Byrne:Kozar:Duo: It Floats Away From You

Corrine Byrne brings a healthy set of soprano pipes to Andy Kozar’s well manipulated trumpet for this debut recording, where compositions by Alexandre Lunsqui, Beth Wiemann, Li Qi, Vid Smooke, Jeffrey Gavett, Christian Carey, Lei Liang, and Chris Cresswell make for a distinct and exciting version of chamber music.

Lunsqui’s “Solis” starts the listen with playful vocal scatting and gorgeous singing that illustrates a stunning ability alongside the well timed brass moments that point towards The Beatles’ classic, “Here Comes The Sun”, and Wiemann’s “It Floats Away From You” follows with poetry from Marianne Moore, where 3 movements pay close attention to pitch and mood thanks to the stunning voice and expressive trumpet.

Further along, “Lonely Grave”, by Qi, finds a meditative place to reside, where the intimately sonic landscape is mournful and heartbreaking, while Carey’s “A Lady” puts forth strategic harmonization from Kozar that complements the vocal acrobatics of the colorful text.

Closer to the end, “All That’s Left Is Dirt And Sky” recruits field recordings, ambient noise and room tone for the love song about environments, and Lunsqui returns for the final track, “Two Patches”, where a pair of voices in rhythmic unison rely much on timbre, articulation and diction, and the instrumentation provides a sparse backdrop.

The duo are well versed at interpreting work, and their inimitable delivery and meticulous nature makes for a highly atypical chamber and baroque experience.

— Tom Haugen, 7.20.2023

New Focus leaves it up to the artists whether releases are digital-only (for file download) or actually appear as a physical release. As we do not really review digital releases, this has reduced the volume of NFR reviews by more than half. Add to this the summer break, which has been quiet around NFR releases lately. I need to catch up on this now. The two releases picked out here are the two latest. But, coincidence or not, subsequent releases often have something in common with NFR. In this case, the use of brass instruments with a single other instrument in a duo setting.
The first, by the newly formed Byrne:Kozar:Duo, pairs soprano vocals with a trumpet. This sounds really odd. On the other hand, Andy Kozar has already
collected a lot of experience in the group Loadbang (reviewed in Vital 1356), where trombone, bass clarinet, and trumpet are mixed with baritone vocals. Thinking back to that release ('Quiver'), a thread matches the corresponding brass/wind instrument to the vocal timbre. So, the trumpet and soprano voice should go well together in pitch. Nevertheless, I also remember not being too fond of the work Loadbang presented.
Byrne:Kozar:Duo have a slightly different approach to Loadbang, maybe facilitated by only being two musicians which allows them to be more focused whilst having nowhere to hide in the mix. The various compositions differ strongly, being from a line of composers, but mainly, the trumpet acts as the accompanying instrument with the voice performing melody lines. This is not actually fully true, as the different pieces represent different musical ideas. But maybe, as a listener, you simply consider the voice leading, the instrument trailing by default. The music, in
general, is melodic, or even if it flies, the 'contemporary' colours are at least a little dissonant. Byrne/Kozar also perform baroque music for trumpet and voice - which I had not heard of and is not represented on this release. But it may explain the melodic feel of this album. In Alexandre Lunsqui's piece 'Solis', the first track, trumpet and voice follow similar patterns, like chasing each other through staccato and lyrical parts. Very tight. 'It Floats Away..' by Beth Wiemann turns poetry by Marianne Moore into music. I am not a fan of much of contemporary poetry, finding a lot of it preposterous. Luckily, following the words in the music is hard - you can read them in the booklet if you want. Or just don't. The three parts of 'It Floats' set vocals and trumpet lines against each other, seemingly independent of each other. Still, the three parts work very well. 'Lonely Grave' by Li Qi is the one bit of poetry I really liked. It is based on ancient Chinese poetry by Su Shi and is
a reminiscence of a lost love. The music reflects this and consists of long drawn sounds played through a veil or mist. This piece uses electronics to create multiple layers, which considerably helps the mood.
The further pieces by Vid Smooke, Christian Carey, Lei Liang, and again Lunsqui use the approaches displayed up to here to create similar sounding pieces. The only exception is Lunsqui, with tightly played trumpet lines and voices following each other expertly. Only when scanning the liner notes was I aware that the Duo is actually a married couple. Talking of excellently harmonised instrumental lines. This leaves two pieces to contemplate further. One is the three-movement Jeffrey Gavett's 'Proof of Concept for floating child', which revolves around a concise text. It is unusual as it uses rhythmic sounds of breath and mouthed noises interlaced with a nearly baroque setting of harmonies at times. And finally, Chris Cresswell's 'All that is left is dirt and sky'. I must
say, what I definitely liked about this release was the titles. Again, in 3 parts, we find a piano accompaniment in contrast to the other pieces. Long-drawn reverb and background hiss create an unworldly atmosphere in which the trumpet is actually a bit superfluous. If it had been left off, the pieces would have worked even better; pity the trumpet. This composition is one of my favourites on this release - having listened to the duo for some length, the expansion to more sound layers and the subdued atmosphere were a real treat.

