Not your ordinary violins, violas, and cellos
(Modney pictured; photo from video by Frank Heath)
Maybe it was seeing Marshall Allen and the Sun Ra Arkestra play “Holiday for Strings” at NYC Summerstage, but I’ve had strings on my mind with the coming of summer. And yes, I know “Holiday for Strings” was conceived by Ra as a piece with no strings, but there’s been such a wealth of great new releases featuring violinists, violists, and cellists that it’s a great excuse to focus on string music. It’s time for picnics and summer holidays, which make me think of music, but the strings below likely won’t be playing at your next family barbecue (although maybe they should be😉). So here’s our first volume celebrating the power and lively dissonance of strings!
Modney – Ascending Primes
Since moving to NYC in 2007, violinist and composer Josh Modney (now simply Modney) has been part of an artistic space rooted in modern classical music but strongly influenced by jazz and improvisational music practices. With Ascending Primes, Modney plugs in and becomes a rock star. You experience this transformation right away on “Ascender,” the opening track of this two-disc collection. Modney’s solo violin plays a soaring unamplified theme, but a minute in, Modney hits the distortion pedal, and from that point, “Ascender” alternates between acoustic violin phrases and buzzing in-your-face feedback. The effect is bold and, yes, electrifying. Modney returns to his pedal throughout Ascending Primes; dramatic distortion tags the end of “Everything Around It Swells,” and “Fragmentation and the Single Form” is bookended by two amped violins. The last three minutes of that composition may be the most overt rock moment of the album, one that wouldn’t be out of place with a noisy punk or shoegaze band.
But while noise is an important element of Ascending Primes, it’s only one part of a varied and sophisticated program, and there are plenty of quiet moments and music of great beauty. In an excellent interview on the radio show Evening Eclectic (where disc jockey Dave Lake also spins the whole album), Modney states his goal is to expand the continuum of music from consonance to dissonance by employing both equal and just temperament systems. This gives him the widest palette of harmonic possibilities and the greatest range of expression. Ascending Primes brilliantly juxtaposes these elements: for example, in what Modney calls the “heart center” of “Fragmentation and the Single Form,” lovely cornet playing by Ben LaMar Gay and wordless vocals by Charmaine Lee contrast the noise that bookends the piece. The quintet “Everything Around It Moves” is introduced by aggressive intervallic strings that transition into a gentle theme expressively played by violist Kyle Armbrust, and behind that, evocative colors from the piano of Cory Smythe. Even Modney’s solo performance that opens the album carefully reveals contrasting elements – the center of the performance features rich and consonant whole tones that are a far cry from the burning noise elements that Modney also embraces. Ascending Primes is deep in contrasts between consonance and dissonance, beauty and cacophony, and composed and improvised spaces. It’s a rich album that demands and rewards multiple listens, and I’ve been coming back again and again.
One of the points that Modney makes in an interview with PostGenre is that New York City has become the home to a unique cross-pollination between musicians associated with “jazz” and those who play “modern classical” or “new music.” Ascending Primes is a perfect distillation of this exciting and fertile environment. It features music that moves easily in the spaces between these worlds and employs musicians who convincingly erase any boundaries. There’s a lot more to say about this remarkable album, and I can direct you not only to the Dave Lake and PostGenre interviews but also to a review of this album by the always-insightful Peter Margasak. Ascending Primes presents stimulating and deeply conceived music with perfect execution and presentation from all involved.
Paula Sanchez – Sólo un pasaje
If you found Modney’s use of an amped violin as thrilling as I did and want to hear that approach carried to its extreme, you should listen to Paula Sanchez’s new Sólo un pasaje. Sanchez is a cello player based in Switzerland whose bio says her music is “situated at the intersections of experimental music, free improvisation, and performance art.” In her notes to this release, Sanchez says, “I would like to think of sound as a passage, an endless transition. . . A path that shows itself as it is traveled.” That philosophy typifies a release that is a snapshot into both an artistic process and what it may be like to experience this music live.
Sólo un pasaje consists of improvised solo performances recorded at two different venues. The first track, “Solo at Cave 12,” begins quietly enough, with the use of lots of space and spare amplified pizzicato over an arco drone. The music steadily builds until 15 minutes in, when Sanchez has added layers of earth-shaking noise and distortion that could frighten the neighbors. The next track, “Solo at Tobe Gallery,” is half the length and dives right into the chaos and dissonance from the start. Sólo un pasaje is not subtle and does not aim to be – it’s about the visceral experience of totally out, freely improvised music. Hearing this live might just be the ticket – so get yours now to see Sanchez with Fred Frith at Cafe Oto on October 20th – a great reason to jump on a plane to London.
James Díaz (with Julia Jung Un Suh) – [speaking in a foreign language]
After all the intensity and noise from Modney and Paula Sanchez, you may need a breather. Composer James Díaz has just released an album of cool, ethereal, and mysterious music based on violin with electronics. The Philadelphia-based Díaz has composed scores for internationally renowned orchestras, as well as written chamber and solo works. For his first solo album, Díaz operates in a quieter realm; on [speaking in a foreign language] Julia Jung Un Suh plays solo violin music, to which Díaz applies electronic processing in real-time and also later in the editing process. The result is one of the most unique albums I’ve heard this year.
