Nomi Epstein: sounds

Composer Nomi Epstein is an integral part of Chicago’s new music community. She’s an educator, curator, and, most notably, the founder and leader of a.pe.ri.od.ic, the city’s most steadfast and open-ended ensemble devoted to experimental composition. Unfortunately, her advocacy has often obscured her work as a composer, so her first portrait album comes as a welcome reminder.

The collection includes three austere solo piano pieces—all performed by the superb Dutch pianist Reiner van Houdt—that on first blush suggest the influence of Morton Feldman. Till for Solo Piano opens with a spare, ascending six-note pattern that receives very subtle dynamic variations as it proceeds, in terms of attack, before applying a similar technique to a glassy dyad, and concluding with a single chord patiently decaying before repeating. The two-part Solo for Piano moves from cycling lower-register patterns into a series of shifting dyads that are still resonating when the next voicing occurs. For Collect/Project is a dynamic piece that uses voice (Frauke Aulbert), flute (Shanna Gutierrez), and electronics (Francisco Castillo Trigueros), all arranged in shifting combinations and timbres, while Sounds for Jeff and Eliza features Epstein on piano along with bass clarinetist Jeff Kimmel and flutist Eliza Bangert.

— Peter Margasak, 7.01.2020

Sounds is a delicate and sparse collection of pieces by Chicago-based composer Nomi Epstein. Deep listening often comes in the form of immersive drones, but here, Epstein brings about inner pontification through short phrases and quietude. This is the type of music whose silence is just as powerful as its sound.

— Vanessa Ague, 8.07.2020

US composer Nomi Epstein appears before us on a CD album with six compositions for solo piano and a few for small chamber configurations. The album is aptly titled Sounds (New Focus Recordings FCR260). Sounds is a meaningful title as Ms. Epstein's music gives us a heightened attention to the timbral qualities of tone production. It is also music that to some extent has the element of process, a semi-ritualized doing in patterns neither redolent of classical or song modes of unfolding (e.g., abacaba), rather coming to us with relation, at times repetition as abstraction, at times long tones and deliberate, open ended soundings that hang together like fantastic canvases in sound--in timbre-tone--where modern abstract visual art would use pigment.

The overall presence of the music including the repetitions are ambient in the manner of later Morton Feldman rather than, say, Steve Reich.

The trio of Frauke Aubert on voice, Shanna Gutierrez on bass flute and Francisco Castillo Trigueros on live electronics have special sonance on the 2016/19 "for Collect/Project." is simply gorgeous,a living breathing sound being that quietly maps out a path to a deep space inside us. It unfolds without a lot of repetition, through-composed cosmic tones it has in abundance.

The solo piano works alone are worth the entrance fee! Each has its magic. "Layers for Piano" (2015/18) is a memorable gem. Similarly there is mysterious beauty in "Till for Solo Piano" (2003) as well as "Solo Piano Part I: Waves" (2007/11) and "Part II: Dyads" (2007/11/19).

The 2018 "Sounds for Jeff and Eliza" makes a beautiful sonance for Eliza Bangert, flute, Jeff Kimmel, bass clarinet and the composer at the piano. Long tones alternate in ways that iterate same and altered, change and stasis in ways that are exceedingly beautiful if you allow them to open to you.

This music has the kind of depth that perhaps is the antithesis of the "popular." That is not to say that it does not open the listening self to sheer aural expressivity, with a widely spatial lyricism that is not literal in the way it "means," but nonetheless has much to understand in the way it straddles the inner aural self and a potentially infinite outward spatiality.

If you give this one enough listening frequency it should pay you back with a profoundly meditative inner space when you return to each new listening session. In this way it affirms that there are indeed places to go beyond the American School of Cage and Feldman. Highly recommended.

