Scott Lee: Through the Mangrove Tunnels

Album review

Even more than other works by this composer, the eight-movement Through the Mangrove Tunnels reflects the environment of Scott Lee's native Florida. The work has a basis of percussive, pointillist sounds that evoke the swamps' spooky atmosphere, but Lee adds to this basis a host of other sounds that reflect the stories of their human inhabitants, and the music is "polyphonic" in the broadest sense. The work is for string quartet, piano, and drum set, and Lee's treatment of all his instruments is flexible. The quartet weaves in and out of the basic texture, and the percussion instruments sometimes fall into fixed rhythms, which may be drawn from jazz or rock music. These junctures have important structural significance, introducing episodes that relate to the history of Lee's mangrove tunnels and Weedon Island nature preserve. This history includes Native American meetings, a movie studio, speakeasies, and other events dating back to the time of the Spanish conquistadors. The musical construction is eclectic, to be sure, but also logically put together, and overall, this is an exciting work that is both rigorously contemporary and fully accessible.
© James Manheim /TiVo