“Solo guitar figures flow and fray through echo and empty space, evoking loss, long roads, and low-lit landscapes.” That’s what the little blurb about Scenes from the South Island tells me as I scroll through its Bandcamp page. “It would be nice to take a road trip,” I think to myself as I hit play. “Through the American southwest. Zion’s kind of unreal.” The album … Continue reading On Sounding Daydreams
On Branches, Philadelphia-based ensemble Square Peg Round Hole creates genre-blending ambient music that melds outward expression with inner pensiveness. The third LP from the percussion-based trio — Evan Chapman, Sean M. Gill, and Carlos Pacheco-Perez — Branches continues in a similar vein to past releases like 2016’s Juniper, a deeply emotional collection of purely instrumental, ambient works. But this time around, they’ve incorporated occasional vocals … Continue reading Album Review: Square Peg Round Hole, Branches
Pianist Isabelle O’Connell performed 13 different pieces at the Irish Arts Center on November 7. Each encapsulated a vastly different soundscape, but stories of O’Connell’s life and travels between Dublin and New York City connected them. The first piece on the program was George Gershwin’s Prelude No. 1, chosen in honor of her last concert in Dublin before moving to New York for school, where … Continue reading Isabelle O’Connell’s Wide-Ranging Exploration of Contemporary Piano at the Irish Arts Center
meditations on auxin, a new brooding work for electric guitar and voice, amalgamates the seemingly disparate musical categories of ancient Greek lyre songs, Bach’s solo partitas and sonatas, and punk rock. Composed by performer-composer and poet Yaz Lancaster and performed by composer, guitarist, and arranger Andrew Noseworthy, meditations on auxin uses form as a framework to give the performer freedom of interpretation. Released today on DIY-inspired, … Continue reading Track Premiere: Yaz Lancaster, “Meditations on Auxin”
Kinds of Kings, a six-member composer collective dedicated to producing inclusive work and advocating for underheard voices, celebrated the opening of their 2019-20 season at Roulette on October 24 with a concert titled Afterimage. Teaming up with ~Nois, a Chicago-based, new music focused saxophone quartet, the evening featured one work for saxophone ensemble by each composer in the collective, each exploring a different musical style. … Continue reading Afterimage: Kinds of Kings, ~Nois, and Wide-Ranging Musical Styles at Roulette
Mary Halvorson and John Dieterich’s first collaborative album, ‘A Tangle of Stars,’ released on artistically diverse label New Amsterdam Records, unfolds across a wide range of musical styles. Continue reading Album Review: Mary Halvorson & John Dieterich, A Tangle of Stars
“Alone Again” is violinist and composer Sarah Goldfeather’s immersive ode to rejection. It’s a dramatic, indie-pop response to the open wounds of lost love. A heartbreaking relatability seeps through every synth-laden lyric, following influence from artists like Sufjan Stevens and Mitski. Its accompanying video amplifies the sonic intensity, using visual layering to mimic the echoing loneliness of the music itself. Continue reading Video Premiere: Goldfeather, “Alone Again”
