loadbang: Plays Well With Others

“Altering a listener's sense of the space around the instruments” - New York Times

“A sonic world unlike any other” - The Boston Musical Intelligencer

New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ʻcultivatedʼ by The New Yorker, ʻan extra-cool new music groupʼ and ʻexhilaratingʼ by the Baltimore Sun, ʻinventiveʼ by the New York Times and called a 'formidable new-music force' by TimeOutNY. Creating 'a sonic world unlike any other' (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), their unique lung-powered instrumentation has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today. In New York City, they have been recently presented by and performed at Miller Theater, Symphony Space, MATA, and by the Look and Listen Festival; on American tours at Da Camera of Houston, Rothko Chapel, and the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University; and internationally at Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), China-ASEAN Music Week (China), the Xinghai Conservatory of Music (China), and Shanghai Symphony Hall (China). loadbang has premiered more than 375 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today's leading composers. Their repertoire includes works by Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Charles Wuorinen; Rome Prize winners Andy Akiho and Paula Matthusen; and Guggenheim Fellows Chaya Czernowin, George Lewis, and Alex Mincek. Not content to dwell solely in the realm of notated music, loadbang is known for its searing and unpredictable improvisations, exploring the edges of instrumental and vocal timbre and technique, and blurring the line between composed and extemporaneous music. To this end, they have embarked on a project to record improvisations and improvised works written by members of the ensemble.

These recordings are designed, fabricated, and released in hand-made limited editions. loadbang can also be heard on a 2012 release of the music by John Cage on Avant Media Records, a 2013 release of the music of loadbang member Andy Kozar titled 'On the end...' on ANALOG Arts Records which was called ʻvirtuosicʼ by The New Yorker, a 2014 release on ANALOG Arts Records titled 'Monodramas,' a 2015 release on New Focus Recordings titled 'LUNGPOWERED' which was called ʻnew, confident, and weirdʼ by I Care If You Listen and 'an album of quietly complex emotions' by The New Yorker, a 2017 Bridge Records release titled 'Charles Wuorinen, Vol. 3', featuring the music of Charles Wuorinen, and a 2018 release on New Focus Recordings titled ʻold fires catch old buildingsʼ of which was said ʻThough they arrived on the scene without a repertoire to speak of, loadbangʼs decade-long output now speaks for itself in quality and depth of involvementʼ by I Care If You Listen. loadbang is dedicated to education and cultivation of an enthusiasm for new music. They have worked with students ranging from elementary schoolers in the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestraʼs OrchKids Program to college aged student composers at institutions including Columbia University, Cornell University, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Peabody Conservatory, Princeton University, University of Buffalo, the University of California in San Diego, and Yale University. They are an ensemble-in-residence at the Charlotte New Music Festival, and through a partnership with the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston, they are on the performance faculty of Divergent Studio, a contemporary music festival for young performers and composers held each summer.

L O A D B A N G P L AY S W E L L W I T H O T H E R S

LINER NOTES BY PAULA MATTHUSEN: A gentle, breathing pulsation melds into the high gentle sustained tones. A mellow, percussive thud is concluded by the gentle rattle of a machine-like whirr. These are just some of the striking sonic moments of Loadbangʼs new album Plays Well With Others, which features the adventurous lung-powered quartet joining forces with an all-star group of string musicians. The additional appearance of Steve Beck on piano (Wollschleger, CVS) and electronics (Stebbins, Riven) expands the timbral possibilities of these forces.

The album title Plays Well With Others recalls for me, and I think many others, the gridded report card used to evaluate me and my other classmates as children. The idea that such an invaluable human trait could be systematically evaluated is endowed with a somewhat more creepy air when it acknowledges that someone was always there, watching, when everyone else was wrapped up in a game of freeze tag.

The endeavor presented in this most recent compilation of pieces and performers revels in a shared curiosity, and yields a striking array of musical shapes, gestures, and possibilities. The six composers whose work sprung to life under these auspices – Eve Beglarian, Taylor Brook, Reiko Futing, Heather Stebbins, Scott Wollschleger, and myself – were generously invited into this field of play and collaboration. The openness with which this was approached is evident in the range of expression and timbral combination in each piece – with Taylor Brookʼs beautifully evocative Tarantism, the deft interweaving of electronic gestures with the ensemble in Heather Stebbinʼs Riven, the playful and poignant pizzicati opening Eve Beglarianʼs You See Where This Is Going, the captivating repetition of “I am” in rearranged intonations and articulations across the ensemble in Reiko Fütingʼs mo(nu)ment for C/palimpsest, the haunting qualities of Scott Wollschlegerʼs CVS that expand so exquisitely, ending with my own contribution to the album.