— RSW, 9.05.2023

A debut album from the Byrne:Kozar:Duo hits an impressive mark, with finely curated and exquisitely performed new works for soprano and trumpet.

Undoubtedly, this ensemble is a unique one. It unveils surprising tonal ecosystems and colouristic effects rarely heard, originating from an elliptic Renaissance sensibility. The duo endeavours to “guide the way, providing a template for integration across multiple parameters as a powerful vehicle for expression and depth.” Once moving past such novelties, the listener embraces a lustrous, generous universe of diptych-infused dedication, perfectly integrated in a concordant yet plural narrative. The skilled synthesis from these two musicians is one reason for this achievement. The other: the compositions themselves, boasting sensitive text settings and idiomatic constructions.

Austere, even stark, music like Li Qi’s Lonely Grave (with a fixed media component) sets a compelling foil to such pieces as Alexandre Lunsqui’s Two Patches and Jeffrey Gavette’s Proof of Concept for Floating Child, the latter exemplifying the duo’s textural and rhythmic possibilities, inspired by heavy metal music and Meredith Monk.

While each track is well ordered, the disc plays more as a recital rather than a coherent album. That is not necessarily scabrous, especially when considering a debut record. Indeed it might compel the listener to leave the audio space and seek live performances from this new duo, having whet the aural appetite with unexpected soundscapes. Let the armchair listener witness first hand the energy, intimacy and aired spell, the Byrne:Kozar:Duo so masterfully conjures.

— Adam Sherkin, 12.08.2024

I feel compelled to begin on a note of relief. Crossing my path, or desk, are new releases that feature singers with fragile, worn-out, or simply inadequate voices. The ones that are most cringe-worthy seem to be devoted to New Music, which is tough enough for a general listener to appreciate without the obstacle of a bad singer. In all respects, none of that applies to soprano Corrine Byrne in this debut album with her husband, trumpeter Andy Kozar. Byrne has a bright lyric soprano that is beautifully trained and a delight to hear. She is pitch-perfect, fearing nothing from atonality, wide leaps, and flights into her highest register. Moreover, her crisp articulation makes it possible to hear the text clearly, a rarity with high voices singing in English.

She and Kozar are instinctively musical, which helps to allay my secondary fear that the New Music pieces written for them would lean so heavily on abstraction and arcane compositional techniques that enjoying them would present a mountain to climb. I’ll admit to skepticism about maintaining interest over a long span listening to voice and trumpet. There’s a legacy of beautiful music where the two are combined in an orchestral setting (Handel’s “The trumpet shall sound” and Mahler’s “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen” immediately come to mind), but when reduced to their naked selves, as it were, basically the singer is used either as an instrument or as a voice.

The eight contemporary composers who have written songs for the Byrne:Kozar:Duo all faced the challenge of writing expressive music for a very unusual instrumentation, and there I’m tempted to stop passing judgment. All the necessaries are in place for this material to receive ideal performances, and each song does. Anyone would be delighted by the quasi-scat singing heard in Alexandre Lunsqui’s Solis, which bounces around cheerfully until it reveals its origins in the Beatles’ “Here comes the sun,” a lovely takeoff in which Byrne sounds as close to a trumpet as Kozar does to the human voice.

The album’s title work, It Floats Away from You, is a three-song cycle by Beth Weimann based on poems by Marianne Moore whose themes are aquatic (the titles are “An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish,” “A Jelly-Fish,” and “The Fish”). I often feel that, with the best intentions, contemporary composers ruin poetry by having a tin ear for words and mood. Moore’s nimble, ingenious aperçus about marine life are treated by Weimann as a basis for simple, quasi-melodic motifs in which voice and trumpet echo each other. In one instance, “A Jelly-Fish,” the ethereal mood of the music bears a nice resemblance to the subject, but the other two songs barely depart from this model and do nothing for Moore’s words.

New Music devotees will insist that I’ve missed the point, because it is habitual to mismatch texts and advanced musical idioms, to the point that everyone seems satisfied with a misalliance. Yet I am happy when the chemistry is right, as in Li Qui’s mournful Lonely Grave, where a pre-recorded tape of Byrne and Kozar blends into their live performance with elegiac delicacy; this is like a contemporary take on the voice from the grave heard in Mahler’s song about where the beautiful trumpets sound. The text is sung in Chinese.

An esoteric method underlies Vid Smooke’s All Are Welcome Here. He translated the title into several languages, then broke them down into phenetics, each representing “vocal timbres that can be integrated into an ensemble texture like instrumental articulations and shadings.” The music perfectly fits the description, and although “All are welcome here” flits by once in English, the piece as a whole is like atonal solfeggio for both soprano and trumpet, often to spectacular effect in this bravura performance.

In these few thumbnails I hope to convey how varied and imaginative this album is—I doubt I’ve heard a more enjoyable New Music release this year, particularly one that features singing. Every piece confronts the challenge of writing for soprano and trumpet differently and I’m sorry to give short shrift to so many intriguing ideas. But you get the gist—a potentially eccentric outing turns out to be a triumph, thanks to the Byrne/Kozar Duo’s irresistible presentation.

— Huntley Dent, 3.12.2024