10 Cutting-Edge Artists That Have Captured the Imagination Mid-Year
Summer is in full swing and there's no better time to dip your toes into works by some new, cutting-edge composers, musicians and ensembles.
From a Philadelphia-based choir which sometimes sings while standing in water, to an ascendant St. Louis-born soprano, to a New York-based saxophone quartet of unstoppable, trance-like energy, the Q2 Music staff wants to share a list of 10 artists that have caught our imagination so far this year.
10 Cutting-Edge Artists in 2016
Julia Bullock - Soprano
During last month's Ojai Music Festival in California, the ascendant young soprano Julia Bullock channeled with equal dexterity the spirit of French philosopher-mystic Simone Weil in music by Kaija Saariaho (video below) as well as that of French-American entertainer Jospehine Baker in music by Tyshawn Sorey. In describing her work with Saariaho, The New York Times described Bullock as "a presence simultaneously youthful and mature," and it's clear from even a few moments listening to the St. Louis-born, New York-based soprano that she radiates a innate musicality and precocious force of dramatic conviction. She's a muse to acclaimed opera director Peter Sellars and has performed as a soloist under Alan Gilbert and Michael Tilson Thomas. With her commanding presence and arresting delivery, not to mention her activism and fundraising within the community, it's only a matter of (short) time before her name is a fixture of the international scene. (Alex Ambrose)
Hub New Music - Mixed Quartet
Founded in 2013, HUB New Music has been lighting up the Boston concert scene since its formation in a New England Conservatory classroom. The mixed quartet (two winds, two strings) is dedicated to contemporary performance and education, and it frequently collaborates with fellow young intrepids of the Boston new music scene. I first encountered HUB at Jordan Hall when it performed the mesmerizing chamber music of Kati Agocs, who had been a mentor to the ensemble at NEC. Next season’s plan includes many workshops at high schools and colleges, as well as performance tours and the premiere of the multimedia project, Blue, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Just as much as HUB is committed to making vibrant music, it is committed to engaging and building a vibrant community. (Zoë Madonna)
Tyshawn Sorey - Composer, Drummer
It has been a remarkable season for the impossible-to-pin-down composer, improviser, percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey. In May, he played a duo show with pianist Conrad Tao at the Park Avenue Armory, finding a frenetic swing in reimaginings of works by Elliott Carter and Arnold Schoenberg; in the hands of Sorey and Tao, Morton Feldman's meditative Piano becomes an entrancing expanse of spare timbres. Earlier this month, Pi Recordings released The Inner Spectrum of Variables, a massive and densely intriguing suite based on a flexible score by Sorey in which improvisation and composition flow ceaselessly together. And a few weeks ago, the Ojai Festival debuted his haunting "Josephine Baker: A Portrait" — a collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble, soprano Julia Bullock and poet Claudia Rankine — which The New York Times called "one of the most important works of art yet to emerge from the era of Black Lives Matter." (It will arrive at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival on August 24.) (William Robin)
Delphine Dora and Sophie Cooper - Composers
I try to look out for something called "studio teleportation listening" — when I can both enjoy a recording and imagine what the room felt like while making it. It makes sense that this effect kicks in immediately on Delphine Dora and Sophie Cooper's improvised album Distance Future, which they recorded in the Todmorden Unitarian Church in England. You can visualize the cathedral's oracular curves in how the trombone, organ, percussion, electronics and vocals travel, but the real echolocation is between the two women. Collaborations can be tricky, especially when the two artists already have so much going on elsewhere, but Dora and Cooper are audibly familiar with each other's musical reflexes. The result is a meditative, honest collection that gives a refreshingly female, social face to ambient sound. May we all soon make music with our friends in historic stone buildings, and may we look out for the next release from this duo. (Elena Saavedra Buckley)
The Crossing - Choir
