Jacob Greenberg: Bright Codes

Jacob Greenberg will be a name familiar to many primarily for his essential role as the keyboard artist in ICE, one of those fine New York based new music ensembles that can play just about anything. At one time composers were forming their own ensembles to play the strange and difficult music they were writing (Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Steve Martland to name a few). Now ensembles like ICE are ready made, able to provide a flexible instrumentation and, with each musician, a stunning level of technical competence and a true affinity for the music of now.

Mr. Greenberg here is one of those multitasking, technically refined artists whose curatorial ear makes him an artist you need to have on your radar. In an earlier blog post I reviewed his solo (mostly) piano release Hanging Gardens in which he created an insightful contextualization by the choices of repertoire he made for the album. In response to this review he sent me a copy of this, the latest of his solo piano (mostly) projects.

The disc begins with music by probably the best known composer on this release, Japanese composer Dai Fujikura (1977- ). White Rainbow (2016) is a sort of tone poem for harmonium evoking the visual atmospheric phenomenon of a “fogbow” or “white rainbow”. It has an impressionistic feel much like Debussy. This is followed by the more experimental “Bright Codes” (2015-2018) for piano, four pieces which can be played in any order, but with the caveat that they be played without pause.

The next 5 tracks are dedicated to the 2018 “Funf Worte” (Five Words) by Amy Williams, five miniatures, each exploring a single German word. The piece is for harmonium and voice and the voice is the wonderful new music soprano, Tony Arnold. This is followed by a much larger piece for solo piano, “Cineshape 4” (2016) developed after the structure of the film “Run, Lola, Run” (1998). this virtuosic piece starts three times, each time developing differently analogously to said film.

“The Memory of Now” (2021) by IONE. This is a work for harmonium and voice. This time the voice is of the composer IONE, poet, dramatist, musician, playwright, and life partner of the late, great Pauline Oliveros. The piece has improvisational, indeterminate elements which require the performer(s) to listen to internal and external sounds.

The album ends with two large and powerful pieces by Nathan Davis. “Ghostlight” (2013) and “Seedling” (2019). Ghostlight is for “lightly prepared piano” and evokes the ambiance of those small single lights that shines on a darkened stage when the theater is closed. The preparations hep produce the ghostly microtones and gong-like sounds.

Seedling for harmonium and electronics brings us back to the sounds again of a harmonium. This is the only track which has appeared before and it was on the wonderful ICE release on Starkland Records (On the Nature of Thingness).

This sampling of some of the latest in contemporary composition reflects the use of extended instrumental and vocal techniques. It also makes use of experimental compositional techniques that demand deep involvement of the musicians in the execution of the music in ways that diverge from the conventional classical music paradigm. And it is the expansion of old paradigms that are ultimately what makes Greenberg and his ICE colleagues so compelling.

— Allan J. Cronin, 7.24.2022

This one may be a bit of a fringe case to be discussed on Vital. A classically trained pianist who plays pieces composed by other people. Well. But what caught my eye was the harmonium work. So I gave it a listen.

Greenberg is an experienced pianist, but also other keyboards. He teaches at a university, making his living, I guess but has an extensive catalogue of performing with orchestras, most USAmerican, but also from Israel and Australia, and solo, building a profile of modern composer renditions. One special aspect is his continuing collaboration with Soprano vocalist Tony Arnold. More about this later.

He kicks this CD off with two compositions by Dai Fujikura. The first uses an Indian-type harmonium (with a hand- in place of a foot-pump). This is a long track, moving between layers of harmonium sound and more delicate passages, finally dissolving into single notes. It would have profited from deciding for more one or the other, exploring the sound more than the notes (as a composer would tend to do, as opposed to an improvising artist). As such, the piece moves from sound layer to intimate sounds too quickly and often. Still, it is a welcome new addition to the sound sphere. Bright Codes is a 4-movement piece by Fujikura that reminds of Poulenc and Bartok mixed with Reich. Sometimes it even resonates a bit of an Impressionist atmosphere. However, four short parts achieve its goal better than the first.

Amy William is the composer of the five-word cycle Fuenf Worte that sees the collaboration with Arnold on this release. Every part uses a single German word. Sounds very eclectic and intellectual - until you read the words ... somebody knew what they were doing here. So the word 'Fingerspitzengefuehl' or even better 'Verschlimmbessern' get their classical music treatment. Probably for the first time ever. And, hey, the harmonium is back! it intricately illustrates and comments on the respective word, creating a comical backdrop. A really pleasant surprise after having dreaded another soprano vocals contemporary classical attack. Needless to say, the track 'Kuddelmuddel' really made my afternoon. The fourth piece, also by Williams, is modelled on the cinema film 'Lola Rennt' and uses very rhythmic deep piano notes (somewhat similar to what we hear from Hania Rani recently) very effectively contrasted with expressive piano set between Debussy and Keith Emerson.

The composition by IONE again uses the harmonium, this time with a mostly dissonant backdrop to the composers own voice speaking her poetry. And finally, we find two pieces by Nathan Davis. The first on the piano (aha: we recognise the pattern) offers one of the more virtuoso pieces on the CD. It has some elements of string preparation but nothing that would obscure the musical intention and is well placed in the 10-minute musical journey. Seedling, finally, entices the harmonium to produce some ambient-like sounds that build - not in layers, as this is not overly sound-processed - but intensity, in stretches creating a drone-like feeling.

