01/14/22: Breathing Room
Featuring Douglas Knehans, Tina Douglas, Magda Mayas, and Dmitri Kourliandski
Welcome to Keeping Score. This week I have three new releases, with an emphasis on ambient works.
The Music
Something Symphonic
Australian/American composer Douglas Knehans released Cloud Ossuary, performed by the Brno philharmonic. The release notes state of the title piece:
Cloud Ossuary is set in three related movements in a fast-slow-slow arrangement. These culminate in an extended setting for soprano and orchestra—utilizing only English horn, trumpet, two percussionists, harp and strings—of Knehans’ daughter’s poem Bones and All. Katarina Knehans, a professional writer, has already collaborated with a number of other composers and her linguistic sensitivity to vocal setting is very clear here. Her words give intensity, image, substance and philosophical depth to the work.
The album is sweeping and colorful, definitely worth your time.
Listen on Spotify, YouTube Music, etc.
Something Improvisational
German composer and performer Magda Mayas and Australian composer and artist Tina Douglas collaborated on Objects of Interest, a release for “piano, clavinet, rhodes, and objects”. Douglas wrote the scores, graphical scores which Mayas responded to, drawing inspiration and guidance from them, as well as prepared objects. Mayas writes:
I had a wish to slow things down, to expose a certain fragility or imperfection and to let one melody or one chord or one little noise be enough. With the piano you can have such an orchestral approach, and I often do that, but with this collaboration I didn’t feel like I wanted this kind of complexity.
As she writes, the release is slow and frequently sparse, but still very interesting and unique.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc.
Something Rhythmic
Similarly sparse at times, microvariations, released by Russian composer Dmitri Kourliandski, is a interesting blend between ambient and electronic music. Accessible rhythms and harmonic motifs, Kourliandski uses lots of space to create a unique album.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc.