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NW 80787CD
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"Michael Byron (b. 1953) has long been committed to writing virtuosic instrumental music of contrapuntal complexity and perpetual variation, but with The Celebration (2013), a song cycle for baritone and piano quintet, he ventured into unfamiliar territory: He had not previously composed for voice, the primary vehicle for articulating the wonder of the human condition. Consisting of four songs (words by Anne Tardos) and two instrumental interludes, The Celebration explores the ambiguity, the disorientation, and ultimately the joyful paradox of formulating an identity in a world of constant change. Like most of Byron's work, the composition is built on a carefully designed structure that ensures the constant and measured transformation of musical elements. Just as Byron creates a new context for Tardos's poetry, so does the presence of the poetic voice transform Byron's music. The instrumental lines, for example, assume an intensely lyrical guise as they anticipate, echo, mirror, and contrast the vocal line. Also, the contrapuntal and rhythmic complexity -- a hallmark of Byron's style -- seems here to have emerged from a fragmented chorale of simple melodies that have been enriched by increasingly rhapsodic ornamentation, all of which has been meticulously notated. The unexpected divergence and convergence of the vocal and instrumental lines produce what Byron calls 'inevitable synchronicities,' that mysterious circumstance of individual voices immersed in eternal dialogue. With The Celebration, Byron and Tardos provide a rich opportunity for us to acknowledge and celebrate the divine counterpoint between voice and instruments, poetry and music, individual and humanity."
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NW 80679CD
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Performed by Joseph Kubera, piano. If you've ever been to a strip club with Willie Winant, you must buy this CD! "Michael Byron (b. 1953) was a pupil of James Tenney, and later, of Richard Teitelbaum. The body of music he has composed over the past thirty years has been harmonically rich, rhythmically detailed, and increasingly virtuosic. Dreamers Of Pearl (2004-2005) evinces a sensitivity for the sound of the piano, a sensibility of extended playing/listening, and an interest in repetition and change through gradual and seemingly clandestine processes that transform and extend what we hear. Despite the lyrical (and, one might assume, programmatic) titles of the three movements ('Enchanting the Stars,' 'A Bird Revealing the Unknown to the Stars,' 'It Is the Night and Dawn of Constellations Irradiated'), Dreamers Of Pearl is a self-contained piece of pure ('absolute') music without obvious quotation or extra-musical references. Dreamers makes its case within a classically-balanced architectural design: three extended 'fast-slow-fast' movements of roughly equal length (263, 199, and 226 measures, respectively). The notation is meticulous, specific, precise. Much of the work's texture could be characterized as baroque, given the perpetual motion of the consistent two-voiced polyphonic layering -- some of it cryptically and distortedly imitative. Dreamers belongs to a rare class of recent piano music --monumental compositions of great length, beauty, and depth -- all self-consciously bound to tradition-oriented genres and their deeply ingrained structures, yet inventive and thrilling in ways that inspire a few brave pianists to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to these often mercilessly difficult pieces. Joseph Kubera, the tremendously gifted pianist for whom Dreamers Of Pearl was written, is one of those brave few."
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