BANDCAMP DAILY: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: February 2020
BANDCAMP DAILY: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: February 2020
BY PETER MARGASAK
“This sextet—which started in Chicago, but whose members are now spread out across the U.S.—achieves an impressive leap in focus and intensity on their second album. Premiering new work drives many working ensembles, but there’s something to be said for Latitude 49’s decision to master a variety of pre-existing pieces, some of which were adapted by the composers for their instrumentation, as they lean into these works with dazzling rigor.
The collection opens with ‘Number Nine,’ a piece by Gabriella Smith—whose work is featured prominently on the yMusic album elsewhere in this column—which draws inspiration from the infamous music concrete work on the Beatles’ White Album. A cello mimics the looping vocal phrase ‘number nine,’ amid ascending and descending reeds, skittering and banging piano patterns, slashing violins, and peripatetic percussion to produce thrilling acoustics. The group’s percussionist Chris Sies wrote ‘these (were) used to harm,’ which borrows heavy metal cadences to comment on the militaristic applications of music, while Annika Socolofksy’s ‘a sense of who’ reflects on the feeling of community experienced by the composer while participating in Irish jam sessions, using processed recordings of folk music and field recordings of a local river to blend with strings, piano, and reeds that keen, float, flutter, and cry.”