New music septet Exceptet releases their debut recording featuring works written for them by Katherine Balch, Paul Kerekes, and ensemble violinist/singer Sarah Goldfeather. Exceptet's instrumentation has its roots in Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat, balancing strings and winds with percussion in a versatile combination that has expansive expressive possibilities.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 30:15 | ||
| 01 | Mouth Full of Ears | Mouth Full of Ears | 4:55 |
| 02 | figment | figment | 5:45 |
Tree LinesKatherine Balch |
|||
| 03 | Yew | Yew | 1:51 |
| 04 | Juniper | Juniper | 2:25 |
| 05 | Cypress | Cypress | 0:44 |
| 06 | Bristlecone | Bristlecone | 3:23 |
| 07 | Oak | Oak | 2:21 |
| 08 | Foxtail | Foxtail | 1:33 |
| 09 | Cedar | Cedar | 1:06 |
| 10 | Larch | Larch | 1:21 |
| 11 | Baobab | Baobab | 1:19 |
| 12 | Jequitibá | Jequitibá | 1:03 |
| 13 | Sequoia | Sequoia | 2:29 |
Fashioning their ensemble from Stravinsky’s instrumentation for his iconic A Soldier’s Tale, Exceptet commissions works from emerging composers, performing them with precision and energy. This release, their debut full length album, centers Katherine Balch’s multi-movement work Tree Lines with additional pieces by ensemble co-founder Sarah Goldfeather and Paul Kerekes. The balance between wind and brass (clarinet, trumpet, trombone, bassoon), strings (violin, double bass), percussion, and voice allows composers to treat the ensemble like a small orchestra, reveling in its vibrant colors.
Goldfeather does quadruple duty in Exceptet, serving as its artistic director, composing works for the group, playing violin, and performing as its singer. In her work Mouth Full of Ears, we hear her in three of these four roles (invariably the artistic direction facilitating them behind the scenes), as she alternates between violin and voice. The text of the piece extols independent thinking, with the music vacillating between colorfully orchestrated post-minimal activity and prog rock inspired, mixed-meter, modal material. Gluing the sections together is a motive that oscillates by an ascending whole step before rising chromatically to resolve on the third of a major chord.
Paul Kerekes establishes a pulsing, Reich-ian percolation as the canvas upon which to explore the sonic possibilities of Exceptet’s instrumentation. Off-kilter, interlocking motivic fragments propel the energy beyond each downbeat, while repeated pitches fade in and out of the texture at different speeds, Kerekes patiently excavates new registral territory, carving out larger scale structures that emerge from the long, cantus firmus implied by shifting arrival pitches. After the midpoint of the work, Kerekes begins to periodically interrupt the seamless texture with angular, skittering figures in the ensemble that create dissonance with the prevailing pad of sound, only to resolve themselves momentarily.
Read MoreKatherine Balch’s music revels in discovery and play, often integrating found sounds or following the evolution of natural processes. Tree Lines is an ode to old-growth trees, a phenomenon of nature that often live more than 400 years. Balch chose to divide the work into eleven short character movements, drawing a contrast between our lived experience and the tree’s expansive lifespan.
Five of the eleven movements set texts which are limited to recitations of numbers and botany terms. Balch largely treats the voice as another instrument in the ensemble, though a primary one, often calling on other instruments to highlight vocal arrivals and extend or transform its timbre. “Yew” features glitchy repeated cells and a multi-layered texture of trumpet mutes, vibraphone clusters, and glitchy, syllabic utterances. “Bristlecone” is built around sustained and extended sounds that are transformed through pitch adjustment and evolving sound colors. In “Oak”, the voice alternates between establishing central pedal points that trigger ostinato figuration in the vibraphone, and punctuated, non-pitched rhythmic patterning that is passed through the chorus of instruments. “Baobab” features the voice singing more conventional melodic contours in dialogue with the double bass and vibraphone. “Sequoia” returns to the modular, Rube-Goldberg-esque energy of “Yew,” closing the work in the same expressive world within which it began.