Both the music and the process are fascinating. Díaz uses his electronic kit to modify the pitches and sound of Jung Un Suh’s violin, allowing you to simultaneously experience the natural sound of the acoustic instrument with its deep well of associations and a ghost-like mirror image that is uncanny and new. The effect is jarring, beautiful, and subtly trance-inducing. The novel soundscape allows Jung Un Suh to play very melodic material that also has a faint air of menace and is never trite. As the album unfolds, Díaz shifts the mix subtly towards the electronic elements; eventually, those electronics swallow the violin altogether, and [speaking in a foreign language] ends with a hall-of-mirrors effect of eerie echoes and static, warbles and blips. Díaz has created a unique enmeshing of acoustic sounds and modern digital effects – it’s also the perfect late-night listen!
Nick Dunston – Colla Voce
I also keep returning to bassist Nick Dunston’s Colla Voce, which combines disparate elements to create something layered, complex, and utterly fantastic. Right away, you can judge if this is for you – the opening track, “Ova’churr,” is a sound collage that compresses the album’s sonic material into a dense and hallucinatory minute and a half. Then, “Designated Antagonist” introduces the sound of the JACK string quartet, whose approach is the central element of Colla Voce. JACK contributes a wide and nonconventional palette of sounds. For example, volleys of streaking strings shoot between your speakers on the opening to “Blinding, Joyous, Fearful.” Elsewhere, percussive string effects segue into a low growling drone on “Lo and Behold.” There is one startling example after another of the JACK quartet sounding nothing like any chamber group you’ve heard.
But that’s only part of the sonic elements Dunston uses to create the tapestry of Colla Voce. He also employs an ensemble in Berlin (where Dunston lives), which augments the JACK quartet, adding cello, guitar, drums, and another violin (played by Maria Reich – more on her below), along with Dunston’s bass. The tracks recorded in Berlin also add four vocalists – Cansu Tanrıkulu, Sofia Jernberg, Isabel Crespo Pardo, and Friede Merz – who deliver wildly innovative wordless vocals that capture the album’s themes of surrealism, the subjective view of reality, and subverting musical forms. Dunston calls it an “anti-opera.” Then, on top of all that, Dunston adds processing with the help of producer Weston Olencki, creating a heady brew of music that is simultaneously disorienting and enthralling. When I first listened to Colla Voce, I had to turn it off because there was just too much to absorb. After multiple listens, I’m coming to understand more of what’s going on. What has grabbed me the most are the radical experiments in string writing, where the physicality of the playing makes sound tactile. Each time I put Colla Voce on, it gets better and richer.
Maria Reich – INTERDEPENDEZEN
Violinist Maria Reich is one of the core players on Nick Dunston’s Colla Voce. If you love the strings on that album, Reich’s new album INTERDEPENDEZEN is a great way to spend more time appreciating the range of sounds and approaches that the violin (or, on two tracks here, the viola) is capable of. I’m not sure whether INTERDEPENDEZEN is so rewarding in spite of, or because of, its humble process: Reich assembled the album from solo field recordings made using her iPhone. Like the best field recordings, the player and the instrument are only part of the story – the lo-fi sound expressively captures the sonic qualities of the spaces where the recordings were made, and the approach gains impact from the haze of reverb in the sound space that creates an aura around the playing.
Nothing here is by chance, and Reich’s imaginative playing and organized concepts are always clear. The first track of INTERDEPENDEZEN sounds at first like it comes from a more conventional violin recital, but by the end of “Ent-täuschen,” Reich explores a range of approaches to melodic material and to sound itself. The pizzicato playing of “Spiegelungen” sounds like raindrops; the third track, “The Fabric,” appropriately sounds like paper tearing. I especially love the “World in(forms) us,” built around a descending theme that you could imagine being played by a string orchestra, but here presented humbly and winningly as a soft pizzicato quietly played near the violin’s bridge. Sometimes (well, pretty often) “experiments” in sound can bore the listener, but not on INTERDEPENDEZEN. Reich uses simple low-tech tools to create fascinating sonic worlds. I initially had this music on in the background, and it kept diverting my attention from other things – a sign of a captivating approach as well as deep ideas.
