Guitarist Daniel Lippel’s newest release, Adjacence, is a compilation of several chamber works recorded with various ensembles and collaborators (International Contemporary Ensemble, counter)induction, Flexible Music, Bodies Electric, and various freelance colleagues) that integrate varied aesthetics into one programmatic arc. The program highlights music across the stylistic spectrum, incorporating microtonality, improvisation, timbral experimentation, and carefully managed ensemble textures to create a broad snapshot of chamber repertoire with guitar by many of the community’s prominent composers. All but two of the works (Davidovsky and León) are heard in their premiere recordings and all but two others (Speach and Ko) were written for the ensembles heard on this recording.
Adjacence highlights music involving guitar that invests in a variety of musical parameters, including Ken Ueno’s exploration of a just intonation scordatura, Tyshawn Sorey’s deft balance between intricately through-composed material as a springboard for improvisation contrasted with Tania León’s structured open form score, Mario Davidovsky and Charles Wuorinen’s tightly argued modernism, Nico Muhly and Peter Adriaanz’s personal approaches to minimalism, Sidney Marquez Boquiren and Peter Gilbert’s programmatic expressionism, Bernadette Speach’s timbral exploration, and Tonia Ko and Carl Schimmel’s instrumentation driven invention. The album is both a compendium of several avenues in contemporary guitar chamber music as well as an expression of a conviction that underlying musical components bind together diverse aesthetics more than they separate them.
Initially conceived as a short overture to the included recording of Tyshawn Sorey’s Ode to Gust Burns, Utopian Prelude fulfills a dual role as an invitation to the album as a whole. Taking loose inspiration from selected material in Sorey’s guitar part, the short work combines through-composed material with a short improvisation.
Mario Davidovsky wrote Cantione Sine Textu in 2001 for the UC Davis based Empyrean Ensemble, wryly choosing the title itself as the text for this “wordless song.” He treats the soprano largely like one of the instruments, weaving it into his characteristically intricate ensemble mechanisms. This recording was made four days after Davidovsky passed away, his profound impact on the music world and infectious spirit very present in the hearts of everyone involved in its production.
Read MoreKen Ueno’s Ghost Flowers was commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble for a performance on Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival in 2017. The piece grows out of an overtone based guitar scordatura Ueno developed where each open string is tuned to partials of a detuned low C string. Opening with non-pitched scratching sounds that are punctuated by percussive accents, Ueno slowly reveals the pitch language of the piece as if opening petals of a flower.
Peter Gilbert’s Neñia (Canción Fúnebre), written in 2004, sets a poem by Carlos Guido y Spano about South America’s cataclysmic War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870). Gilbert’s setting captures the wrenching history through driving irregular rhythms, poignant leaps in the soprano line, powerful dissonances, and ethereal resignation.
Nico Muhly’s Wedge was written for percussionist Jeffrey Irving and guitarist Daniel Lippel’s Irving Lippel Project in 2003. Interwoven passagework between vibraphone, marimba, and guitar is punctuated by accents that outline irregular groupings on bass drum and metals. Sections guided by long lined cantus firmi (as well as an embedded Purcell quote) are filtered through a nuanced approach to managing repeated minimalist cells.
Tonia Ko’s Moments is a collection of five miniatures for piccolo and guitar that evoke the subtleties and elegance of French music of different eras, from Poulenc to Couperin.
Peter Adriaansz' Serenades II to IV (No. 23) for three electric guitars and electric bass is a Sonic Youth inspired addition to the repertoire for layered guitars. Written for the Catch Electric Guitar Quartet, the opening serenade juxtaposes modular, repetitive cells that are colored with microtones and timbral variations, the second is an expansive chorale, and the final futuristic serenade features a soaring melodic line on ebow over a series of dense vertical harmonies with varying delay speeds and durations.
Tyshawn Sorey’s Ode to Gust Burns pays homage to the iconic Seattle based improvising pianist through its extended keyboard feature, while placing it in dialogue with the other three instruments through complex rhythmic interplay. The score includes three open sections for improvisation based on the composed material.
