Ensemble Dal Niente: confined. speak.

Ensemble Dal Niente, a staunch Chicago-based purveyor of new music, is not like other groups. Since its inception in 2004, Dal Niente — “from nothing,” in Italian — has gravitated to largely atonal scores that fall within the orbit of the very challenging and even the cacophonous and bizarre. Their latest album, confined. speak. (New Focus Recordings), highlights the ensemble’s activities during the pandemic while documenting a period of uncertainty in the performing arts.

Led by conductor Michael Lewanski, Dal Niente consists of a flexible core of instrumentalists who are attuned to the multiculturalism of our time. confined. speak. features composers from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa, and the U.S., some of whom live or have lived in Europe. The six selections are culled from the group’s live-streamed concerts between October 2020 and June 2021, for which a worldwide audience tuned in, even if the halls were empty.

The title cut, a duet for violin and piano by Igor Santos, speaks to that dichotomy. Santos juxtaposes episodes of arrested communication — represented by nontraditional and mostly dissonant techniques — with flurries of throbbing release, in which the duet synchronizes into rhythmically tangible statements. Violinist MingHuan Xu attaches a mute to the bridge, which gives her bowing a mosquito-like buzz, while pianist Winston Choi is tasked with exploiting the instrument’s inherent resonance by making echoey sounds directly on the strings and tapping around and under the keyboard.

The violin crescendos into a funky groove with the piano; Xu plays loud, muted pizzicatos — note the contradiction — as Choi creates a deep thumping by loudly depressing the piano’s damper pedal while striking the lowest strings directly inside. Choi slams the fallboard and scrapes plastic cards against the tuning pegs. But this violence against the piano is warranted: Santos has a knack for creating techno-like beats with acoustic instruments — sometimes you’d swear more than two people are playing — while casting them into an architectural mold. By the end of the piece, you can make sense of the apparent discordance on the surface.

Scored for 13 players, Demente Cuerda by Hilda Paredes is a crusty harp concerto featuring Ben Melsky, who is also Dal Niente’s Executive Director. The title is a play on words in Spanish: depending on your spacing in writing, or on your emphasis in speech, “demente cuerda” can mean “of a sound mind” or “mad string.”

The concerto emerges from the lowest and murkiest of registers, as if from a thick mist, with bass clarinet and a corrosive buzz from wildly plucked harp strings. A glissando introduces the full ensemble; what were disparate textural fragments begin to coalesce, with piccolo and mallet percussion piercing through the former fogginess. Melsky’s bold strokes and abrupt plucking are often followed by a shimmer from the ensemble, like an afterglow. Blowing into the flute and into the mouthpiece of the horn, string glissandos and tremolos, and undulating overtones from the vibraphone all add a surreal effect.

A rumbling also opens Andile Khumalo’s Beyond Her Mask, which gives way to skittish strings and wordless ethereal vocals by soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw. But the vocals immediately turn into a rasping grunt — Khumalo is interested in the spectral analysis of sound — and then into recitation. The menacing atmosphere starts to churn with a restless clarinet and assorted percussion; airy, whispery woodwinds afford a temporary hush, later offset by an otherworldly buzzing from the horn. A heartbeat pattern waxes and wanes, perhaps suggesting the struggle and resilience of the women represented in the recitation; the text, uncredited, faces violence against women in South Africa, where Khumalo is from. The harrowing piece ends with the words “everything about me worth seeing cannot be seen,” over soft, faraway piano triads.

Shorter, but equally intriguing works by Tomás Gueglio, Melissa Vargas, and George Lewis round out the album. The latter’s Merce and Baby, from 2012, is a showpiece for jazz percussion; Kyle Flens channels the spirit of the titular jazz drummer Baby Dodds.

Gueglio’s Triste y madrigal consists of a soft incantation by soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett that becomes a little numbing combined with a static backdrop of whistling flutes and wisps from a distant violin. A similarly sparse soundscape of sorrowful clarinet, soft cymbal splashes, and an acoustic guitar with affected vibrato makes the bulk of Vargas’ Es casi como el inicio… y comienza, but the piece evolves when Bartlett jabbers in a rapid-fire glossolalia, then takes off into a wordless full-throated belting.

