March 12, 2018

  • Creating Space for Global, Jazz and Classical Styles

     Exhaling Space: Music of Alejandro Rutty

    Beo String Quartet
    Fabian Lopez, violin. Inara Zandmane, piano.
    Marjorie Bagey, violin.  Steve Stusek, soprano saxophone.
    Jacqui Carrasco, violin. Adam Ricci, piano. Guy Capuzzo, guitar. Alejandro Rutty, electric bass.
    Fernando Martinez Lopez, percussion.
    Anthony Taylor and Kelly Burke, clarinets.
    Vincent Van Gelder, piano. Scott Rawls, viola. Alejandro Rutty, bass.
    Alejandro Rutty, piano.
    Navona 6145
    Total Time: 72:10
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

     

    The chamber music of Alejandro Rutty is on display in this latest release from Navona.  Rutty’s music is noted for its blend of South American musical styles, lyricism, intriguing rhythms, and compositional techniques that are inspired from modern electronic processing technology.  Here we have eight works exploring a variety of instrumental combinations that introduce the listener to Ruttty’s style.  Each bears a rather evocative title that provides a bit of a window into the musical directions that may occur.

    Such is the case with the opening work from which the CD takes its name, Exhaling Space.  This single-movement work for string quartet was inspired by images from Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, and the perception of the way these images looked like exhalations.  The music thus explores this idea applying it as well to the way the human body also breathes, especially as we approach the central part of the work with these exhaling-like gestures.  The music has an almost immediate global feel with its propulsive rhythmic action within mostly traditional harmonic support.  The thematic lines repeat and then begin to loop through the ensemble.  The music has an almost Piazzolla-like sound.  This is due in part to the rhythmic accents and energy that Rutty explores here in this engaging work that dissolves slowly away.

    A burst of energy opens Transparent Sun, but shifts into a melancholy line for violin with the piano supporting with Impressionistic extended harmony in a somewhat languid and reflective opening which soon gives way to a bluesy-like piano line.  The bursts here continue in the piano with the violin solo shifting between matching the piano line and launching off on a more lyrical remembrance.  A similar approach appears in the following, “As You Say”, with warm writing for violins and an added soprano saxophone.  Sometimes the strings have an almost Baroque-like edge to them in their interplay.

    The South American style returns in Martian Milonga, a tango-like work that sort of moves the Piazzolla-like style into the future.  This is especially notable with the addition of a groovy electric bass line and guitar ideas against an extended violin solo in this modified modern jazz ensemble.  The unique blend of styles both global and borrowed from popular music shows up later in Cantabile Hop.  A more virtuosic piano line wonders amidst a blend of Electronica, Funk, and jazzy harmonies as this three-movement work plays out.  It is not quite third-stream, more an eclectic wash of styles merged into music that shifts between jazz and classical styles lending the music an almost improvisatory feel.

    A variety of intriguing electronic colors and atmospheres are layered against a solo saxophone line in the rather unwieldly-titled More Music for Examining and Buying Merchandise.  The sounds create a diffuse backdrop with interesting spurts of sounds that have an almost psychedelic quality.  It is a rather unusual work in the midst of these other chamber pieces providing another side to Rutty’s compositional style.  Explorations of electronics are applied in the somewhat humorously-named redirect Guitars—which is actually for clarinets.  Rapid loops on clarinets lend the sense of a rapid-strummed guitar line but these are electronically enhanced to create a variety of echo ideas that continue while the soloists move on to the next fragment of music.  This is another of the more experimental works that has that psychedelic edge to it.  Percussive sounds create further rhythmic variety as well as the music begins to slowly shift into more metal influences.

    The final work on the album, Qualia, has some of the same qualities as the opening work.  A repeated rhythmic motive adds forward motion while a  more lyrical line begins to flit across rich jazz harmonies.  There is a boundless energy in this interesting syncopated rhythmic material that is further enhanced by the extended harmonies and longer development of the motifs present in the music that move across the piano to discover new thematic directions.  It makes for a fitting close to this unusual release.

    Rutty’s music in this collection shifts between a South American jazz style, concert music gestures, and a sort of modern New Age feel across the different pieces here.  Each create an engaging sound world that invites the listener in on often fascinating aural journeys.  The jazzier moments tend to stand out here in an album that is overall rather eclectic in its stylistic traversal, but often quite surprising and engaging.