Carl Schimmel's The Alphabet Turn'd Posture Master, or The Comical Hotch-Potch was written for the Flexible Music quartet in 2008. It is inspired by an illustrated print from 1782 portraying a "posture master", or contortionist, forming the letters of the alphabet with his body.
Sidney Marquez Boquiren’s Five Prayers of Hope was premiered on March 7, 2020, in a concert just days before the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown. Through the piece, Boquiren addresses distinct, pertinent issues of justice in our time, from migration to sexual violence to environmental stewardship. The music is graciously eclectic, from the timbral experimentation of the opening and closing movements, through the Messiaen influenced expansiveness of “Sanctuary,” to the fierce determination of “Silence Breakers.”
Tania León wrote Ajiaco for the Schanzer/Speach Duo in 1992. León’s open form score allows for freedom in the performance, providing a road map with several motivic fragments and encouraging the players to spontaneously decide on some aspects of their sequence. Characteristic Latin American rhythms establish an infectious groove which provided a springboard for further improvisation in this performance.
Bernadette Speach’s Échange explores extended techniques for an uncommon instrumentation of guitar, piano, and percussion. The percussion part is performed entirely inside the piano, placing the focus of the sound world of the piece within the extended keyboard timbre and its interaction with the sonic palette of the guitar.
Charles Wuorinen’s Electric Quartet, written for Bodies Electric, navigates through a mix of contrapuntal and unison passages, with two notable sections that suspend the prevailing percolating activity in favor of elastic glissandi and obscured pitch.
Dystopian Reprise is a fusion-inspired improvisation using the final minutes of Peter Adriaansz’ Serenade IV as a canvas.
– Daniel Lippel
Executive producer: Daniel Lippel
Session producers: Ryan Streber, all tracks except: Ryan Streber and John Link (Davidovsky), Bernadette Speach (Speach), David Crowell and Daniel Lippel (Adriaansz III and IV, Adriaansz/Lippel, Lippel), Flexible Music (Schimmel), Peter Gilbert (Gilbert), Sidney Boquiren and Ryan Streber (Boquiren)
Recording engineer: Ryan Streber, all tracks except: David Crowell (Adriaansz III and IV, Lippel, Adriaansz/Lippel), Scott Fraser (viola on Ueno), Christopher Jacobs (Schimmel)
Editing: Ryan Streber, all tracks except: David Crowell (Adriaansz III and IV, Adriaansz/Lippel, Lippel), Peter Gilbert (Gilbert), Daniel Lippel (guitar on Ueno)
Editing producer: Daniel Lippel, all tracks except: Peter Gilbert (Gilbert), Ryan Streber and Daniel Lippel (Muhly, Sorey), David Crowell and Daniel Lippel (Adriaansz III and IV, Adriaansz/Lippel, Lippel)
Mixing engineer: Ryan Streber, except David Crowell (Adriaansz Serenades and Dystopian Reprise)
Mastering engineer: Ryan Streber (Oktaven Audio, Mt. Vernon, NY)
Artwork, Design and Layout: Kate Gentile
This recording has been funded in part by support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording Program, University of California at Berkeley Music Department (Ueno), the International Contemporary Ensemble (Sorey), University of New Mexico Music Department (Gilbert), and the Roger Shapiro Fund (Wuorinen). Many thanks to Pete Harden, Bernadette Speach, Neil Beckmann, and Jeffrey Irving for assistance with obtaining and collating scores and clarifying performance details; Ken Ueno, William Anderson, Peter Gilbert, Karola Obermueller, Ross Karre, Peter Adriaansz, Bernadette Speach, and Jeff Irving for facilitating funding support; Jessica Slaven, Eric Huebner, and Scott Fraser for help coordinating recording logistics; Haruka Fujii, John Chang, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and counter)induction for creating the circumstances that allowed for the creation of some of these works; Marc Wolf and Neil Beckmann for behind the scenes label collaboration; Kate Gentile for bringing so much to the design; David Crowell for artful and enthusiastic work on sessions which didn’t have a template; Ryan Streber for ever inspiring virtuosity and musicianship behind the controls; and of course to the composers and performers, thank you so much for lending your inspiring artistry to this project and sharing it with all of us.