— Grego Applegate Edwards, 9.13.2021

Composer/pianist Nomi Epstein’s music, as demonstrated on the portrait recording sounds, is made up of fine-grained distinctions between sounds and between sound and non-sound. This is evident particularly in the three compositions for solo piano: Till (2003), Solo for Piano (2007-19), and Layers for Piano (2015/18), all of them performed by Reinier van Houdt. Till, which opens the album, surrounds deliberately picked out, largely quiet individual notes and chords with silences to create differential effects of dynamics and register. The first part of the two-part Solo for Piano, appropriately titled “Waves,” features oscillating, closely-spaced tones that particularly in the lower registers merge into something like a massed, grey noise. The second part opposes “Waves’” sonic blur with unhurried, precisely defined pitch groups. Layers for Piano, a three-part work, places delicate sonic fragments consisting of single notes and muffled dissonances within a range of quiet, subtly distinguishable dynamics. The other two compositions in the collection are for trios: of voice, bass flute and electronics, and for flute, bass clarinet, and piano. The first of these, for Collect/Project (2016-19), is a low-key drama of contrasts between the hollow tones of the bass flute (Shanna Gutierrez) and the abrasively dense interventions of the electronics (Francisco Castillo Trigueros). When Frauke Aulbert’s voice breaks through into a sonic clearing, the effect is bracing and revelatory. The 2016 sounds for Jeff and Eliza, for flutist Eliza Bangert and bass clarinetist Jeff Kimmel, who perform it here along with the composer on piano, builds harmonies from the wind instruments’ multiphonics superimposed on isolated notes and chords from the piano. The piece’s very slow harmonic rhythm lends it a sense of timelessness.

— Daniel Barbiero, 6.08.2020

Nomi Epstein is the leader of the New Music ensemble a.pe.ri.od.ic, which has performed quietly radical music in Chicago for the last ten years. The group’s presentations have included music by Michael Pisaro, Catherine Lamb, Christian Wolff and Pauline Oliveros. Many times, the featured composers directly collaborate with a.pe.ri.od.ic, either during rehearsals or helping to perform their music. In the weeks before COVID-19 shut everything down, Epstein and her ensemble performed one piece by Peter Ablinger that involved plumbing the raw acoustics of a loading dock, and another by Annea Lockwood that translated a map of Houston’s bayous into a score for sounds that floated like ghostly memories.

To effectively present such music, one must often grasp diverse, elusive concepts and frame them without drawing unnecessary attention to one’s own presence; working variously and often concurrently as a conductor and performer, Epstein has done this many times over. But she is also a composer, and while she has contributed to a.pe.ri.od.ic’s programs over the years, sounds is her first solo recording.

Over the album’s 76-minute duration, pianist Reinier van Houdt plays three lengthy compositions alone, and two very different trios handle the rest. Together they present a stance that is economical, patient and particularly concerned with permutating patterns. But patience doesn’t mean that you can’t put the pedal down; van Houdt does just that on Till for solo piano, which enables him to articulate one iteration of a chord or phrase while another hands in the air. Over the course of nine and a half minutes, the moments when hammers hits wires seem to shift from foreground to background, overtaken by a fog of decaying sound. The next piece, for Collect/Project, changes the scene like a suddenly activated overhead floodlight. Nothing cloaks the trio’s articulation, and both the distant-train woosh of Francisco Castillo Trigueros’ electronics and the initial back-of-the-throat cackle of Frauke Aulbert’s voice will bring you up short. As the piece progresses, Aulbert and bass flautist Shanna Gutierrez juxtapose and overplay similar phrases and gestures so that even when you hear one musician at a time, you always hear them in relation to each other.

Epstein only plays on one track, sounds for Jeff and Eliza. It would be fair to call her creeping phrases “composer’s piano,” but don’t take that as faint praise; it’s a recognition that when she is present, it’s to perform a function, and part of that function is to point your ear where she wants it to go. Each ringing note sets a boundary that around the long tones of Jeff Kimmel’s bass clarinet and Eliza Bangert’s flute. As on Till for solo piano, repetition and duration erode one’s sense of time and sharpen one’s focus on the sounds themselves. That self-effacement probably also explains why van Houdt’s playing is what you hear on the two-part Solo for Piano and Layers for Piano. By handing the performance over to a player with such an exacting touch, she invites the listener once more to spend some time inhabiting the realm of sounds.

— Bill Meyer, 10.09.2020

There is something absolutely irresistible in the way Nomi Epstein confronts matters of boundary. The dis-ease involved in categorizing her music, a boundary issue to be sure, is certainly not reflected in the listening. Her work is beautiful, quietly challenging and infinitely subtle, catering to nothing but the emergence of each element in a malleable context. To point to the near-silent felicities of so much Wandelweiser would be both obvious and far too easy, because Epstein’s music bristles with a different sort of energy. Hers is a soundworld of beauty and concision, but as each piece unfolds, depth of experiential listening occurs via the superficially simplest means. Her ensemble pieces are studies in timbral chromaticism. Something akin to the Spectralists is at work as Jeff Kimmel’s bass clarinet and Eliza Bangert’s flute transcend their boundaries on the titular piece, dedicated to them. It is almost rapturous to hear their multiphonics elide with Epstein’s delicate pianism. Dig into the special moment captured at 5:46, just to cite one frozen instant as tone and sound meld to push harmonic boundaries well past convention. Such a moment has its analog as Frauke Aulbert’s vocalizations usher in For Collect/Project (2016–19). If Alvin Lucier is invoked in its pulsing clarinet and oscillator sweeps, the interactions are entirely Epstein’s own as they inhabit different areas of the stereo spectrum, the sum total alive and brimming with the occasionally confrontational energy a great concert recording can offer.

The other pieces are similarly vibrant. Piano recordings are improving by leaps and bounds, as exemplified by Reinier van Houdt’s superb contributions. As annotator Jennie Gottschalk observes, the unifying factor here is subtle differentiation, and van Houdt’s playing is a treat for the ears. In the sonorities comprising Till’s subtly Protean repetitions, he realizes Epstein’s contrasting stabilities and instabilities with grace and power mirroring the breadth of the recording itself. Every nuance of the instrument is captured in technicolor, every resonance clear, present, and finally evaporating into the nebulous region between mist and point. Conversely, “Waves,” part of Solo for Piano, rumbles and glides along beneath a glassy surface of upper partials, but it’s the way notes are connected that separates van Houdt’s playing from that of so many practitioners of “contemporary” music. Layers brings the various elements of Epstein’s piano writing together and makes a wonderfully expansive but nuanced conclusion to this excellent portrait disc.

I’m not in the habit of reading liner notes, or anything else, as I listen to a disc, but Jennie Gottschalk’s accompanying essay is such an excellent guide through these tones and timbres that a recommendation is in order. She knows this music from all directions but allows the mystery behind it to remain silent. The package is unified in that music and notes present a dialogue whose subject matter, at its core, is embodied beautifully and succinctly in the album’s title.

— Marc Medwin, 2.22.2021

Already featured twice in the New Focus catalog as member and director of the collective a•pe•ri•od•ic, Chicago pianist and composer Nomi Epstein has an obvious affinity with the poetics of Wandelweiser, an expressive “movement” that more than any other perpetuated the legacy of Morton Feldman and of John Cage’s late ‘number pieces’. This bond is also reflected in her curatorial activity which, up to now, has led her to organize a celebration in five concerts for the centenary of Cage’s birth in 2012, and a festival dedicated to the same Wandelweiser in 2014.

In her first portrait album, the American author appropriately entrusts her pieces for solo piano to Reinier van Houdt, one of the most sensitive interpreters of today’s reductionist avant-garde, already in close collaboration with Michael Pisaro (The Earth and the Sky, Shades of Eternal Night) and Bruno Duplant (Lettres et Replis).

The uncertain, immersive atmosphere of “Till for solo piano” (2003), clearly inspired by Feldman, highlights the changeability of a same ascending progression – repeated between the second and fourth minute – based on the degree of pressure on the keys, alternately skimmed or struck hard like little stabs; around this moment of epiphanic suspension there’s a coming and going of questioning phrases, gently disconnected textures that lead to the extreme synthesis of the hovering irresoluteness, with the regular tolling of a single chord left to resonate with the sustain pedal.

At first more abstract and elemental is the diptych “Waves / Dyads” (2007/11/19): gloomy atonal ripples in the low register evoke the perpetual motion of a restless nocturnal tide, until the indistinct tangle of darkness unravels in the second movement, stark and shining in the calm pace of minor and irregular chords (dyads, in fact) which, despite this, are far from an even temporary pacification of the soul.

Lastly, “Layers for Piano” (2015/18) is a further, perhaps less incisive variation on the late Feldman’s moods tending to colourlessness, structured according to three different but uninterrupted temporalities and articulations: the second in particular, as pointed out by Jennie Gottschalk in the liner notes, complements the supporting melody with respective “shadow pitches”, like a tracing of vague footprints that further undermine its fragile balance.