Instrumental movements are interspersed throughout, traversing a wide range of expressive territory, from the persistent repetitions in “Juniper,” the frisky fragments of “Cypress,” the nobility of “Cedar,” the whimsical muted timbres of “Foxtail,” the compressed energy that escapes in “Larch,” and the moto-perpetuo awakening of “Jequitibá.” Balch uses a rich box of compositional tools, including microtonality (often to create an illusion of a kind of Doppler-effect pitch shift), extended sonic techniques from overpressure on the string instruments to multi-phonics and other non-pitched timbers in the winds.
Balch, Goldfeather, and Kerekes have each effectively marshaled the resources of Exceptet’s instrumentation to create the scope of a larger ensemble while also pairing it down to realize intimate characters. The ensemble displays impressive fluidity navigating different stylistic territory, from Goldfeather’s vocal driven opening track to Balch’s deepest investigations of texture. Tree Lines portends many exciting musical projects ahead for this dynamic ensemble.
– Dan Lippel
Produced by Sarah Goldfeather and Mike Tierney
Recorded, edited and mixed by Mike Tierney
Mastered by Alan Silverman
Album artwork by Katherine Balch
Disc artwork photo by James St. John
Album design by Chuck Furlong
Exceptet is a New York-based 501(c)(3) new music ensemble with the instrumentation of violin/singer, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, double bass, and percussion. They have played in various festivals and venues across America including Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, Boston Conservatory, The Donald J. Farish Auditorium at the Providence Public Library and have been presented by Con Vivo Music in Jersey City, NJ, The Johnstone Foundation for New Music in Columbus, OH, The Ecstatic Music Festival and MATA Interval Series in New York, and more. Exceptet is dedicated to commissioning new works from young and emerging composers, including a work by Rome Prize recipient Katherine Balch, which was generously funded by the Barlow Endowment.
Sarah Goldfeather is a composer-performer whose works include pieces for pianist Timo Andres, ETHEL quartet, Contemporaneous, Alkemie, W4RP, and Exceptet. She also co-writes and performs music for the experimental pop band Goldfeather and is the co-founder and artistic director, and violinist for the seven-piece new music ensemble Exceptet. As a violinist, Sarah has appeared on Broadway, including holding the violin chair in Broadway’s Oklahoma! and has performed at Disney Hall, Lincoln Center, New Sounds on WNYC, and more. She received a 2023 Finalist award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and Goldfeather (the band) won the innova Recordings National Call for their album, Change.
Paul Kerekes is a composer and pianist based in New York City who often confronts and blurs the space between composition and performance. As a co-founding member of Grand Band – a piano sextet described by the New York Times as “a kind of new-music supergroup” – and Invisible Anatomy – an “otherworldly and uncanny” (Village Voice) composer-performer ensemble/collective that’s “shedding labels” (Yale Alumni Magazine) – most of his projects engage and unify these two sometimes-disparate worlds. Both ensembles have had the pleasure of being featured on festivals across the States and abroad – most notably Grand Band’s performance of Kerekes’ first six-piano piece, wither, on The Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, which was described as “pointallistic, sparkling, and delicate” by the Kalamazoo Gazette, and Invisible Anatomy’s performance on the Beijing Modern Music Festival, which lead to consequent tours throughout China’s major cities.
Paul’s music has also been described as “gently poetic” (The New York Times), “striking” (WQXR), “highly eloquent” (New Haven Advocate) and he has had the privilege of hearing his pieces performed by many outstanding ensembles, some of which include the American Composers Orchestra, Da Capo Chamber Players, New Morse Code, guitarist Trevor Babb, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Real Loud, andPlay, and Exceptet in such venues as Merkin Hall, (le) poisson rouge, The DiMenna Center, Roulette, Spectrum, and Symphony Space. His compositions and playing have also been featured on NPR’s Performance Today hosted by Fred Child and released on major recording labels such as New Amsterdam Records, Innova, New Focus, and Naxos.
He is a recipient of the Morton Gould Young Composer Award from ASCAP, the JFund Award from the American Composer’s Forum, and the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. Paul is a graduate of Queens College and Yale School of Music and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
Called “some kind of musical Thomas Edison – you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle), Katherine Balch is a composer interested in found sounds, playfulness, intimate spaces, and natural processes. A recipient of the 2020/21 Rome Prize, Katherine’s music has been presented by leading ensembles and festivals including the New York Philharmonic, the Tokyo Symphony, Musikfest Berlin, and Tanglewood. When not making or listening to music, she can be found hiking, cooking, or building windchimes.
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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