Bartlett, Thomas / Nico Muhly - Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music CD (Mega Blowout Sale)
SKU
23-075597930368
“Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music is nine songs written by Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) and Nico Muhly plus three gamelan transcriptions by ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee, which inspired the new songs.
Bartlett and Muhly play pianos and keyboards on the album, and Bartlett sings, joined by other musicians on strings and metallic pitched percussion.
McPhee recorded a suite of Balinese ceremonial music with Benjamin Britten in 1941. Muhly says: "The project is named after Peter Pears, who was Britten's partner and also an observer and collaborator of a larger community of musicians, writers, and thinkers."
“This record has a rich overlay of ideas that should lead the curious listener in all sorts of fascinating directions. First, there’s the title, which combines the name of one of the 20th century’s greatest vocal artists with a reference to Gamelan music, the Indonesian form that attracted the attention of Pears and his collaborator (and lover) Benjamin Britten. Britten first learned about Gamelan during a fascinating period in the 40’s, when he found himself living in a townhouse on Middagh Street in Brooklyn with the likes of W.H. Auden, Dashiell Hammett and Gypsy Rose Lee. Also in residence was Colin McPhee, a composer and ethnomusicologist who had studied the gamelan extensively while living in Bali. McPhee and Britten recorded his two-piano transcriptions, which made the music accessible to Western ears and performers. Thus Balinese music, which uses an orchestra primarily of bell-like percussion instruments to play repeating clusters of melodic rhythms, became one of the roots of minimalism.
The McPhee pieces are busier and sharper-edged than the originals, which are gauzy wonders of piano, strings, percussion and electronics over which Bartlett sings in hushed tones lyrics that are full of poetic allusions, aphorisms, and compassionate advice. There is a seamless grace to this music, not doubt enabled by the excellent musicians Muhly and Bartlett have assembled, including Rob Moose and Yuki Numata Resnick (violins), Christina Courtin (viola), Clarice Jensen (cello), Hannah Cohen (harmony vocals), and Chris Thompson (percussion). But the end result is all Bartlett and Muhly, making a case for collaboration being the surest way to bring out individual strengths. By working together and drawing on music and history that fascinates them, they have created something uniquely beautiful that also feels genuinely new. And if this album leads some new listeners back to McPhee and the Gamelan or the marvelous music Britten and Pears created together, so much the better.”-Jeremy Shatan
- LabelNonesuch
- UPC075597930368