The Loadbang + Strings combination emerged initially with the quartetʼs collaboration with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn in 2015. This effort expanded and traveled southwest, working with the Albuquerque-based group Chatter. Moving back to New York, the series of compositions commissioned through this process were recorded with Eduardo Leandro conducting and audio engineering by Ryan Streber. The recordings resulting from this process represent a train of thought that has been enlivened and nurtured through the numerous musiciansʼ hands it has touched.

“Plays well with others” is not a category to be checked off here – it is instead a celebration as to how we may come together.

Musicianʼs networks are often porous, and “play” in all its meanings and manifestations is an integral part of keeping them alive. This CD represents a collection of striking and sonically engaging moments among many in this continuous process.

Scott Wollschleger (1980) - CVS (2018, rev. 2020) Our experience of everyday society can seem dream-like and fragmentary; numerous commercial entities are vying for our attention; we're inundated with disturbing news channeled directly into our homes and cell phones; very serious news is coupled with extremely banal news about celebrities or the hottest new movie. We are forced to stitch together these contradictory encounters into some sensible experience. Often itʼs impossible to find meaning in it all. I wrote CVS as a reflection and response to this societal incoherence, but instead of trying to make an overt statement about society, I chose to create a surreal work that would produce an ambiguous meaning or, at best, a deeply personal reflection for the listener. The workʼs core text is a multiplicity of contradictory cultural encounters that we might experience on a given day: CVS Thereʼs been a terrorist attack.

Cool graphics.

I chose these three subjects because, for me, they capture the most fundamentally extreme poles of our daily lives. To include a line on terrorism is, obviously, halting, but it's included because I cannot deny the reality that pharmacies, cool graphics, and extreme acts of violence have become equally common threads in the fabric of our contemporary existence. Even the way I've written for the singer—who states “CVS” with various kinds of vocal inflection and word distortion—captures the same disjointed means of delivery that is so pervasive in media: “Bob Ross voice calm, very welcoming and polite”, “Like a weather announcement”, “Serious and direct”. While the piece may seem dark, my aim is to not to create a space for despair, nor a soothing place for escape. Instead, I aim to create a truthful place to accept; a musical space for personal thinking and reflection about the reality of our current time, and how to live within it. (notes by Scott Wollschleger)

You See Where This Is Going

By Brendan Constantine

PROGRAM NOTES:

A rose by any other name could be Miguel or Tiffany Could be David or Vashti Why not Aya which means beautiful flower but also verse and miracle and a bird that flies away quickly You see where this is going That is you could look at a rose and call it You See Where This Is Going or I Knew This Would Happen or even Why Wasnʼt I Told Iʼm told of a man who does portraits for money on the beach He paints them with one arm the other he left behind in a war and so he tucks a rose into his cuff always yellow and people stare at it pinned to his shoulder while he works Call the rose Panos because I think thatʼs his name or call it A Chair By The Sea Point from the window to the garden and say Look a bed of Painterʼs Hands And this is a good place to remember the rose already has many names because language is old and canʼt agree with itself In Albania you say Trëndafil In Somalia say Kacay In American poetry itʼs the flower you must never name And now you see where this is going out the window across water to a rose shaped island that canʼt exist but youʼre counting on to be there unmapped unmentioned till now The green place you imagine hiding when the world finds out youʼre not who youʼve said

“Not music only, but whatever is harmonious and agreeable to the senses, may probably conduse; such as delightful and extensive prospects of nature, elegant buildings, fine paintings and refreshing odors, to say nothing of the inciting sensations of touch and taste, the benefits of which are sometimes out weighed by indulgence in them, beyond the limits of just proportion, which may be termed a kind of universal harmony.”

