Trios from Contemporary Chicago

Album review

This release from the Lincoln Trio is the second of two releases devoted to music from Chicago, a city that has not generally been thought of as having a style of its own in concert music, but the Lincoln Trio makes a persuasive case. Perhaps the most distinctively Chicagoan work is Shawn E. Okpebholo's City Beautiful, with three movements referring to the Chicago architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Burnham, and Jeanne Gang, for the latter specifically to her 82-story Aqua Tower downtown. These are highly evocative pieces that would make an ideal starting point for a discussion of the idea that architecture is frozen music, and Okpebholo is perhaps less generally familiar than the other composers represented. However, even the other works, which are not explicitly Chicagoan (aside from being written in several cases for institutions in the city), feel cohesive. They are not avant-garde but also not conservative, using traditional materials in fresh ways. Consider Mischa Zupko's Fanfare 80, written for the 80th anniversary of the Music Institute of Chicago, an institution that also spawned the Lincoln Trio. It is unmistakably a fanfare, but there's nothing nostalgic about it. This release and its companion volume are highly recommended to those wondering about the musical legacy of the Second City.
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