August 17, 2018

  • Fusing Arts in the Music of Gina Biver

     

    The Music of Gina Biver
    Fuse Ensemble
    Ravello Records 7993
    Total Time:  44:23
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Evocative titles grace this new release of music by Washington, D.C., composer Gina Biver.  Her music blends traditional and electric instruments to create dramatic works that take their inspiration from literature and other art forms.   The pieces here began inspiration from the works of Jung, a painting by contemporary artist Jackie Tileston, poetry of Colette Inez, and a non-fiction work by Andrew Solomon.  Biver is also the director and composer for the new music/media ensemble, Fuse.  The idea in their concerts is to link multimedia experiences with music to create unique events.  Each of the five works here explores unique instrumental combinations and were written over the last 8 years.  Such performance art can sometime loose something when taken apart from its additional stagecraft.  The works here are carefully chosen to give a sense of the experimental and dramatic qualities

    Mirror (2012) is based on Inez’s poem “Empress in the Mirror”.  The piece is set for violin and piano.  The former creates a rather ethereal film at the beginning which moves into a more jagged central portion.  The piano creates denser harmonic support before moving to a repeated ostinato pattern in the middle.  The poem is spoken by Biver and Inez and imaged in such a way that we hear a sort of mirror image of its own.  These also then bookend the music itself to create an additional musical arch.

    In Girl, Walking (2014), Biver creates an episodic work that evolves from a motivic pattern laid out in electric guitar.  The flute idea creates a more floating line that intersects with this pattern accompanied by a bowed string bass.  Teacups add a unique percussion quality.  The guitar idea becomes a mesmerizing backdrop to the improvisatory quality of the other lines.  The music wanders through different styles sometimes feeling almost like third stream jazz at times.  In one sense, the guitar idea walks us through these episodes as the musical ideas take root and move on into serene, or more dramatic qualities.

    Two works influenced by the writings of Cal Jung follow.  The first of these, We Meet Ourselves (2015), is inspired by quotes from the noted psychologist/psychoanalyst.  Here Biver uses marimba whose own improvisations and patterns trigger barely audible audio responses.  Musically, the idea is to explore the concept of the unconscious symbolized by the audio which tends to be rather .  The second work, The Cellar Door (2011), for piano and cello explores similar themes with the acoustic instruments exploring individuation and the audio sounds serve to explore meaning for these instrumental ideas.

    The final work on the disc is No Matter Where (2010) in which Biver explores Tileston’s painting of the same title as a musical journey through the images.  The trio of violin, clarinet, and piano come together to create a work that is patterned on speech rhythms, Indian ragas, and Tibetan bells.  It is perhaps the most “fusion” like in a sense and it would help to have Tileston’s painting in hand with its intriguing swirls of color oscillating on the canvas.

    Biver’s music is quite dramatic and falls into more experimental musical lines of alternative classical music.  Harmonically, the music stays closer to modernist and traditional sounds with the unusual sounds adding the edge.  The electroacoustic ensembles create interesting combinations of instruments that explore motivic concepts allowing for improvisation to occur according to the instrumentalist’s desires and abilities.  To that extent, the Fuse Ensemble feels very well versed to create this music shaped with input from the composer.  The music is all quite fascinating, though notably requires some effort from the listener to get a sense of the inspirational aspects of the music.  With the notes for these pieces, one can then more readily get a sense for the dramatic story Biver is attempting to communicate.  The result is a very intimate chamber music collection of interesting contemporary music.