Issues of hierarchy typically come to the fore when composers and classical ensembles symbolize themselves on an album cowl. Who’s the boss? Who has the title with probably the most advertising and marketing clout? That’s not the case on Interius/Exterius. The composer, Catherine Lamb, and the performers, Ghost Ensemble, have as an alternative expressed this report’s collaborative high quality.
In 2022 Lamb, an American violist who lives in Germany, got here to the U.S. to workshop concepts with New York-based chamber group Ghost Ensemble. Each composer and band shared pursuits in microtonal music and the deep-listening follow of Pauline Oliveros, however as they labored collectively, Ghost Ensemble realized extra about Lamb’s very specific tuning ideas and he or she gained information that knowledgeable the completed piece. Ghost Ensemble carried out the six-part Interius/Exterius in 2022 and recorded it two years later, and also you suppose that the time spent on attending to comprehend it has one thing to do with how properly the 9 musicians stability relaxed pacing with particular execution of the tonal relationships that maintain the music collectively.
Ghost Ensemble’s instrumentation—4 low strings, two excessive winds, accordion, harp and hammered dulcimer—is properly outfitted to understand the overlapping lengthy tones that give the music a way of steady improvement. The group doesn’t solidify right into a trance-inducing drone, however navigates a purposeful course that lightly piques the listener’s curiosity about the place the subsequent step could fall. At some factors, the cadence of the bowing evokes respiration, however shiny, generously spaced harp and hammered-dulcimer notes places you extra within the thoughts of a constellation of stars.
These ongoing, contrasting spatial results correspond to Lamb’s intent to make sounds that relate to one another in an in/out vogue. They situate the listener smack in the midst of this alternate, concurrently encircling and flowing previous at a tempo that’s unhurried, however by no means lulling.
Interius/Exterius is a non-intoxicating however absorbing countermeasure for no matter assails you, and who doesn’t really feel bombarded by one thing in 2025? [Grayfade]
—Invoice Meyer
