Composer Richard Carrick's third release on New Focus, The Atlas, is an album length work for extended piano and string quartet that uses timbral exploration, integrated improvised elements, and building on the existing structure of the piano quintet repertoire to create a work that journeys through musical geography. This recording features Carrick in a performance with members of the ensemble he directs, Either/Or.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 47:48 | ||
| 01 | Compass | Compass | 5:44 |
| 02 | SeaGliss | SeaGliss | 5:09 |
| 03 | Penumbra | Penumbra | 7:53 |
| 04 | Expanse | Expanse | 8:05 |
| 05 | Interlude | Interlude | 1:55 |
| 06 | la terre | la terre | 4:46 |
| 07 | Solo | Solo | 1:14 |
| 08 | Cartographers | Cartographers | 6:15 |
| 09 | Journey through the Spheres | Journey through the Spheres | 6:47 |
Composer and pianist Richard Carrick’s third release on New Focus, The Atlas, maps new territory onto the familiar landscape of the piano quintet. Carrick explores a series of techniques that create an extended keyboard vocabulary, utilizing percussive effects and preparations. In recent years, Carrick has turned his focus towards graphic notation and improvisation, and The Atlas mixes these alternative approaches with conventional notation, creating a multi-practice performance. His omnivorous artistic spirit is ever present, as aspects of The Atlas are influenced by such wide ranging sources as Algerian folkloric music, Tom Waits, John Cage, Henry Cowell, Iancu Dumitrescu, and Morton Feldman.
Carrick’s title, The Atlas, references Peter Turchi's book Maps of the Imagination, specifically a passage that examines the link between maps and narratives: "Maps suggest explanations, and while explanations reassure us, they also inspire us to ask more questions, consider other possibilities. To ask for a map is to say, ‘Tell me a story.’” Carrick extrapolates this paradigm to his work with inside-the-piano techniques, exploring the territory on his own before notating his discoveries and inviting others to enter into the world with him.
With the first prepared keyboard tones of “Compass,” Carrick is already mapping out unexpected territory for the listener. The steady, gong-like attacks of the piano establish a regular pulse whose divisions are gradually inhabited by the other instruments as they enter. First, the strings imitate the dry attack of the piano with pizzicati, slowly bringing in swells and taut ponticello twangs and animating the rhythmic grid with triplets. Carrick varies ostinato material subtly, exploring the coloristic shadings of changing one or two notes within a modal context.
Read More“SeaGliss” is written in graphic notation, leaving room for the performers to interpret the realization of gestures. Punctuations, skittering figures, and tactile bursts inside the keyboard splash the texture with brilliance while the strings play long, ethereal glissandi. After expressive, energetic string solos, the entire ensemble arrives at a static halo of overtone sound (including e-bows in the piano) before the movement closes with a series of swooping gestures in the strings and a cacophonous flourish in the piano.
“Penumbra” has two sources of inspiration — a Frank Browning painting depicting the outer shadow of an object, and Algerian Chaabi music as celebrated in the movie El Gusto. A driving 6/4 groove comprised of a rumbling bass line, high pitched percussion, and a skittering rhythm in the strings underpins the movement. The violin and cello take turns flying over the top of this ostinato with earthy solo lines. A contrasting middle section features modal figuration in unison between violin and piano and then violin and cello.
“Expanse” opens with a muted, spinning keyboard arpeggio that produces a contrapuntal melodic line through the manipulation of the strings inside the keyboard with preparations. The strings enter with sighing swelled figures as a contrast to the percussive attacks in the piano. This interdependent textural relationship allows Carrick to explore and cycle through a long form harmonic progression and revel in the resonance of the ensemble.
The short “Interlude” is catalyzed by a repetitive gesture in the piano of a luminous chord, three repeated high pitches, and a sustained low register pedal. Around these towering verticalities, the strings play elastic, rhapsodic material. “la terre” is a transcription of a work for piano and pre-recorded tracks, mapped here onto the piano quartet. Its quirky, angular character owes much to the panoply of timbres and effects Carrick is able to elicit from the piano, while the strings play furious, insistent passages and strident, charged interjections.
The next two paired movements include some of the work’s most freely improvised music. A short “Solo” luxuriates in more conventional pianistic timbres; with the pedal depressed throughout, Carrick spins a halo of accumulated sound. That pad provides the launching point for the string entrance in “Cartographers,” a movement of luminosity for strings only that progresses from shimmering harmonics through shrouded muted plucks, and oblique virtuosity to tapped non-pitched fluttering.