It seems like a simple and necessary concept: a professional chamber choir devoted to new music. And yet, in these parts at least, there is only one, The Crossing Choir of Philadelphia. Thank God it's really good and, under the direction of Donald Nally, doing great things. Founded in 2005 by friends who wanted to sing together, The Crossing has now given over 40 world premieres, with 25 commissioned works being performed this season alone. I first heard it in two spectacles — James Dillon’s 3-hour-long Nine Rivers at Miller Theatre, and John Luther Adams's Sila at Lincoln Center, where the singers had to stand in water — but got a better feeling for its sound and spirit in warmer and more intimate works by Gavin Bryars and David Lang. It's just unveiled the Buxtehude-inspired Seven Responses, featuring composers such as Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Caroline Shaw, David T. Little and Santa Ratniece. It hits Mostly Mozart in August. (Phil Kline)
Kamala Sankaram - Composer, Singer
Kamala Sankaram wears many musical hats: as a composer, she has been commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Arts Center; as a singer she is the frontwoman of Brooklyn-based band Bombay Rickey; and, on top of her musical expertise, Kamala holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. In her techno-noir opera Looking at You, Kamala tackles the implications of digital privacy laws through an energetic, playful score and interactive multimedia which draw the audience into the discussion on a very personal level; Rob Handel’s delightfully nerdy libretto makes this a killer trifecta. I first encountered Kamala’s music during Looking At You’s first workshop reading at the National Opera Center on June 19. The full production will include interactive singing tablettes, one of which might include your own face serenading you with your digital footprint. Have a listen to the bike scene from Looking At You. (Jamie Leidwinger)
Mocrep - Ensemble
If PR firms have all but neutered words like “radical” and “provocative” with excruciating overuse, Chicago new music ensemble Mocrep is reclaiming these attributes faster than Williamsburg furniture makers at a barn demolition. These young heretics are not just out to tummy-tickle (or gut-punch) the navel-gazing elements of contemporary classical music with audacious theatricality and performance art — in concert, these players’ bodies are as integral as their instruments — they are actively pushing back against patriarchal norms of programming and what constitutes “the canon.” Mocrep is gaining serious traction on the Third Coast and is distinguished as the only American band invited to the Young Ensemble Program at Darmstadt this summer, including a workshop it's co-hosting with the inimitable Steven Kazuo Takasugi. Keep an eye Clockwork Orange–style wide-open for this band in coming years. (Doyle Armbrust)
Battle Trance - Saxophone Quartet
Battle Trance is a tour-de-force tenor saxophone conglomerate brilliantly conceived by composer, tenor saxophonist and qigong practitioner Travis Laplante. Self-described as producing "portal-opening” music that’s deeply emotive and expressive, Battle Trance’s performances (featuring Jeremy Viner, Patrick Breiner and Matthew Nelson) are continuous, meditative and soaring sonic experiences that deeply resonate within the acoustic space they occupy, together in sympathy, as a single entity. (Curtis Macdonald)
TAK Ensemble - Mixed Quintet
My first encounter with TAK Ensemble quite took my breath away. It was their video of Taylor Brook’s Idolum, which is the most mesmerizing fifteen minutes you’ll spend on YouTube today. This intrepid quintet, led by flautist Laura Cocks, impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity — and, well, just a dash of IDGAF as they slay the thorniest material like it’s nothing (see also David Bird’s Series Imposture). As titillating and irresistible a band as we have on the new music scene today. (Patrick Castillo)
Horse Lords - Mixed Quartet
They've been around since at least 2012, but the Baltimore quartet Horse Lords burst onto my radar in April with their third full-length album Interventions. It hit like a triple shot of caffeine and I immediately shot a flurry of "have you heard this?!" emails to friends and colleagues. Some of it sounds like tape experiments translated to guitar, saxophone, bass and found-sound percussion. Some of it sounds like multiphonic-centric free jazz. Sometimes it's more like Steve Reich filtered through sub-Saharan guitar playing and microtonal tuning. Whatever you want to call it, this is fearless and inventive music that made me sit up straight for the first time in quite a while. (Hannis Brown)
