BANDCAMP DAILY: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: August 2020
BANDCAMP DAILY: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: August 2020
BY PETER MARGASAK
“Composer Michael Harrison studied with both La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath, and those experiences reinforced a career-long interest in Indian classical music and just intonation, an ancient tuning system where the intervals in a scale are derived not from a constant frequency multiplier but from varying ratios of whole numbers. This stunning work commissioned by the sublimely versatile vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth is his first piece for a choir, and he worked closely with the group to refine his ideas, responding to recordings of each new iteration to further fine-tune the four-part composition. The premiere performance—featured here—was given at The Tank in Rangley, Colorado, a disused water tank turned performance space, and its stunningly resonant acoustic properties required Harrison to further tweak the piece. The results are gorgeous; sonorous long tones glide in ever shifting harmonic combinations, each of which hang patiently in the air. Ensemble artistic director Brad Wells has said, ‘It’s all long tones. It’s the singers as bells, or the singers as drones or as pure pitch,’ which, while true, doesn’t adequately convey the music’s ghostly beauty, like hyper-precise madrigal singers playing games with our ears. Roomful of Teeth has simultaneously released a much different EP featuring a Wally Gunn piece titled The Ascendant, a percussion-driven marvel that somehow brings pop concision to Renaissance-flavored language.’”