Balanced and thoroughly captivating, confined. speak. ponders last year’s downturn and stands for the countless groups that took to social media during the temporary suspension of live music to remain active and purposeful. The solitary experience of listening to the album at home replicates, in a more intimate manner, the somewhat paradoxical position Dal Niente found themselves in. This “live album,” performed for a vacant theater, has been transformed into something different, as the previous simultaneity in space and time between performers and audiences shifts to a looser, perhaps less poignant interchange.

— Esteban Meneses, 11.29.2021

The Chicago based Ensemble Dal Niente releases a collection of works that were streamed during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. With each work offering a variety of experimental techniques and sound worlds, this music reveals the ensemble’s incredible musical abilities. Igor Santos’ confined. speak. is a post-Lachenmannian work that explores themes of “confinement and liberation.” Santos’ music is carefully crafted and contains an impressive series of magical events. The harp concerto of Hilda Paredes, titled Demente Cuerda, contains endless virtuosic gestures for both soloist and ensemble members – all of which are expertly performed. With Tomás Gueglio’s Triste y madrigal we receive a delicate and mysterious soprano part amid outlandish restlessness in the ensemble – a beautifully enigmatic work. In Merce and Baby by George Lewis, the composer creates an imagined musical scenario that exists only in the documentation of a collaboration between jazz drummer Baby Dodds and avantgarde dancer Merce Cunningham in the 1940s. Finally, Andile Khumalo’s Beyond Her Mask is a disturbing and important statement that confronts violence against women in South Africa. Ensemble Dal Niente delivers stunning performances of works that truly speak to our time.

— Adam Scime, 12.15.2021

Despite the enormous obstacles faced with playing concerts this past year, Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente documents their recent collaborations here, where they feature several composers that touch on sounds from South America, North America and Africa.

The title track opens the listen with interesting bow techniques, where timbre manipulation and atypical piano textures illuminate the Igor Santos tune, and Hilda Paredes’ Demente Cuerda follows with an initially haunting climate of precise harp playing that’s capable of lush moments, as well as quivering intimacy.

Tomás Gueglio’s Triste y madrigal occupies the middle spot and benefits from Amanda DeBoer Bartlett’s soprano in the primarily bare orchestral climate, while Merce and Baby meshes violin and percussion in all sorts of unpredictable ways that illustrate creative gesturing in the George Lewis composition.

Es casi como el inicio…y comienza, by Melissa Vargas, resides near the end and showcases a minimal delivery where vocals are used like an instrument, and Andile Khumalo’s Beyond Her Mask exits the listen with spoken text about violence against women that flows amid a busy landscape of ambient, playful and even dreamy instrumentation.

A very well thought out chamber focused listen, the 23 members of Ensemble Dal Niente make for an adventure that can at times be stirring and stripped back, just as it can be majestic and full, and these 6 pieces do a great job of spotlighting their profound talents.

