I, A.M. - Artist Mother Project
Olivia de Prato (violin)
Pamelia Stickney (theremin)
Zosha Di Castri (piano)
rec. 2020-22, Vienna; 2021, Brooklyn, USA
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
NEW WORLD RECORDS NW80838 [57]
All the composers and musicians featured on this fabulous new album are mothers who banded together for mutual support and encouragement under the banner of Artist Mothers – the A.M. of the album’s title. These musicians are fierce, brilliant mothers holding nothing back – banish any thought of sentimental lullabies! The result is an album of stupendous intensity, wit and generosity that for all its modernist complexity has nothing of the ivory tower about it.
There is no avoiding the fact that this is, in places, a tough listen for the uninitiated but, for those who make the effort, the reward is a dazzling conspectus of 21st century music. I initially demurred at the thought of an hour of music for solo violin and electronics but what I got was a riot of colour and invention.
If there is a single thread that runs through the collection, it is, as the liner notes helpfully point out, that of the unsociable depths of the night. These are precious moments, they go on to say, that, with a child finally asleep, can be grabbed for creative work. Snatching at such opportunities seems to energise much of the music written for this album, nervous and joyous in turn.
This sense of seizing the moment is reflected in just how much these composers pack into scores the longest of which runs to under 15 minutes. This is exemplified by the opener, automatic writing mumbles of the late hour, by Natacha Diels. An electronic opening using digitised violin evokes a vivid sense of a bleary eyed middle of the night which eventually transforms into what the composer labels ‘absurd funk’ (in my imagination sounding almost as though it were being played by a rogue child’s toy!). The fluidity of approach to borrowing styles, often from outside the classical tradition, is characteristic of the album as a whole and here as elsewhere contributes to a dreamlike, almost spaced mood.
This is followed by Katherine Young’s extraordinary Mycorrhiza I, my personal favourite of the pieces included. It is intended to conjure up the networks of fungi which connect trees and by means of which we now know that, astonishingly, trees can communicate and even collaborate with one another. If nothing else it is a moving tribute to the community of musical mothers which enabled this album to get made. As music, it is a tour de force. Think of the texture of a beginner violinist scratching away at Three Blind Mice (and not the out of tune pitch!) and imagine it used musically and you will get some idea of the musical materials out which Young’s work is built. The sound gives the music a surprisingly beguiling earthiness like hearing something grow deep underground, an effect enhanced by the electronic effects. To my ears, the scurrying pizzicati played – I presume! – by the left hand and the high whistling harmonics sound like the messages sent across the earthy networks of the first half of the piece. It sounds genuinely amazing but carries with it considerable emotional effect in music that is fragile and precious like the natural networks it celebrates.
The extensive notes included are an object lesson in why composers are not always the best people to engage a novice listener. Unfailingly informative on a technical level, they might give the impression that this music is an arid exercise in trendy techniques. The liner notes also include a stimulating meditation on the challenges of combining motherhood with being a creative artist but doesn’t really say much about the music that results. Happily, the music speaks for itself.
Most of the works are the product of collaboration between composer and the soloist extraordinaire, Olivia de Prato whose improvisations often inspire the compositional work, are included within it or are manipulated electronically. This blurring of the lines between composer and performer adds to the collective feel of the recording. Ha-Yang Kim’s hypnotic may you dream of rainbows in magical lands even includes de Prato’s son adding ‘found’ percussion on some Lego! This particular piece adds a still point of calm at the heart of a collection bursting with febrile energy as she layers long held digitised violin notes which seem to expand time.
The metaphor that meant most to me in Pamelia Stickney’s description of her piece noch unbenannt was one of a parent trying to get a baby to sleep. It is a duet for theremin – an instrument of which Stickney is a noted proponent – and violin which casts the theremin in the role of soothing mother and the violin as the fretful child.
Fire in the Dark by Jen Baker takes its title from a experience of the winter solstice sun on a freezing New York morning. I responded to this as a straightforward sonic picture of that event, chilling and crackling in turn. It is rather like a painting which evokes a huge landscape with just a few brush strokes.
The collection is crowned by The Dream Feed by Zosha di Castri. This traverses an astonishing amount of ground in just ten minutes, integrating pianistic and electronic ripples from the sound of glass shattering at its start through a violin meander that almost threatens to become a lark ascending, sounds of an unborn baby’s heartbeat, a sleeping baby murmuring to itself and much else besides before drawing all these elements together into a vertiginous, nightmarish close.
This is a thrilling and inventive collection teeming with vitality. If sadly in this day and age motherhood still places obstacles in the way of creative artists, then this album represents a counterbalance in terms of rich inspiration. I hope this is just the beginning for this musical collective.
David McDade
Contents
Natacha Diels (b. 1981)
automatic writing mumbles of the late hour (2020)
Katherine Young (b. 1980)
Mycorrhiza I (2021)
Ha-Yang Kim (b. 1976)
may you dream of rainbows in magical lands (2021)
Pamelia Stickney (b. 1976)
noch unbenannt (2021)
Jen Baker (b. 1976)
Fire in the Dark (2020)
Zosha Di Castri (b. 1985)
The Dream Feed (2020)
Published: November 21, 2022