The coherent solo corpus is accompanied by two more parallel glances to Epstein’s sound universe, this time in relation to wind instruments: the trio “for Collect/Project” (2016/19) explores the twin phonetic properties of bass flute (Shanna Gutierrez ), voice (Frauke Aulbert), and electronics (Francisco Castillo Trigueros), hypothetical manifestations of a same breath at the meeting point between Salvatore Sciarrino’s imaginary naturalism and Alvin Lucier’s microtonal shifts.

Finally, the threadlike harmonies of “sounds for Jeff and Eliza” (2018, respectively Jeff Kimmel on bass clarinet and Eliza Bangert on flute) also are the opaque reflection of the piano chords performed by the author herself, the primary source of a tonal glare that in the soft breaths and overtones of the winds unequivocally traces back to Jürg Frey — one of Wandelweiser’s most distinctive exponents. Thus is closed the circle of contemporary protagonists who variously inform the emerging style of Nomi Epstein, even now quite valuable and worthy of attention.

— Michele Palazzo, 6.14.2020

Pianist Nomi Epstein writes magical, otherworldly, spacious music that sometimes brings to mind Federico Mompou, other times Messiaen. The piano pieces on her new album Sounds – streaming at Bandcamp – linger with an often mournful, sparse belltone ambience. These works are deceptively minimalist: the way Epstein slowly shifts between relentlessly unsettled harmonies is artful to the extreme. She keeps the pedal down for maximum resonance. If there was any sound tailor-made for the unreality and immersive angst of the lockdown, this is it.

The first composition is Till For Solo Piano, played meticulously by Reinier van Houdt. The obvious antecedent seems to be Satie’s Vexations; the way Epstein subtly shifts harmonies while maintaining a creepy, bell-like ambience is as masterful as it is hypnotic.

Solo for Piano part I: Waves is aptly titled, its graceful series of low lefthand rumbles building a picturesque portrait of water washing a beach at night, and slowly brightening from there. The minute dynamic shifts in the brooding, steady conversation between left and righthand in the uninterrupted, eighteen-minute part two, Dyads are more celestially captivating. Again, Satie’s Vexations comes to mind

Van Houdt returns to the keys for the concluding number, Layers for Piano, with its contrasts between stygian reflecting-pool resonance in the lefthand with slowly shifting, spare, unsettling close-harmonied accents in the right. Occasional flinging gestures in the the upper registers dash any hope of a persistent, meditative state.

There are also two chamber works here. For Collect/Project, a hazy, lighthearted electroacoustic piece featuring vocalist Frauke Aulbert with Shanna Gutierrez on bass flute is ridiculously funny in places. And the composer herself plays the album’s sparest piano on the title track, Eliza Bangert’s flute and Jeff Kimmel‘s bass clarinet providing nebulous wave motion and a mist of overtones behind her. What a stunningly individualistic and often haunting album: let’s hope Epstein can continue build on what promises to be a brilliant body of work.

— Delarue, 2.10.2021

Trois ans déjà...tant pis, car ce disque mérite de figurer dans ces colonnes. Pourquoi ? Parce que le pianiste Reinier van Houdt est présent en solo sur quatre titres (le disque en compte six). Je sais qu'il est là du côté des musiques essentielles. Et ce cd portrait de la compositrice américaine de Boston Nomi Epstein est passionnant d'un bout à l'autre !

"Till for solo piano"(2003) fait partie de ces pièces mystérieuses qui semblent les facettes mêmes d'un silence rayonnant. Ce sont de courtes phrases, interrogatives peut-être, insistantes, des phrases perdues dans les rets de leurs résonances, elles marchent doucement, fermement, dans des lacs de lumière, au seuil de quelque chose. Puis une note revient, tel un battement de cloche : nous sommes ailleurs…

"for Collect/Project"(2016/19), pour voix, flûte basse et électronique en direct, parcourt une série de couleurs, de formes, passant de l'une à l'autre avec une grande aisance, si bien que l'hétérogénéité de la pièce devient sa richesse.