Reiko Füting (1970) - mo(nu)ment for C/palimpsest (2015) The composition mo(nu)ment for C/palimpsest for baritone, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and string orchestra was commissioned by the loadbang ensemble and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn. The title refers to sculptures by the American artist Dan Flavin. The musical references found in the strings originate in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler, Charles Ives, and Samuel Barber. The whispered text consists of three fragments - "Je suis" (French), "Ich bin" (German), and "I am" (English). They refer to the attack on Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015. (notes by Reiko Futing)

Taylor Brook (1985) - Tarantism (2016)

- Richard Brockelsby, Reflections On Modern and Ancient Musick With the Application to the Cure of Disease, London, Cooper, 1749, p.65 Tarantism was written for Loadbang and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn in the Fall/Winter of 2015-2016. The text, both sung and spoken, was drawn from neoplatonic scholarly texts of the 16th and 17th centuries that describe the practice of curing victims of the tarantula bite with music, an ancient practice in Italy. This musical healing ritual was the root of the popular dance of the tarantella. The historical accounts also reflect the idea of music as a magical force, as a piece of music could also be a spell or incantation with the ability to cure the listener. In the drama of Tarantism, the soloist ensemble of lung-powered instruments takes the role of the the musician/doctor while the string orchestra takes the role of the afflicted. (notes by Taylor Brook)

“I remember travelling... in the wide, uneconomical regions which were drying out under the scorching sun. We heard the sound of drums, whistles and flutes in all the towns and villages... in these regions it was a means of healing the people bitten by the tarantula... we ... saw a young man affected by this disease. He seemed to have become insane, singing absentmindedly to the beat of a drum, while his arms and legs and the entire body moved in beat with the music…when the drummer stopped to play… the patient suddenly seemed to go numb, lose his senses and faint. However, as soon as the sound of drums could be heard again, the patient regained his strength and started to dance with more vigour than before...”

- Alexandro (1460-1523) a Neapolitan lawyer in his Genialum dierum. Paris, Riogny, 1539. “the tarantula bites on the tip or under lip of oneʼs ear, because the tarantula bites one sleeping on the ground: and the wounded part becomes black three days after... being obliged to play on the fiddle in order to cure the... an old woman presented herself to me to do the good office, who sang in such an unintelligible sound of voice, that I could not form an idea of it... the man began to move accordingly, and got up as quick as lightning, and seemʼd as if he had been awakenʼd by some frightful vision, and wildly starʼd about still moving every joint of his body; but as I had not as yet learnʼd the whole tune, I left off playing, not thinking that it would have any effect on the man. But the instant I left off playing the man fell down and cried out... distorted his face, legs, arms and any other part of his body, scraped the earth with his hands… in miserable agonies. I... made all the haste I could to learn the rest of the tune… the instant he heard me he rose up as he did before and danced as hard as any man could do; … very wild, he kept a perfect time... but had neither rules, nor manners, only jumped and runned, too and from, made very comical postures... the people cried out faster-faster…at last after two hours dancing, fell down quite motionless, and I gave over playing. The people took him up and carried him into a house, and put him into a large tub of tepid water, and a surgeon bled him... he was let blood in both his hands and feet … a great quantity of blood…”

- Stephan Storace, a genuine letter from an italian gentleman concerning the bite of a tarantula, Gentlemanʼs Mag., September 1753, pp 433-434 “All the world knows, how wonderful and various the effects of motion are, generation, corruption and all sublunary alterations are the product of motion. Whatever lives, whatever grows, and whatever undergoes the sensible Mutations of Life and Destruction, is in perpetual Motion.”

- Giorgio Baglivi, The practise of physic, reducʼd to the ancient way to observations containing a just parallel between the wisdon and experience of the anceints and the hypothesisʼ of modern physicians. London, Midwinter, 1704 (Rome 1696) p.404

Heather Stebbins (1987) - Riven (2020) The creative act, like many processes, is often rife with clefts and ruptures. In Riven, I sought to weave together the seemingly muddled debris of past projects. This piece is commissioned by and dedicated to my four friends in loadbang. They have made my musical life much richer. (notes by Heather Stebbins) Eve Beglarian (1958) - You See Where This Is Going (2019) You See Where This Is Going is a setting of a poem by Brendan Constantine about the flower you must never name (in American poetry.) I found an equation, r = a sin(kθ), that was named rhodonea by the 18th century Italian mathematician Guido Grandi because its plot resembles a rose. If n is odd, the rose is n-petalled. If n is even, the rose is 2n-petalled. I used this equation to create the music that is played by the pizzicato strings, but itʼs actually in the spaces between those events where the piece unfolds.

Maybe the piece is about how naming things obscures them, representing them (and us) as something quite other than what we are, and thereʼs a kind of imposter syndrome we feel by not being able to live into all the implications of our names. (notes by Eve Beglarian)