![]() ![]() It has a new recording of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” via Hans Richter and Philip Glass’ “The American Seasons” coming out next month. This exciting young ensemble is a step ahead, ready for anything. ![]() In her delirious desert landscape, she shares a joy of place and aural sensations. Smith takes not only her trees seriously but also the sound of Delirium‘s strings. ![]() It is as though desert winds and dry heat re-tuned violin strings. Smith uses microtonal runs to do what bushy Joshua trees do to the landscape, namely make it weird. A Vivaldi-esque pulse turns into something more in the vein of Michael Nyman doing a Minimalist take on Purcell. There is a thump, thump, thump in the vibrant strings. The middle movement, “Sofia,” for instance, starts out sounding like a hipster driving too fast on Twentynine Palms Highway. Like Vivaldi, she is a string player herself and fancies sound effects. Her “Desert Ecology,” in five sections, might be likened to 21st century Vivaldi. Gabriella Smith, who will have a major Los Angeles Philharmonic premiere in May, went to Joshua Tree National Park and recorded the sounds of the ecosystem in which the desert’s namesake trees have long thrived. Root-like, the other members of Childs’ trio - Dan Chmielinski on bass and Christian Euman on drums - reached out in their solos, engaging in a contrapuntal sense with various Delirium players. If the full ensemble’s melodies and rich harmonies could be heard as the trunk, then Childs let the leaves fall where they might in his complex and surprising piano improvisations. One thing doesn’t necessarily have to lead to another in a freewheeling forest. The piece itself, though, gave the impression of what it felt like to be with a giant sequoia in its own environment. Listening to it is as gratifying as tree roots reaching out to different plant species in the forest. That’s stayed with me long enough to feel new gratitude for the wooden desk on which I’m typing.Ĭhilds’ “My Roots Spread Far and Wide” easily makes the communication between his improvisational jazz trio and his more formal material for the virtuosic and versatile Delirium strings. And for a couple of hours, we thought trees. Had they been heard outside the “Treelogy” conceptual umbrella and with different titles, the scores wouldn’t exactly scream trees.īut then again, we surround ourselves with the bounty of trees without thinking. Otherwise, the pieces were left to speak for themselves. The new scores were played in front of large projected photos of the trees by Max Whittaker, a New York Times freelancer. They didn’t even get program notes, only two-minute Vimeo video introductions linked to a physical or digital one page program sheet. Billy Childs, Gabriella Smith and Steven Mackey, each commissioned by the Soraya to write a 25-minute piece for the string ensemble Delirium Musicum, don’t have anything like that opportunity. ![]() Strauss has a full opera to prepare you for this epiphany. Want to become one with nature? Bond with a tree. In order to transform a mythological nymph into a tree, Richard Strauss ended his opera “Daphne” with a transcendental musical photosynthesis that mimics the mystical sensation of standing under a redwood. No trees means no leafy springtime branches to start off Vivaldi’s eternal “The Four Seasons.” Opera without trees as settings is unthinkable. Trees have always been welcome in classical music. But the real value of “Treelogy” is subliminal. Now what? Can three splendid pieces of music, inspired by trees, save our state? Of course not. They arrive at a crucial moment, as for the first time in their centuries-old lives, a great many of our state’s enduring majestic residents face an existential threat from wildfires. Given their first performances at the Soraya on Thursday night, the works ask, instead, what music can do for trees. “Treelogy: A Musical Portrait of California’s Redwood, Sequoia and Joshua Trees” features three new “tree” pieces by composers from California. Would we have recorded music were it not for the wood that made loudspeaker cabinets? We bless them for having given us so many of our instruments and listening spaces. Trees have made music, as pretty much most of the world knows it, possible. and shoutout my favorite rapper ever for doing a verse for it, he really helped inspire my entire sound and this isn't done without him at all.Ask not what trees can do for music. shoutout my manager for helping me throughout making this project, motivating me, getting visuals, putting it out there, etc. after this tape we're really on go, i'm deleting hella old music, and i'm gon do the most to turn the rest of the year up. i know it may not seem like a long time, but the way i get music done is at a much faster rate. ![]()
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