January 18, 2019

  • Exploring Sound in Dance Settings

     

    Ted Coffey: Works for Dance
    Ravello Records 8002
    Total Time:  64:04
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    The sort of soundscapes that composer Ted Coffey creates on this new album are parallel to the sound design work one often finds in film music.  Coffey’s uses a variety of electronic manipulation of non-traditional elements in the pieces recorded here.  Various guitars uitar tend to serve as the one recognizable acoustic element that is blended into the often fascinating sounds where rhythmic motifs become repeated patterns and sounds that loop to lend texture and shape to the music as it evolves.  Coffey’s work is often integrated as multimedia installations or events and the pieces here for dance, hence the title.  The music stretches expectations of modern dance in the process.  It would be helpful perhaps to see some of the visuals connected to the music, but the production here is a simple, white package that suggests the sterile environment out which Coffey creates these often pristine sounds.

    The album opens with Petals 8 which the composer intends to be a sort of update of Japanese gagaku music.  This description can provide a starting point for the way tonal elements appear and are shaped.  The sparseness of the texture early on also feels inspired by this ancient style.  A particular throaty version tends to lend itself best to helping create that connection.  It also helps provide some additional structure for the listener to anticipate.

    Experiments in sound continue in Petals 1, 2, and 3.  These short works are responses to exploring various compositional issues that arise when utilizing this method of creation.  One might liken them to having to solve the problems of fugue or specific structures in tonal music, or the difficulties raised by specific instrument choices and orchestration in traditional composition.

    Composers like to challenge themselves in opposite directions by turning to using a minimal amount of material and crafting works around it.  One Note Solo might just be the electro-acoustic equivalent of Percy Grainger’s The Immovable Do.  In the Grainger, a stick note on a keyboard became his inspiration for a work that had that note transferred around the ensemble.  In Coffey’s piece, the note “C” is the focal point.  For his work, we must expand our perception of what “C” is by thinking about it as frequency, harmonics, amplitude, and range.

    The album closes with Sonatina.  Here is one of Coffey’s earlier attempts at exploring sound with a variety of found and traditional materials one of which is a looped recording of a viola da gamba.

    Ideally, computer-generated material that interacts with a live component loses something when reduced to just an aural experience.  That said, it can be a rather fascinating experience to let the sounds wash over you and let the imagination create the imagery that it inspires.  Music like this can often seem cold and distant but that is not the case here.  The result is an album of contemporary music that recalls the days of electronic experimentation that grew out of the New York School of composers: Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, and John Cage.  All challenging our perception of what constituted “music” by helping us here everyday objects and even silence in new ways.  Coffey’s release is one example of how this has evolved over the last half century.