Puis c'est le "Solo pour piano" (2007), vingt-cinq minutes en deux parties inégales, "Waves" pour un peu moins de huit minutes, et "Dyads" pour dix-sept minutes. Reinier van Houdt, comme d'habitude, est royal dans les vagues graves de l'instrument : une descente abyssale bruissante d'harmoniques bourdonnantes, floues. "Dyads" articule au contraire très nettement les notes, bien séparées, et c'est une montée lente, fragile dans sa pesanteur. On pourrait dire que c'est un essai de montée, car ne repart-on pas du même point ? Ce qui compte, c'est la réitération têtue, la volonté de décoller les semelles, contrariée par la lourdeur d'une charge, comme la marche d'un homme accablé sous le poids de sa Chimère dans le poème en prose Chacun sa chimère de Charles Baudelaire. Arriveront-ils jamais ? Il n'y a plus que cette marche, elle pourrait être infinie…

Nomi Epstein est elle-même au piano sur "Sounds for Jeff and Eliza" (2018), également pour clarinette basse (Jeff Kimmel) et flûte (Eliza Blangert), les sons discontinus du piano ponctuant, découpant les plages continues des deux autres instruments. Répétitions et superpositions construisent un univers sonore méditatif, une sorte de labyrinthe de souffles et de brèves déflagrations lumineuses. Dans la lignée de Morton Feldman, une pièce fascinante, superbe.

Reinier van Houdt interprète à nouveau la dernière pièce de ce portrait, "Layers for piano" (2015/18), en trois parties enchaînées. La première, mesurée, joue sur de longues notes soutenues. La seconde, non mesurée, détache davantage les notes, semble rebondir à chaque fois dans l'inconnu. Seule une oreille avertie, exercée, distinguera ces parties (où commence la troisième ?), tant le parcours est cohérent, semé de courtes grappes tout au long de cette belle errance.

Un disque magnifique de musique contemporaine contemplative.

{translation via google:

Three years already... so much the worse, because this disc deserves to appear in these columns. For what ? Because the pianist Reinier van Houdt is present in solo on four titles (the disc has six). I know he is there on the side of essential music. And this cd portrait of the American composer from Boston Nomi Epstein is fascinating from start to finish!

"Till for solo piano" (2003) is one of those mysterious pieces which seem to be the very facets of a radiant silence. They are short sentences, interrogative perhaps, insistent, sentences lost in the nets of their resonances, they walk gently, firmly, in lakes of light, on the threshold of something. Then a note returns, like a beating of a bell: we are elsewhere...

"for Collect/Project" (2016/19), for voice, bass flute and live electronics, runs through a series of colors, shapes, moving from one to another with great ease, so that the heterogeneity of the piece becomes its richness.

Then it is the "Solo for piano" (2007), twenty-five minutes in two unequal parts, "Waves" for a little less than eight minutes, and "Dyads" for seventeen minutes. Reinier van Houdt, as usual, is royal in the bass waves of the instrument: a rustling abyssal descent of buzzing, hazy harmonics. "Dyads" on the contrary very clearly articulates the notes, well separated, and it's a slow rise, fragile in its heaviness. You could say it's an attempt to climb, because don't we start from the same point? What counts is the stubborn reiteration, the will to take off the soles, thwarted by the heaviness of a load, like the march of a man overwhelmed by the weight of his Chimera in the prose poem Each one his chimera of Charles Baudelaire. Will they ever arrive? There is only this walk, it could be infinite...

Nomi Epstein is herself at the piano on "Sounds for Jeff and Eliza" (2018), also for bass clarinet (Jeff Kimmel) and flute (Eliza Blangert), the discontinuous sounds of the piano punctuating, cutting up the continuous ranges of the other two instruments . Repetitions and superpositions construct a meditative sound universe, a kind of labyrinth of breaths and brief bursts of light. In the tradition of Morton Feldman, a fascinating, superb piece.

Reinier van Houdt performs again the last piece of this portrait, "Layers for piano" (2015/18), in three linked parts. The first, measured, plays on long sustained notes. The second, unmeasured, further detaches the notes, seems to bounce each time into the unknown. Only a well-informed, trained ear will distinguish these parts (where does the third start?), so coherent is the course, strewn with short clusters throughout this beautiful wandering.

A magnificent record of contemplative contemporary music. ]

— n/a, 7.12.2023