August 14, 2019

  • Chamber Music for Brass and Sax

     

    McKinley: Modern Chamber Works
    New York Festival Brass Quintet;
    Estrella Consort:/Erik Rohde
    Navona Records 6238
    Total Time:  66:48
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Three Scenes is a new collection of chamber music by composer Elliott Miles McKinley, one of the founders of the group earWORM and currently a professor of music at Roger Williams University.  He has studied with, among others, William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty, and David Gompper.  The pieces here explore recent music for winds.

    Six Movements for Brass Quintet (2015) are set with an introduction and an epilogue which frame two episodes set apart by interludes all of which are of essentially equal length in time.  “Glass Towers” is the title for the opening which is a blend Hermanesque modernism in a rather somber atmosphere.  Cells of material are transferred through the upper parts with these massive harmonic blocks serving as dramatic signposts where things come together before expanding outward again.  The first episode, “Dirge”, features quite dense harmonies out which float a single thematic line against swells in a somber atmosphere.  An interlude of “Fanfare” adds some variety and connects well with the traditional brass form.  It is followed by “Dawn Breezes” which revisits the harmonic structures of the introduction but with the edges smoothed more reminiscent of Roy Harris.  The next interlude, “Frozen Fire”, is a scherzo-like segment where fast articulations provide the momentum and energy.  The work concludes with a touching “Elegy for Dad”.  The work is a fairly dramatic piece that has a style and narrative feel that is cinematic.  (It was somewhat reminiscent of Twilight Zone scores of the 1960s.)

    The central work, Aria (2015), is for a saxophone quartet and mixed media with a playing time around twelve minutes.  The intricate quartet lines are set against ambient textures.  An almost mesmerizing quality invites the listener into the opening bars where these same combinations of harmonic swells are played against different melodic threads that pop through the texture.  The harmony moves through these denser sections to occasionally open up to more traditional sounds, if but for a moment.

    Four Grooves combines the saxophone quartet with percussion and two pianos for a work that connects McKinley’s interest in music that straddles popular music, global forms, and art music.  “Marimba Madness” brings us some of that same energy and dramatic shape that informed the opening brass piece.  Motivic cells are used as unifying factors against a some intriguing piano patterns that are further transferred and elaborated on by the other instruments.  The saxophones serve as one means to add harmonic structure as the other lines fling by.  “African Dreams” has a nice languid quality in its opening bars that soon gives way to interesting syncopated jungle rhythms.  Rhythmic punctuations, and metallic percussion lends themselves to the appropriately-titled “Heavy Metals”.  The piece concludes with “A Different Drummer” with exciting forward motion that eventually dissolves at the end.