Overall, an enjoyable release that for once adds some humour and smiles and new sounds to contemporary classical music.

— RSW, 12.14.2021

A perusal of the discography page at Jacob Greenberg's site credits him with piano on almost every recording he's released as a solo artist or appeared on as a collaborator or member of ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble). Two recent New Focus Recordings sets, for example, 2019's Neo/Classic and 2018's Hanging Gardens, feature him playing acoustic piano exclusively. That makes his latest collection, Bright Codes, all the more enticing for featuring Greenberg on harmonium and piano; enhancing its appeal is the fact that all of its pieces were written for him between 2013 and 2021. The project couldn't, in other words, be more personal.

Issued on ICE's in-house Tundra imprint, the eighty-minute set—equivalent in old-school terms to a double-album release—is an eclectic affair featuring material by Dai Fujikura, Amy Williams, IONE, and Nathan Davis. In writing the pieces for Greenberg, the composers naturally crafted them with his particular strengths in mind. Self-produced by the pianist, the material was recorded between 2017 and 2021 at Oktaven Audio in Mt. Vernon, New York. The inclusion of harmonium gives the recording a character dramatically unlike his other recordings and the pieces on which it appears a meditative, drone-like quality more associated with Eastern than Western music. Stated otherwise, its presence aligns seamlessly with Greenberg's inclinations and intrepid sensibility.

The album's tone is established by Fujikura's White Rainbow in being a harmonium-only performance. Titled after the white rainbow (also called a fogbow) that results from small droplets within a cloud, the piece exudes a gentle, luminous quality in keeping with the phenomenon after which it's titled. Advancing methodically, it unfurls in slow, wave-like movements, with gleaming harmonium timbres that could be mistaken for an accordion's. While the four piano miniatures of Fujikura's Bright Codes sonically relocate us within a comparatively familiar classical milieu, they reflect as explorative a compositional mindset as the titular setting.

Arranged for harmonium and voice, Williams' Fünf Worte comprises miniatures also, though in this case the five have soprano Tony Arnold concentrating on a single German word in each instance. Naturally the combination of the two elements makes for an arresting presentation, but it's the connection exemplified by the long-time collaborators—her singing's pivotal to Hanging Gardens, for instance—that's makes the performance so gripping. Whereas “Fingerspitzengefühl” and “Kuddelmuddel” are playful, “Verschlimmbessern” opts for brooding mysteriousness. Like Fujikura's pair, Williams' Cineshape 4 shifts the focus to acoustic piano after Fünf Worte, in this case a twelve-minute excursion the composer patterned after Run Lola Run (1998). The film famously begins its story the same way three times but has it develop differently with each telling, a form Cineshape 4 replicates. Similar to the film, the music is in constant motion, though passages do arise where it briefly slows, almost as if it's catching its breath before starting up again. Strangely enough, moments also emerge that take on a swinging, boogie-woogie feel.

Author and poet IONE perpetuates the album's experimental character in The Memory of Now, a trippy meditation that sees Greenberg fully engaged with the harmonium's potential and the composer intoning phrases (“sound, sound, the sounds of now … until a memory arises…") conducive to invoking free-flowing, spontaneous expressions in the dialogue. Bright Codes ends with two long-from settings by Nathan Davis, Ghostlight for lightly prepared piano and Seedling for harmonium and electronics. In the first, its title a reference to the sole bulb that shines on the dark stage of a closed theatre, objects were placed on or between some of the instrument's strings to produce microtonal pulses and gong-like sonorities that form a streaming backdrop to the piano's trajectory from highest to lowest registers. Particularly ear-catching is the intricate tapestry that gradually assembles as the piece advances towards its declamatory climax. Seedling ventures even further afield in merging the harmonium with electronic sounds, the softly shimmering and at times quivering result conjuring the image of tremulous micro-entities gracefully buoyed by the breeze.

It's safe to say Bright Codes won't dislodge Adele's new release (or whatever else is occupying the slot this week) from the top of the charts, but Greenberg's operating, of course, in an entirely other sphere. It's bold exploration, not commercialism, that drives him, and one comes away from the recording appreciative of the integrity embodied by this adventurous and uncompromising artistic undertaking.

— Ron Schepper, 12.23.2021

Pianist Jacob Greenberg is a longtime member of the International Contemporary Ensemble and released his solo debut album, Bright Codes, on its in-house Tundra label. All of the pieces here were written for him. Only two of the seven works included, one of them the title work by Dai Fujikura, are for a conventional solo piano; Nathan Davis' Ghostlight is for a "lightly prepared" piano. On the rest of the pieces, Greenberg plays an instrument that may well be unique in the annals of avant-garde music: a harmonium. This is stripped of its folk overtones (and its Indian origins) and placed in the role of an intermediary between the acoustic piano and the electronics that appear in several pieces. In IONE's The Memory of Now, the harmonium interacts with stochastic "sonic vocals," while in Amy Williams' Fünf Worte for harmonium and voice, it plays a more conventional keyboard role. In Davis' Seedling, the harmonium becomes a kind of acoustic-electronic instrument with haunting effect. The overall effect is of an experimental but wide-ranging attempt to extend the sonic realms of keyboard music, and while the album is clearly not for those lacking sympathy for avant-garde music, it will intrigue most others.

— James Manheim, 1.29.2022