|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CD
|
|
NW 80813CD
|
"'An insatiable listener, learner, and reader, Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) has taken into his mind and spirit myriad styles of musical performance spanning centuries, methods of compositional practice of all sorts, and innumerable close personal relationships with artists of all disciplines. He has absorbed this vast expanse of knowledge, art, and personal experience, and rather than mimicking anything he has encountered along the way, he has manifested a truly personal, honest voice that rings true to himself and to all of his inspirations. In four of the works presented here, specifically Thicket (2010), Family Portraits: Self (in 14 Stations) (1997), Palm Sunday (2012), and Among Us (2007), Smith calls upon the performer to provide the musical dynamics, articulations, and phrasing to the traditionally notated pitches and rhythmic structures he provides. This charge extends the performer's contribution well into the realm of composition. In making personal musical decisions regarding dynamics, articulations, and phrasing, given the contrapuntal density of the material Smith composed, it became important for me to remove the mental burden of choreographed performance from the process and make my choices from the listener's perspective. This process involved the making and reviewing of a series of self-recordings that gradually led to the versions of the pieces I present here. The recurring issue in preparing these pieces was negotiating the balance between larger dramatic gestures, illuminating formal clarity in longer works, and shaping local nuance to assist the listener in aurally parsing dense passages.' --Kyle Adam Blair"
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
NW 80754CD
|
"Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) describes himself as 'a confessional composer who focuses on revealing in his music the most personal aspects of his life, in the belief that the revelations of the particular speak to the universal.' These six works feature the violin, unaccompanied and in a chamber context, and span four decades of compositional activity. Minor (2001) and Hearts (2004) -- the unaccompanied violin works on this album -- offer a Janus-faced comparison of two interrogatory paths. Minor is unifocal, a soliloquy that delves into and elaborates upon a singularity. Hearts, on the other hand, is a series of miniatures that articulates a complex idea by moving from perspective to perspective, like a photographer trying to capture a sculpture by taking pictures of it from many angles. Both works, though, evince the characteristics of Smith's compositional language: free atonality, occasional nods toward the extended triadic harmonies of avant-garde jazz, the intuitive use of pitch cells, and registral displacements that create implied counterpoint and compound melodies within single lines. The four chamber works on this album -- Three for Two (1972), A Gift for Bessie (1971), A River Rose (2005), I've Been Here Before (2008) -- rely to varying degrees on elements of what Smith calls 'music of coexistence' -- music where each performer's material is set, but its deployment in time in relation to other performers is not fixed. Smith has sometimes referred to this practice as writing parts without a score. The scores for these works do not appear to be especially complex -- they look similar to his conventional solo and chamber scores -- but by adjusting the synchronic relationships of the performers, Smith creates sounding objects that are breathing, vivid, and complex beyond the confines of intellectualism." Performed by: Airi Yoshioka, violin; Maria Lambros, viola; John Novacek, piano; Sue Heineman, bassoon; Lee Hinkle, percussion; José "Zeca" Lacerda, vibraphone.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2CD
|
|
NW 80690CD
|
"Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) has created a diverse and unusual body of musical and literary compositions. His music is usually chromatic, atonal, and rhythmically complex, with his pitch material selected in an intuitive manner rather than via the twelve-tone technique. Many of his works are theatrical, asking the performers to speak, sing, act, and perform pantomime in addition to playing their instruments. His works often feature improvisation. Approximately half of his more than 130 works involve percussion, and his works are particularly popular among percussionists. This is the first complete recording of the Links series. 'The Links Series of Vibraphone Essays is scored for vibraphone in various settings, from unaccompanied solos to duos with flute, piano and off-stage orchestra bells. This series was composed between 1975 and 1995. There are eleven individual Links pieces. The title refers to the entire structure of the work, in that the end of one composition elides to the beginning of the next - a link in a delicate necklace. Also, 'links' in German means 'left' in English. The Links Series remains left of the center of the past and current musical languages in which composers have composed and are composing. It is the most physically, melodically, rhythmically, and conceptually demanding vibraphone music yet composed. The Links are performed all over the world and are part of important percussion curriculums from Yale to UC-San Diego, to mention a few.' - Stuart Saunders Smith"
|
|
|
|