Singing in the Dead of Night

Chronique

Singing in the Dead of Night has a unique structure: it is both three works and one. The music was composed by David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, all associated with the New York contemporary music ensemble Bang on a Can. All have independent compositional careers, but they continue to collaborate with interesting results like the ones here. The album's title, and that of Julia Wolfe's contribution, come from the Beatles' "Blackbird," and the other two works also take their names from lines in that song. (The ensemble name Eighth Blackbird, however, comes from the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.") Lang's these broken wings is a three-movement work, and interspersed among its movements are Gordon's the light of the dark and Wolfe's work. The compositions are independent of each other but linked in medium and by a general idiom that might be called postminimalist, with propulsive but spiky textures occasionally interrupted by silences or contrasting passages. The instrumentarium of the six players of Eighth Blackbird ranges from flute to cello to sandpaper, with all the musicians playing multiple instruments including, in most cases, "metals." The biggest attraction may be the production by Elaine Martone, who earned a Producer of the Year Grammy nomination for this and the entirely different African American-themed live album Bound for the Promised Land. Working at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, Martone and engineer Bill Maylone lend the percussion instruments a crackling edge. This is an absorbing, lively, and conceptually unusual contemporary music release.

© TiVo