Subscribers to The Wire Magazine, keep an eye out for a track from Elizabeth A. Baker in the Wire Tapper compilation CD that came with your latest issue of the magazine!
Photo: Charlotte Suarez
This article originally appeared in Issue 43:2 (Nov/Dec 2019) of Fanfare Magazine.
Quadrivium • Elizabeth A. Baker • AEROCADE 008 (118:00)
Elizabeth A. Baker, based in St. Petersburg, Florida, refers to herself as a “New Renaissance Artist,” which means in part that she works in a variety of forms and media. A 16-page zine accompanying this release includes her poetry and art, and it helps to put her work in a broad perspective. It also includes a “Manifesto” in which Baker decries exclusivity in the presentation and dissemination of modern concert music (and art in general), and in which she observes that such exclusivity can be created unintentionally by well-meaning promoters who try to attract new audiences with “trendy” or “curated” experiences. This resonates with me, and not just because “curated” has lately become my least favorite buzzword! “Art,” she writes, “belongs to all mankind.” Right on.
Baker, who is now 29, is a graduate of St. Petersburg College’s Music Industry Recording Arts program; she started out as a classical guitarist before discovering her true creative voice, in which the piano plays a central role. Quadrivium is the latest of several commercial releases (available, like Quadrivium, on Bandcamp), and the most varied yet in both instrumentation and style. An early, all-piano collection is called Imperfect Improvisations for Possible Probable Ghost Listeners, and some of the music on that release sounds eerily like Debussy, or like Scriabin on Quaaludes. Quadrivium is nothing like that. Its first half, while devoted to the piano, opens with the Minimalist and tightly controlled Sashay by Nathan Anthony Corder, and continues with Baker’s own works, looser and more improvisational in style, which call for the piano to be prepared in different ways. The title Command Voices, used in two of these works, alludes to the voices heard by individuals experiencing psychosis. These voices direct them to behave in certain ways, including in ways that can cause harm to the individual or to the community. One of the implements used in these works is a vibrator—yes, that kind of vibrator. (The feminist implications of that are fascinating.) The second half is devoted to works in which electronics and spoken word feed off each other, and here Quadrivium takes on an appealingly science-fictionish vibe—a little William Gibson and a little Samuel Delany. Baker addresses social issues, such as the transactional nature of love in the digital age, and the alienation of the “silent webcrawler,” sometimes electronically altering her voice to emphasize that alienation. A recitation of URLs and IP addresses, punctuated by a slow and stuttering electronic heartbeat, is chilling. Baker is a talented composer and performer, and Quadrivium, taken as a whole, is a pretty impressive release for someone still so young. Perhaps Baker will be the Pauline Oliveros of her generation, and perhaps she will be more than that.
Quadrivium also is available as a digital download from Bandcamp, where you can buy the CD, and a separate copy of the zine, if you so desire. It’s not easy listening in any sense of that phrase, but its difficulties are anything but gratuitous. Adventurous listeners might find it to be a provocative and intriguing ride.
Raymond Tuttle
Equal Sound presents:
Isaac Schankler Album Release & The Furies
April 4, 2019
8:00 pm
Art Share L.A. (801 East 4th Place, Los Angeles, CA 90013)
Equal Sound’s First Thursdays series at Art Share presents an album release concert for Isaac Schankler’s Because Patterns in a performance featuring collaborations with Vicki Ray, Aron Kallay, and Scott Worthington. Intersectional feminist performance art violin duo The Furies join the bill with their project A Cure For Hysteria, featuring the music of Elizabeth A. Baker, Eve Beglarian, Olga Neuwirth, and ThunderCunt.
All attendees will receive a free download of Because Patterns.
Program
OLGANEUWIRTH ad auras...in memorium H.
THUNDERCUNT Incidental Music I
ELIZABETH A.BAKER A Cure For Hysteria
THUNDERCUNT Incidental Music II
EVEBEGLARIAN Well Spent
ISAACSCHANKLER Because Patterns
Aerocade Presents: Elizabeth A. Baker, Post-Haste Reed Duo, Meerenai Shim, and friends
Join Aerocade Artists for an evening of new music, free improvisation, electronics, woodwinds, and good vibrations! Contrabass flute virtuoso Ned McGowan will join the lineup as a special guest.
Saturday, January 5, 2019 @7PM
Center for New Music
(55 Taylor St. San Francisco)
Tickets available online at centerfornewmusic.com and at the venue box office ($20 general, $10 members/seniors/students)
Complimentary refreshments will be served when doors open at 7pm.