“Journey through the Spheres” closes the album with a reprise of the spinning, muted motive heard in “Expanse.” Carrick uses this texture here to explore spectral possibilities, assigning the strings to highlight high partials emerging from the piano’s repeated figure. A powerful driving motive in the low register activates further spectral bloom, which Carrick alternates with sweeping keyboard arpeggios. It is a grand sonic close to a piece that is ultimately about mapping a new sound onto the time honored piano quartet instrumentation. Within that frame, Carrick explores many of the avenues that have recently piqued his interest, including improvisation, alternative notation, and non-Western music cultures. Working with his longtime collaborators of Either/Or, Jennifer Choi, Pala Garcia, Kal Sugatski and John Popham, they have refined an expressive and fluid performance practice that is beautifully on display in these recordings. The result is a compelling and fully formed statement from an artist who is constantly opening his ears to new sources of inspiration.
– Dan Lippel
Recorded September 20, 2023 at DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York, NY
Recording engineer: Chris Botta
Editing: Richard Carrick
Mixed and mastered by John Escobar in RedRoom of EscobarMusic
Paintings “Untitled #44” (front cover) & “Untitled #43” (back cover) by Richard Carrick, 2020
Design, typography & layout: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Richard Carrick is a musician of wide-ranging vocations and proclivities, whose calling spans composition, performance, conducting, teaching artistry, education, lecturing, ensemble leadership, and curation. His reputation as an international leader in contemporary music rests on his tireless curiosity, intercontinental body of experience, and ceaseless exploration across disparate musical fields. His music is characterized by spatial depth and robust stasis; continual development and the evocation of profound human experiences.
Described both as "charming, with exoticism and sheer infectiousness" and "organic and restless" by The New York Times, Carrick's music is influenced by his multicultural background and experiences as well as his commitment to inspire professionals, audiences and youth through composition and live performance. His music spans beyond solo, chamber and orchestral compositions to include conceived works incorporating dance, graphic scores, multiple video projections, and group and conducted improvisation.
Carrick’s music has been programmed and presented internationally at festivals including NYPHIL BIENNIAL, ISCM World Music Days- Switzerland, Library of Congress, Enescu Festival, Pacific Rim Festival, Miller Theatre, Mid-American New Music Festival, and Darmstadt Summer Festival, and performed by musicians including the JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Nieuw Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, Hyperion Ensemble, Sequitur Ensemble, Musica Nova, Hotel Elefant, Marilyn Nonken, Taka Kigawa, Margaret Lancaster, Vasko Dukovski, Jennifer Choi, Tony Arnold, Magnus Andersson, Steven Schick, Rohan de Saram, and others. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2015-16 Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition and a 2011 Fromm Foundation Commission.
Carrick is co-founder and co-artistic director of the contemporary music ensemble Either/Or, declared 'first rate' and ‘a trustworthy purveyor of fresh sounds’ by The New York Times, and winner of the 2015 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. As conductor and pianist, Carrick has worked closely with many celebrated composers including Helmut Lachenmann, Jonny Greenwood, Chaya Czernowin, Elliott Sharp, George Lewis, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Iancu Dumitrescu, Robert Ashley, Karin Rehnqvist and Raphael Cendo. Carrick conducting E/O's ambitious performance of “John Cage Party Pieces” premiered 125 scores by renowned composers from around the world.
A teaching artist of considerable skill and experience, Carrick was instrumental in the development and expansion of the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composer program, in which he mentored hundreds of young composers to compose pieces to be performed by New York Philharmonic musicians (including pieces for full orchestra). His work in the program has expanded to include mentorship for young composers in Korea, Japan and the UK. As part of his work as a Guggenheim fellow, Carrick also founded a young composer program in both Israel and Kigali, Rwanda.
Carrick is the Chair of Composition at Berklee College of Music, where he directs the Neither/Nor Composer/Performer Ensemble, and teaches composing for dance and alternate approaches for structuring real-time music creation. He has presented masterclasses and lectures throughout the US, Canada, Holland, France, UK, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Israel, Rwanda, Japan and South Korea. Former posts include composition faculty at Columbia University and New York University.
His CD release, Cycles of Evolution, incorporates pieces commissioned and performed by Musicians of the New York Philharmonic, Either/Or, Sweden’s Ensemble Son, Hotel Elefant and String Orchestra of Brooklyn. Carrick conducts or performs on all works on this CD, which includes his 'apocalyptic' multimedia work for performers and video, Prisoner's Cinema. Carrick's first recording, also on New World Records, the “rich, beguiling” (The New York Times) extended chamber composition Flow Cycle for Strings, translates psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'flow' principle into sonic terms. Carrick's improvisation-based disc Stone Guitars (New Focus Recordings) garnered critical attention in both the new music and guitar worlds, causing American Record Guide to note 'it may change your perception of electric guitar'.
A US/French citizen born in Paris of French-Algerian and British descent, Carrick received his BA from Columbia University, MA and PhD from the University of California-San Diego working with Brian Ferneyhough, and pursued further studies at IRCAM and the Koninklijk Conservatorium. Scores distributed by Project Schott New York.
http://www.richardcarrick.comNew 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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