la vida que vendráOrlando Jacinto García & loadbang

Some New Music, as here, isn’t intent on keeping up with avant-garde sound worlds or the invention of complex structures. There’s an old-fashioned feeling to this collection of electro-acoustic chamber works by Cuban-American composer Orlando García—the booklet note uses that word—because solo instruments occupy the foreground, playing live, while the electronics, which are pre-recorded, do their own thing. The mood is often meditative, pulling the listener inward, and even the bold brass (piccolo trumpet and trombone) are mostly subdued, the equivalent of a moody downtown lounge after midnight. Not that jazz is implicated—stasis, minimal gestures, and quietude dominate.

All this evokes remembrance of how electronic music evolved from its early incarnations, but García is also old-fashioned in the modesty of how he applies his electronics, which at times softly echo the acoustic soloist, offer a mirror reflection, or create a hazy halo of background ambience. You are always aware of his focus on timbre as a musical quality that is captivating by itself, needing only a stream of discrete gestures to enhance it.

The effect is illustrated immediately in the first work, Resonating Color Fields, for piccolo trumpet (even though a good deal sounds like a regular trumpet to me). The first minute is occupied by sustained notes from the trumpet climbing a scale, your attention drawn to each note’s reverberation, subtly altered by electronics. Events get a little more complicated through quick staccato repetition of a note, while the timbral aspect of the piece (the color field) begins to ring brightly, while trumpeter Andy Kozar blends into his pre-recorded self. A listener’s response will depend on how appealing you find it to hear minimal gestures mirrored by restrained electronica.

The same is true for the other three solo works, which have been tailored to the membership of the New Music quartet, loadbang, consisting of trumpet, bass clarinet, trombone, and baritone singer. Needless to add, such an idiosyncratic ensemble has had to fashion its own repertoire.

The vocal work, en un universo paralelo, finds baritone Ty Bouque ranging from soliloquy to multi-layered choral singing with his pre-recorded self. The text consists of the work’s title along with references to the titles of other works on the program, but the words are mostly fragmented into anonymous sustained tones. The singer also whistles and whispers. The result is a one-man choral group dwindling and expanding from one layer to many, or as the notes fittingly put it, Bouque’s voice folds in on itself.

García’s bass clarinet piece, Conversations with Harry, departs from the previous works by making the electronics an equal partner. This is because the conversation is with a taped clarinetist, Harry Spaarnaay, giving a demonstration of extended techniques for the instrument. Eerie, sometimes inchoate, sounds are created, and it is nearly impossible to discern where soloist and electronics merge and separate, except that Adrian Sandí’s bass clarinet is mostly undistorted. The contour of the piece is static, so that the main interest is comes from shifting colors and timbres, in other words, a variant on García’s “color fields” concept.

A direct method for creating stasis, as illustrated in the trombone piece, nubes nocturnes, is to play an uninterrupted drone, which in this case consists of a fundamental tone alternating with a major second. This creates a deep sustained resonance that can sound like Tibetan throat singing, at least in my imagination. It takes a while before the drone modulates slightly, but throughout, the music seems like an exercise in breath control for soloist William Lang. Given the length of the sustained drone, he had a chance to check his smartphone with his free hand. Only an interest in utter minimalism, which I don’t possess, could carry a listener from the piece’s beginning to end.

For the final and only acoustic work on the program, la vida que vendrá, which is also the album’s title work, loadbang assembles as a whole. García’s titles have tended toward the spiritual, and this one translates as “the life to come.” The best-known exploiter of Minimalist stasis to create a spiritual atmosphere is Arvo Pärt, and one might think of García following a similar path. But there is more rhythmic life than in Pärt, even if García’s fondness for unison, sustained notes without variance, and a reliance on intervals in place of melody is stark. The program notes speak of Cuban rhythms in the percussion effects called for, like the metallic tapping on the trombone, but I don’t hear the Stravinskian detachment that is also mentioned despite a remote resemblance to his Symphonies of Wind Instruments.

The writing is adroit for the three instruments and singer—it almost has to be—and when you throw in the simple consonant chords that wend slowly along, la vida que vendrá is undoubtedly accessible, holding immediate appeal for general listeners. An added advantage is the unthreatening nature of the electronics. I can’t quite decide, however, if García’s restrained method is varied enough in the solo pieces—a good deal depends on how aligned you are to minimalist pacing and stasis in general. Online sampling is called for.

Four stars: An appealing, somewhat old-fashioned approach to electro-acoustic music

— Huntley Dent, 6.28.2024