Elizabeth A. Baker, composer/performer from Florida, will perform selections from her recent release "Quadrivium," including the West Coast premiere of "Sashay" by Nathan Corder. The Post-Haste Reed Duo (Saxophonist Sean Fredenburg and bassoonist Javier Rodriguez) will perform works from their upcoming release, "Donut Robot!” Meerenai Shim will premiere “This is How I Feel” for flute and electronics by Elizabeth Bayer. Friend of Aerocade and contrabass flute virtuoso Ned McGowan will be visiting from the Netherlands to perform an improvised set.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
Eschewing the collection of traditional titles that describe single elements of her body of work, Elizabeth A. Baker refers to herself as a “New Renaissance Artist” that embraces a constant stream of change and rebirth in practice, which expands into a variety of media, chiefly an exploration of how sonic and spatial worlds can be manipulated to personify a variety of philosophies and principles both tangible as well as intangible. Elizabeth has received recognition from press as well as scholars, for her conceptual compositions and commitment to inclusive programming. In addition to studies of her work, Elizabeth has been awarded several fellowships, grants, and residencies, in addition to sponsorships from Schoenhut Piano Company and Source Audio LLC. As a solo artist, Elizabeth represented by Aerocade Music, her first solo album on the California-based label Quadrivium released worldwide in May 2018 to rave reviews. She is founder of the Florida International Toy Piano Festival, The New Music Conflagration, Inc., author of two books, and the subject of a number of scholarly articles, thesis papers, and other academic research. In March 2018, Elizabeth retired from nonprofit arts administration to focus on her international solo career, though she remains committed to the community through workshops and public speaking engagements. Her first motivational book The Resonant Life inspired by her personal experiences as a professional artist will be released in 2019.
The Post-Haste Reed Duo (Saxophonist Sean Fredenburg and bassoonist Javier Rodriguez) has been spreading the beauty and warmth of their unusual pairing of instruments internationally for almost a decade.
They have worked to increase the amount of quality chamber music literature for saxophone and bassoon duo, and to encourage young musicians to experiment performing in non-traditional chamber ensembles by collaborating with composers towards new works that highlight the capabilities of these two instruments individually and together. When they are not performing together as a duo, Sean can be found teaching at Portland State University in Portland, OR, while Javier teaches at the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID.
Flutist Meerenai Shim is one half of the innovative flute and percussion duo, A/B Duo, and the a member of the award-winning contemporary flute ensemble, Areon Flutes. Her third solo album, the all-electroacoustic Pheromone, is available on the Aerocade Music label.
Ned McGowan (1970) is a flutist and contemporary classical music composer, born in the United States, living in the Netherlands. Known for rhythmical vitality and technical virtuosity, his music has won awards and been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw and other halls and festivals around the world by many orchestras, ensembles and soloists. As a flutist he plays classical, contemporary and improvisation concerts internationally and he has a special love for the contrabass flute, in 2016 releasing the album: The Art of the Contrabass Flute.
“Pianist/multi-instrumentalist Elizabeth A. Baker’s new album Quadrivium – streaming at Bandcamp – is extremely long and often extremely dark. Her music can be hypnotic and atmospheric one moment and absolutely bloodcurdling the next. Erik Satie seems to be a strong influence; at other times, it sounds like George Winston on acid, or Brian Eno.“
The Beauty in Black Artistry blog on the Castle of our Skins website spoke with Elizabeth A. Baker about being a “New Renaissance Artist” and her influences. Read the interview here.
Castle of our Skins is a concert and educational series dedicated to celebrating Black artistry through music. Read more about the organization here.
Grego Applegate Edwards reviewed Elizabeth A. Baker's Quadrivium:
"...after five listens I must say I am mightily impressed with it all.
I must say I do very much love this very living work. It is as contemporary as anything you will hear, and it is not afraid to combine deftly timbral and sound-color beauty in striking ways. The music is visceral. The words are frank yet poetic."
Read the rest of the review at Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
"A more than impressive debut..." - Textura
Elizabeth A. Baker's Quadrivium was reviewed in Textura this week, ahead of the May 25th release.
Here's an except:
Anointing herself a “New Renaissance Artist” might seem a bold, even hubristic move on Elizabeth Baker's part, but the choice is legitimated by the contents of her ambitious debut album Quadrivium: two discs of music, the first consisting of minimalist piano pieces and the second ambient-styled settings, spoken word pieces, and electronic experiments. Well-considered, the album title refers to the subjects arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy that when paired with the those of the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—compose the seven liberal arts. Certainly Baker's diverse range of interests is well-accounted for on the project: along with two hours of musical material, the release comes with a full-color booklet that includes poetry, photography, and illustrations by Baker as well as track-related info and reflections on communication, gender, and other timely issues. Something of a multi-instrumentalist, she augments her piano playing with electronics, voice, guitar, percussion, and toy piano, and she also advocates strongly for the latter: in 2016, Baker established the Florida International Toy Piano Festival to provide a platform for serious toy piano works, and the instrument's prominently featured on the album's otherwise synthesizer-heavy “An Outcast.”