Peter Margasak, 01 April 2024
The taxonomy of contemporary classical music—new music, contemporary music, whatever you want to call it—is a thorny issue. But every month, we’ll take a look at some of the best composer-driven music to surface here on Bandcamp, that which makes room for electronic experimentation, improvisation, and powerful takes on old classics.
Wendy Eisenberg
The Possibility of A New Work for Electric Guitar
Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard & Quatuor Bozzini
Colliding Bubbles
Morton Feldman
Complete Music for Piano and Cello
Soosan Lolavar & Ruthless Jabiru
Girl
I first heard the music of British-Iranian composer Soosan Lolavar last year on Every Strand of Thread and Rope, a gripping collaboration with Berlin-based violinist Sarah Saviet. The long-distance, pandemic-era partnership sought to bridge the gap between the tuning of the composer’s Eastern santoor—the Persian hammered dulcimer—and the Western violin. Sticking with a single mode from Persian music, Lolavar asked the violinist to make up some of the differences by tuning the violin down a minor sixth, an adjustment that makes it more unstable and unpredictable. Saviet improvised on the themes, although not necessarily in the way a santoor player might in traditional Persian music. This new album enlists the UK-based chamber ensemble Ruthless Jabiru, conducted by Kelly Lovelady, to navigate several new works exploring similar divides, as well as presenting a new arrangement of Undone, the most visceral movement of the four featured on the solo Saviet recording. Here we get a delicious, suspenseful tension against the ensemble’s taut orchestral gestures and shadings. The dynamic santoor playing of Faraz Eshghi Sahraei crackles over the deliciously woozy, tonally wobbly I am the Spring, You are the Earth, erasing the divides of different traditions in a way that mirrors the composer’s indemnity as an Iranian living in England. The title composition derives all of its material from an Iranian folk melody, but the transformation echoes how oral transmission constantly changes and mutates a narrative until only the core idea endures, transcending any era or geography. In the final piece, Tradition – Hybrid – Survival, Lolavar built Roxanna Albayati’s exquisite cello solo from a four-note melody the composer heard on Iranian television, pushing it further and further from its source, yet in a different way than with Girl. Rather than offering glib hybrids, Lolavar has created something that reflects her own dualities, a give-and-take of sensibilities and traditions that’s unique to her experience.
Ruthless Jabiru 