Textura Reviews “Aviary” by Elizabeth Robinson

One imagines Takemitsu would be captivated by Aviary, and were he still with us Messiaen would no doubt have the collection on repeat too. Credit Robinson for crafting an album filled with one delightful moment after another, but credit also her flute-playing partners for helping to generate its harmonic sound world and the composers for giving them wonderful material to perform. For flute lovers especially, the album's a must-have, but its appeal is hardly exclusive to a single group.

Read the rest of the thoughtful review on Textura.org!

Many thanks to textura for reviewing Isaac Schankler’s Because Patterns!

“Benefits accrue to composer and performer alike from this presentation of three electroacoustic works by Los Angeles-based Isaac Schankler. Currently Assistant Professor of Music at Cal Poly Pomona, Schankler is a composer, accordionist, and electronic musician whose material is realized exquisitely on the forty-two-minute recording by pianists Aron Kallay and Vicki Ray, double bassist Scott Worthington, violinist Sakura Tsai, and pianist Nadia Shpachenko. The Ray-Kallay Duo appears alongside Worthington on Because Patterns/Deep State, whereas Tsai and Shpachenko present solo performances of Mobile I and Future Feelings, respectively. Describing them as such isn't perhaps entirely accurate, however, when the pieces seem more like collaborations between the performers and electronics. Regardless, the material benefits mightily from the high-level artistry of the musicians, and one's impression of Schankler's composing ability is enhanced in turn by their performances. All five players bring impressive credentials to the project: Shpachenko, for example, is, like Schankler, a Professor of Music at Cal Poly Pomona University, whereas Ray is head of keyboard studies at the California Institute of the Arts.”

Read the rest at textura.org.

"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.”

Read the rest at Textura.org.

Post-Haste Reed Duo's debut album is an honorable mention in the March 2016 edition of textura. The review:

"theirs is no novelty act; the music on the release holds up as an excellent collection of contemporary classical works by Louis Andriessen, Simon Hutchinson, Lanier Sammons, John Steinmetz, and Ethan Wickman, no matter the instrumentation involved."

"...what beneath a canopy of angels...a river of stars demonstrates above else is that whatever reservations one might have harboured regarding the limitations of a saxophone-and-bassoon pairing can be put aside, as Fredenburg and Rodriguez clearly show that music of limitless stylistic range and emotional scope is possible when such instrumentation is involved."

Read the rest at textura.org.