— Tom Haugen, 12.29.2021

The location is an ocean away, but the ensemble size is similar for the ultra-modern music on a New Focus Recordings CD called Dal Niente Portrait 2020-2021. As the disc’s title indicates, the focus here is as much on the performers – the Chicago-based, 23-member Ensemble Dal Niente – as on the six works presented. Three of those include vocals and three are instrumental, that word defined rather loosely because the material tends to be aggressively modernistic, not only through electronic modification but also through extending performing techniques and instrumental sounds far beyond what listeners (other than those already firmly committed to the musical avant-garde) might expect to hear. The connective tissue of this CD is both geographical (as it is for the Laetare Vocal Ensemble’s disc) and anti-geographical: from its Chicago base, Ensemble Dal Niente created a series of virtual collaborative performances spanning three continents during the pandemic-forced closings and lockdowns of the 2020-2021 time period, reaching out virtually at a time when in-person music-making was simply not possible. Cleverness and creative response to an unprecedented-in-our-lifetime situation abound here, not only in the organization of the disc but also in the works themselves, whether or not they were created during the COVID-19 pandemic. The oldest piece on the CD, dating to 2004, is in some ways the most intriguing of all. It is Hilda Paredes’ harp concerto Demente Cuerda, whose title as written means “crazed string” but, if written de mente cuerda, would mean “of sound mind.” That is very neat word play (or almost-word play), and the work offers some attractive contrasts between the harp’s delicacy and the massed sound of the other instruments – although the interplay somewhat overstays its welcome by going on for 15 minutes. Another instrumental piece here is Igor Santos’ confined. speak. (titled using no capital letters and two periods – typical affectations for some contemporary composers). This piece does date to pandemic times (2020) and is intended to express confinement with musical means, ranging from mutes to limited pitch use. It does not, however, really sound very different from many other self-consciously modern instrumental works. George Lewis’ Merce and Baby (2012), however, does have some out-of-the-ordinary sounds. The title refers to choreographer/dancer Merce Cunningham and jazz drummer Baby Douds, and the piece is interesting not only for its easily anticipated forays into percussion but also for its less-expected willingness to lapse into lyricism for a while. The three vocal works on the CD are, on the whole, less interesting. Triste y madrigal (2021) by Tomás Gueglio has nothing to do with Monteverdi and everything to do with sound assemblage, containing some actual soprano passages, some voice clips from the 1940s, and instrumental material that ranges from murky to perky – a good reflection of the bizarrerie of pandemic-era life, but not a work that is particularly convincing to hear. The form, not the function, rules Melissa Vargas’ 2010 Es casi como el inicio…y comienza (the ellipsis is, yes, part of the title): a clock timer is used to pace broad instrumental passages that contrast with screechy vocals. And Andile Khumalo’s Beyond Her Mask (2021) tries to reflect not only pandemic times but also violence against women in Khumalo’s native South Africa, using a gratifyingly clear spoken text mixed with instrumental passages that do not really add much to the verbiage. This hit-or-miss assemblage of modernity in the time of COVID-19 will please fans of Ensemble Dal Niente, for whom it will appear to evoke emotional connection dal niente (out of nothing); but there is nothing here sufficiently engaging or convincing to reach out to listeners who are not already enthralled by the most-modern aspects of today’s music scene.

Ensemble Dal Niente did not stop working across the Covid years and here presents a collection of works they live-streamed during 2020 and 2021. The release sports six compositions by Melissa Vargas, George Lewis, Tomás Gueglio, Hilda Paredes, Igor Santos, and Andile Khumalo. Although you would expect a variety of styles, the ensemble manages to deliver a very consistent album of modern classical music.

Maybe the music was written especially to the needs of Dal Niente, maybe it was the times, maybe it was the choice of composers. The Chicago-based musicians make best use of the instruments at their disposal and from track 3 onwards a soprano voice joins the ensemble and is used to best effect. Sometimes reminding of the way Zeitkratzer use instruments to produce 'noise' and expand the classical modern universe towards electronic and abstract repertoires, Dal Niente uses some of these elements, meandering between single instrument shout-outs and ensemble vehemence, in an approach that reminds more of the early and mid-20th Century composers than contemporary classical music.

The last track is by South African composer Andile Khumalo, who here confronts violence against women. It consists of a musical score with an added soprano voice that also includes some spoken word passages. As usual, these are presented with excessive drama, and if I had not read the press release, I would have had a completely different take on what the composer's aim was. Personally, I would prefer not having an over-dramatised voice overlaying music, though I understand the composer's intentions.

In a statement of intent titled I Care If You Listen, one finds either enticement or a warning about the contents of this CD: “Ensemble Dal Niente, a staunch Chicago-based purveyor of new music, is not like other groups. Since its inception in 2004, Dal Niente—‘from nothing,’ in Italian—has gravitated to largely atonal scores that fall within the orbit of the very challenging and even the cacophonous and bizarre.” But if you have a settled interest in contemporary music, I think the enticement outweighs the warning. There are harsh sounds on the program, some of which many listeners wouldn’t call musical, but these do not predominate.

The “portrait 2020:2021” in the album’s subtitle refers to the fact that the six works here were performed remotely during the pandemic lockdown. Dal Niente, as with many contemporary ensembles, varies the instrumentation according to the work at hand; here the numbers range from a violin-and-piano duo in Igor Santos’s confined.speak to a chamber group of 13 for Hilda Paredes’s Demente Cuerda; three works call for a soprano vocalist. Although Santos’s piece provided the disc’s title, it is safe to say that being confined and feeling the urge to speak unifies all six composers and the multiple performers.

