The Future is Female
Vol. 3 – At Play
Works by Ali-zadeh, Bacewicz, Chaminade, Harris Baiocchi, Kendall, Montgeroult, Oliveros, Shirazi & Chen Yi
Sarah Cahill (piano)
First Hand Records FHR 133 79:33 mins There are several stand-out discoveries on this recording, the welcome third and final volume in Sarah Cahill’s The Future is Female series. For sheer sonic surprise and strength, it’s hard to beat Franghiz Ali-zadeh’s Music for Piano (1989/97). The piano’s sound is haloed with unexpected layers and resonance, created by a glassbead necklace laid across the piano strings. The result evokes the tar, a traditional stringed instrument from Azerbaijan, Ali-zadeh’s home country, while her piece brilliantly juxtaposes low, percussive outbursts with contemplative conjurings.
Pauline Oliveros’s spiky Quintuplets Play Pen: Homage to
Ruth Crawford is a rare notated piece from the doyenne of contemplative listening, written in 2001 for Cahill. And Hannah Kendall’s beautifully controlled On the Chequer’d Field Array’d takes its cue from chess; the loose theme for the whole album is ‘play’. There’s an intricate complexity to Kendall’s music that fascinates.
Two longer works bookend the recital, which is peppered with short pieces by Chaminade, Bacewicz, Yi and Shirazi. Hélène de Montgeroult’s music has been rediscovered in recent years, with superb recordings by the likes of Clare Hammond and Edna Stern. Cahill finds a real affinity with the French composer’s Classical-romanticism in the Sonata No. 9 in F sharp minor. Regina Harris Baiocchi’s poetry-and-haikuinspired Piano Poems of 2020 brings the project up to date and to a close in relaxed fashion. Rebecca Franks PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Works by Tansy Davies, Nwando Ebizie, Alex Groves, Robin Haigh, Ben Nobuto, Alex Paxton et al
Zubin Kanga (piano/electronics) Nonclassical (digital only) 70:03 mins The concept behind pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga’s album Machine Dreams was to bring together international experimental composers under the umbrella of a ten-track recording, illustrating sci-fi and contemporary themes. Among the cutting edge toys were pioneering sensor technology, the use of artificial intelligence, biosensors and a range of keyboard and hybrid instruments. Inevitably, therefore, there are combinations of sounds that blurred the edges between music and technology.
That said, the timbres themselves don’t sound particularly new to my ears – some are drawn from 1980s pop tunes and television sci-fi programmes from that era.
The project conveys witty and deep ideas, however, displaying the complexities of the human mind as well as the wonder and awe of this world. Tansy Davies’s piece, for example, Star-way illustrates a walk across a sacred mountaintop at night while gazing up at the stars, Single Form (Swell) by Alex Groves conveys a sense of a mass of water, and the humour in the apparent self-help manual I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles) and vulgarity of Escape TERF Island made me smile.
Startling contrasts appear throughout, with many pieces clearly juxtaposed for this effect. Star-way, for example, is an almost physical ‘breathing out’ after the overflowing energy of Car-pig. Here there were sounds of sped-up bagpipes, something akin to a belch, a cockerel and very faint jazz references. In all, a stimulating – if challenging – aural experience. Anne Templer PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★