Guitarist Dan Lippel, called a "modern guitar polymath (Guitar Review)" and an "exciting soloist" (NY Times) is active as a soloist, chamber musician, and recording artist. He has been the guitarist for the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) since 2005 and new music quartet Flexible Music since 2003. Recent performance highlights include recitals at Sinus Ton Festival (Germany), University of Texas at San Antonio, MOCA Cleveland, Center for New Music in San Francisco, and chamber performances at the Macau Music Festival (China), Sibelius Academy (Finland), Cologne's Acht Brücken Festival (Germany), and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. He has appeared as a guest with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and New York New Music Ensemble, among others, and recorded for Kairos, Bridge, Albany, Starkland, Centaur, and Fat Cat.
Adjacence is the new album from guitar virtuoso Dan Lippel, playing solo as well as in the company of individual players and chamber groups of various sizes. The selection here is very rich: fourteen compositions by thirteen recent and contemporary composers, including two composed or co-composed by Lippel.
The stylistic diversity of the album’s music clearly demonstrates Lippel’s versatility as a performer. For example, there is Ken Ueno’s Ghost Flowers, a mostly sound-based work of scraped strings and plucked notes in just intonation, for guitar, viola (Wendy Richman), and dulcimer (Nathan Davis); Moments, the elegant five-movement duet for acoustic guitar and piccolo (Roberta Michel) by composer Tonia Ko; Tyshawn Sorey’s darkly atmospheric Ode to Gust Burns for small ensemble, which combines composed and improvised passages; Carl Schimmel’s The Alphabet Turn’d Poster Master for electric guitar, tenor saxophone (Timothy Ruedeman), piano (Eric Huebner), and percussion (Haruka Fujii), a work of fragmentary motifs and intricate unison lines; the dissonant minimalism of Peter Adriaansz’s Serenades II-IV, with Lippel overdubbed on electric guitars and electric bass; and Tania León’s dramatic Ajiaco for piano played inside and out (Cory Smythe) and Lippel’s reverb-soaked electric guitar, spinning out deconstructed jazz-like lines.
Among the album’s many highlights is Charles Wuorinen’s Electric Quartet (2013) for four electric guitars. The piece was commissioned by the guitar quartet Bodies Electric, of which Lippel is a member; the performance here is theirs. The piece contains a complex skein of lines, as one would expect from Wuorinen; Bodies Electric’s realization is a model of polyphonic clarity. Another is Nico Muhly’s propulsive Wedge, which features Lippel on classical guitar and Jeffrey Irving on vibes and other percussion playing additive and subtractive variations on short motifs over shifting time signatures.
In a bit of structural symmetry Lippel’s Utopian Prelude, which features the composer on electric guitar and microtonal classical guitar and Ryan Streber on electronics opens the album; Dystopian Reprise for Lippel on solo guitar, co-composed by Lippel and Adriaansz, closes it.
Adjacence is a fine survey of what the guitar is capable of at this moment in musical time.
— Daniel Barbiero, 11.09.2024
Also out yesterday, this sprawling, adventurous, *essential* collection of new chamber works for guitar. Featuring 14 pieces and 12 premiere recordings, this will become a bible for new music guitarists!
— Jeremy Shatan, 11.16.2024
American guitarist Daniel Lippel has premiered more than fifty new solo and chamber music works, many of which were written for him. He has recorded several of these on the independent label New Focus Recordings, which he co-founded and runs.
With this album, he offers good insights into the contemporary guitar repertoire, including works for solo guitar, acoustic guitar and tape and electric guitar as well as chamber music.
The energetic and minimalist Wedge by Nico Muhly, the original and interestingly composed Moments by Tonia Ko and the sonically exciting Serenades by Peter Adriaansz with its electronic treatment stand out from the first part.
In the second part, the atmospheric Five Prayers of Hope by Sidney Marquez Boquiren, which is so different in its moods, deserves attention. Sophisticated interpretations and good sound recordings are further plus points of the double album.
— Norbert Tischer, 11.22.2024
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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