Santos’s confined.speak addresses confinement literally in the form of abrupt, interrupted gestures and a small range of notes. The use of mutes on the violin and inside the piano is so extreme that I mistook them for electronic augmentation. The sounds are natural, yet some of the time one barely recognizes the ordinary voice of the two instruments. The opening, for example, sounds like an electrified violin falling down stairs. There is no marked tonality, and the pianist is stumming or plucking inside the case as much as he is striking the keys. From such a description you might expect chaos, either organized or disorganized, but this is an effectively dramatic piece whose 13 minutes are constantly absorbing once you adapt to the idiom.

Adaptation is the key to appreciating any avant-garde art, but there is a secondary issue with this disc, in that each piece announces its own language, so the listener’s ear needs to be resilient. In the case of Peredes’s Demente cuerda, the title is double-edged, referring to psychological states that alternated during the lockdown: demente cuerda means “demented string,” while de mente cuerda means “of sound mind.” This dichotomy emerges sonically in the gentle tones of harp and flute at the top range of the 13 instruments, contrasted with the blows from two percussionists. Peredes fills 15 minutes with mostly short gestures that spin a kaleidoscope of colors, rather oddly like Ravel’s Bolero if you can imagine Bolero totally discombobulated.

Tomás Gueglio’s Triste y madrigal is the first work to use a singer, the gently lyrical soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, who sings a text I couldn’t understand without the text (it isn’t provided). The dreamy opening leads to snatches of spoken word and radio dialogue from 1940s melodramas in Spanish. This collage is inventive and creates the atmosphere of a happening—the program notes describe the piece as an “oneiric radio drama,” which is perfectly apt once you look up the meaning of “oneiric,” which refers to dreams. The soprano floats vaporously, often with an underpinning of harp, guitar, and flute. Dissonance is largely absent as the listener is enveloped in a haunting dreamscape. It is easy to identify with the feeling that the entire pandemic has been surreal.

Modern choreographer Merce Cunningham and the 1940s jazz drummer Baby Dodds never collaborated, but they are brought together as “absences” in George Lewis’s very imaginative piece Merce and Baby. Lewis is well known for his eclecticism, so the jazzy elements in the score are as convincing and evocative as the microtones borrowed from John Cage. There is a diaphanous background to suggest time mysteriously folding in on itself. What stands out for me is Lewis’s ability to be constantly inventive without resorting to facile noise-making as a substitute. One imagines that Merce and Baby would be enjoyed by many general listeners—the avant-garde is rarely this friendly.

I’m reminded of the older, intellectually abstract avant-garde when the notes to Melissa Vargas’s Es casi como el inicio … y comeienza declare that the composer “liberates the musicians from the tyranny of meter while simultaneously confining them to clock time.” Whatever this may mean, the piece is confined to minimal gestures, often single notes or short motifs, from a quartet of soprano (Bartlett again, singing a kind of mixed melisma and trills), clarinet, guitar, and percussion. The program notes don’t translate the long title, which Google translates as “It’s almost like the beginning ... and it begins.” As a collection of musical gestures the score is listenable, but it had no cumulative effect for me.

Dark menace, which was at the heart of the pandemic, became magnified with the rise of domestic violence against women during lockdown. Andile Khumalo takes this as the subject of Beyond Her Mask, the only political work on the program. The ensemble of 10 features Western instruments, but the notes describe something I find opaque: “The material for this piece is based on the spectral analysis [of] … the percussion instrument known as the Lion’s Roar and a human voice.” The musical effect, however, is largely set by soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw reciting an emotionally agitated text that revolves around violence. Nothing is explicitly stated to relate to women or to the composer’s native South Africa, so I took Beyond Her Mask at face value. It is “a symphony of feelings and fleeting moments,” to quote a phrase from the spoken text. As such it was engrossing throughout.

Conductor Michael Lewanski leads each piece, however unique its idiom, with perfect ease and sympathy. The diverse performers in Ensemble Dal Niente are of solo caliber, and New Focus’s recorded sound is impeccable. As a commentary on the confinement of lockdown, this disc could have been depressing or anxiety-riddled, but instead it is imaginative and uplifting because of its dedication to the free expression of music in a time of plague.

— Huntley Dent, 3.22.2022