate embroidery and insistent guitar work, the second mysterious, slow, and ponderous, and the rousing third a sparkling, picking-enhanced plunge into folk song territory.

For his 2017 transcription of Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata, Verdery smartly redistributed the original's woodwind and piano parts amongst the quintet so that it plays to the different instruments' strengths. As the guitar wends an unpredictable path through the lyrical “Grazioso,” the strings alternate between supporting the guitar harmonically and authoritatively taking the lead. The second movement, marked “Andantino-Vivace Leggiero,” begins serenely, the writing emblematic of Bernstein's tender side, before the pace accelerates and grows more dance-like, again the rhythms characteristic of the composer responsible for West Side Story. In both movements, the transitions between the instruments as they exchange background and foreground roles are deftly handled. In fact, Verdery's transcription is so convincingly realized, one would never know it came into the world as anything but a work written for guitar and strings.

Verdery's About To Fall (2022), which pays homage to his recently passed friend and long-time Yale colleague Ingram Marshall, builds on an initial swelling of chords and in its measured unfolding assumes the character of a stately and heartfelt lament. For A Giant Beside You (2021-22), Verdery reworked an earlier piece he wrote for the Australian quartet Guitar Trek that came with the directive that it reference a a popular song. Attracted by its funky riff, harmonic progression, and other details, the guitarist selected Sly and the Family Stone's “Stand” and works all manner of rock gestures into the performance, from distortion, wah-wah, and slide to dive-bombing theatrics. At first, it's as if the guitarist's strafing the quartet with spiky interjections but eventually the parts cohere and the five march side-by-side through the piece's raw landscape.

Worlds removed from it is Farias's three-part Andean Suite, which sees Verdery re-arming himself with classical guitar and exploring guitar techniques from different countries in South America. Titled after a Peruvian celebration that includes a blood fight between a bull and an Andean condor, “Yawar Fiesta” is naturally fiery. Verdery's strums and picking vividly evoke South America during the unaccompanied intro before things turn passionate with the quartet's entrance. After the strings introduce “Huayno” with an expressive outpouring, the music, now buoyed by an enticing Altiplano rhythm, takes on a supplicating quality that's almost Piazzolla-esque. Executed at a breathless pace and grounded in a traditional Bolivian dance, “Diablada” takes the recording out on a celebratory note and features dazzling Chilean folk guitar playing.

Verdery and Ulysses Quartet benefit equally from this collaboration. A Giant Beside You casts him as an intrepid and imaginative explorer and the quartet as equally adventurous and up to the many challenges posed by such a wide-ranging project. In slightly less than an hour, the five travel confidently from American classical to South American folk and make room for arresting detours along the way—a scenic and intriguing journey, to say the least.

— Ron Schepper, 9.15.2023

Guitarist and composer Ben Verdery's A Giant Beside You, his seventeenth album release, is a collaboration with the Ulysses Quartet (Christina Bouey and Rhiannon Banerdt, violins; Colin Brookes, viola; Grace Ho, cello). Three of the four works on the program are world-premiere recordings that, in addition to two of Verdery's compositions featuring him on electric guitar, pair the classical guitar with a string quartet in works by Bryce Dessner, Javier Farías, and Verdery's arrangement of Leonard Bernstein's first published piece 'Sonata for Clarinet and Piano.' The textural peculiarity regarding the guitar's range in the album's opening piece by classical guitarist, composer, and co-leader of the indie band The National, Bryce Dessner, reveals the fact that its title, "Quintet for High Strings," is indeed clever wordplay owing to the composer's call for Verdery's 1995 Smallman to be strung with all treble strings. The result is a through-composed vibrant sonic journey in three sections that assuredly defends the work's eighteen-minute span at every twist and turn. Verdery's arrangement of Bernstein's "Clarinet Sonata" follows and, although cast in two movements, it can be heard as three. Rightfully abandoning an attempt at true transcription due to challenges regarding sustain, and also some dynamic considerations, the arrangement distributes the clarinet and piano material between the string quartet and the guitar. This innovative and effective approach preserves the sonata's lyricism and original charm by utilizing each instrument in the quintet to its best effect. The next two pieces, "About to Fall" and the album's title track, are composed by Verdery and performed on electric guitar. With its charmingly insolent tones and attitude, the latter is a reworking of a piece originally composed for guitar quartet. The former is dedicated to Ingram Marshall, a late colleague of Verdery's at Yale University, and it is masterfully composed, exchanging the previous piece's use of distortion, slide, whammy bar, and wah-wah pedal for a pristine tone that works collaboratively this time with the quartet, befitting both title and dedication. "Andean Suite" by Javier Farías, whose laudable achievements include First Prize winner of the Andrés Segovia Composition Competition, is an exhilarating finish to the program. From the flamenco-tinged "Yawar Fiesta," which takes its name from an annual Peruvian ritual fight between a bull and a condor, through to the final movement's pulsating Altiplano rhythms in "Huayno," the wonderfully wild ride of A Giant BesideYou ends in a region at the intersection of Peru, Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia.

— David Pedrick, 9.26.2023