Janel Leppin – Ensemble Volcanic Ash: To March Is To Love
The 2022 self-titled release Ensemble Volcanic Ash was one of that year’s best albums, recognized at Bandcamp, JazzTimes, and here at The Necessary Blues. That album stood out for a sound that centered bandleader Janel Leppin’s cello in the context of a unique group of harp, guitar, tenor and alto sax, bass, and drums. With the new To March Is To Love, Leppins’ group is now a septet without Kim Sator’s harp, but the music and playing have lost none of their potency. In a recent interview, Leppin says, ‘I tried to make things a little more concise. . . I omitted a lot of improvisation on this recording, which I don’t like to do, but I also like to vary records.” There’s still plenty of solo space, but that conciseness lends power to the music, most prominently on the album’s use of muscular pedal point played by Leppin’s cello. At times, Leppin’s cello carries the bottom end, while Luke Stewart’s bass solos over the cello line, and other times, vice versa. None of the players dominate the group sound, but there’s plenty of opportunity to take the spotlight; Sarah Hughes takes a great solo on “Oh Johnny Dear,” and Brian Settles’ powerful tone is a crucial element of the title track and “Tennessee’s A Drag.” Another mark of maturity is the restraint with which Anthony Pirog’s guitar is deployed as part of the fabric of the written themes. All the more impact when Pirog takes center stage – don’t miss the smoking guitar solo on “Union Art.” Above all, the combination of the powerful ensemble sound and Leppin’s great original compositions and arrangements make To March Is To Love a winner.
Janel and Anthony – New Moon In The Evil Age
Released on the same day as To March Is To Love, New Moon In The Evil Age is a new double album from Leppin and her husband Anthony Pirog, who record as Janel and Anthony. This much anticipate release is their first music together as Janel and Anthony since 2012’s Where Is Home. The press kit for New Moon In The Evil Age states that they create “original music with a clairvoyance that their other projects cannot approach,” a claim I can’t dispute based on the terrific and varied sounds on this project. Disc one contains duets where Leppin’s cello and Pirog’s guitar shadow each other beautifully. On the second track, “Boom Boom,” Leppin plays koto, a practice that she says has influenced her cello playing. I especially like the tribute to jaime branch, “jaime’s Song,” which is built around an appropriately moving cello line with strumming counterpoint from Pirog. “Rhizome,” another highlight, is named after the DC club, a crucial gestation place for much of this music, and features truly soaring cello and guitar. I was struck by what a unified and convincing listening experience the first disc of New Moon In The Evil Age is – and I think you can hear what a labor of love it is too.
After the mellow vibe of the “New Moon” disc, it was a real surprise when the first track of disc two opens with a drum machine and Leppin’s singing. With bassist Devin Hoff joining Leppin and Pirog and percussion added from Dr. Ali Analouei, “Surf the Dead” sounds very much like a new wave pop song. The liner notes call this “synth-driven layered avant-pop,” and it’s a pleasant surprise, to be sure. Leppin sings on every track of disc two, which sticks with the synth-based sound. From the press kit: “The gorgeous, Portisheady crawl of “Fly Over Iceland” paints a mountainous landscape using Janel’s powerful vocal range while conveying the yearning she felt on tour, away from her partner. ‘Evil Age’ touts a commanding chorus and foreshadows the era of Trump and Covid; ‘Surf the Dead’ finds common ground between Broadcast, Sonic Youth and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.” The album ends with the optimism of “Find A Way,” with a chorus that declares: “If there’s one thing music can do/It will carry you through.” Albums like this do that! With New Moon In The Evil Age, Leppin and Pirog have given us a surprising curveball that will delight many, and more of the gorgeous cello and guitar atmospherics that their followers have been waiting a decade for. It’s a warm collection of music that quickly feels like an old friend, inviting you to keep coming back.
Christopher Hoffman – Vision Is The Identity
When Christopher Hoffman’s Vision Is The Identity came out in April, I did a post celebrating the guest appearance of Henry Threadgill on the track “What Comes,” and I wrote a bit about how fond I am of Hoffman’s cello playing and writing. Hearing Janelle Leppin’s New Moon In The Evil Age and its “new wave” vibe brought me back to Hoffman, a cello player who has also bathed his new album in synths. But these are very different albums — Vision Is The Identity is Depeche Mode to Leppin’s Kate Bush. Hoffman loves a dark minor-mode groove, and these seven gripping tracks really do dig their claws into you and don’t let go. The guest appearances are all great (highlights aside from Threadgill are Anna Webber on flute and Alfredo Colon on EWI), but multiple listens have brought home to me the excellence of the core trio of Hoffman with Frank LoCrasto on keyboards and Bill Campbell on drums. Hoffman’s music is carefully assembled around electronic tracks and tightly constructed arrangements, to which the added drums and keyboard parts are played with a wonderful economy — only what’s needed, nothing more. It’s is a sign of musicality when the album’s subtleties become apparent after many repeat listens.
The other part of Vision Is The Identity I find compelling is Hoffman’s cello. In this post, we’ve discussed a lot of string players who use pedals and distortion when playing, and in my view, Hoffman has the most convincing approach of them all. Hoffman is able to use effects to flexibly make his cello sound at one moment like a heavy electric guitar on “Better & Better” or a bass during “Farewell Forever.” But even more impressive is Hoffman’s use of pedals to create a burr-like texture that becomes this album’s focal point and emotional highlight. Hoffman’s arco solos on “Cloudbuster,” “What Comes,” and “Farewell Forever” all deepen the intensity of the music through a processed sound that hightens the singing quality of the natural strings. That sound above all is the heart of Vision Is The Identity, where Hoffman expands the expressive range of the cello. I think you can tell I love Vision Is The Identity, it’s wall-to-wall avant-bangers and one of the most concise and compelling albums of 2024.