#4438, With Eric Chasalow
Composer, professor, and multi-instrumentalist Eric Chasalow talks us through the sweep of his latest work, an electro-acoustic, folky, neo-renaissance sonic memoir with both a string quartet and rockenroll guitar solos; it's a song cycle called Ghosts of our Former Selves. Chasalow, PhD, is also the director of BEAMS, the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio at Brandeis University, where he has taught since 1990. Regarded as an “uptown” contemporary classical composer, he studied with Mario Davidovsky, has been compared to Milton Babbitt, and came out of big band jazz background, all the while absorbing popular music.
Chasalow’s songs from Ghosts of our Former Selves, “deliberately composed in a confessional mode” have an eerie, folky charm, and are buoyed by "squalls of electric guitars" (Schaefer), organ, and flute. On the record, there is vocal assistance from his wife, the singer/songwriter Barbara Cassidy (lately, also a student of unaccompanied Sean-nós Irish traditional singing), and Brandeis’ Lydian String Quartet performs on the title track. But, it is Chasalow’s somewhat funereal singing in layers as he plays all the instruments – even mandolin – that anchors this sonic memoir. He thinks that there might be echoes of the Beatles, David Bowie, and perhaps the late Scott Walker in this neo-Renaissance to Rockenroll song cycle that began with writing in a notebook as a meditation on the death of his parents. This was followed by the death of a mentor and continued as he had a brush with serious illness. Some of the songs reflect on mass shootings, mention fire ants, skinks, possums, and in “Ghosts Forever Falling," take on, over many movements, living things and people falling from high places. There’s also a “generous helping of anger toward humankind’s inexplicable willingness to accept hate and to engage in an unwinnable game of chicken with mass extinction.” (Room: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action.) Eric Chasalow talks us through these selections from his song cycle.
Plus, hear music by the late experimental singer/songwriter and producer Scott Walker, as interpreted by both Norwegian singer Susanna Wallumrod, and German diva Ute Lemper.
Program #4438, With Eric Chasalow (First Aired 12/07/2020)
ARTIST: Clogs (feat. Shara Worden)
WORK: On the Edge [:45]
RECORDING: The Garden of Lady Walton
SOURCE: Brassland HWY 021
INFO: brassland.org | clogsmusic.com
ARTIST: Theo Bleckmann, Todd Reynolds, Phil Kline
WORK: Phil Kline: If I had a Farm [:34]
RECORDING: Zippo Songs: Airs of War and Lunacy
SOURCE: Cantaloupe Music #21019
INFO: cantaloupemusic.com
ARTIST: Majel Connery
WORK: Orphea - Eurydices Lament [:25]
RECORDING: Orphea
SOURCE: Majel Connery
INFO: majelconnery.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Eric Chasalow
WORK: Eric Chasalow: First Ghost [3:48]
RECORDING: Ghosts of our Former Selves
SOURCE: Suspicious Motives Records
INFO: ericchasalow.com | Available at AppleMusic, Spotify, Soundcloud, Amazon.com
ARTIST: Eric Chasalow, with Barbara Cassidy
WORK: Eric Chasalow: Ghosts that Greet Me In the Shower [3:38]
RECORDING: Ghosts of our Former Selves
SOURCE: Suspicious Motives Records
INFO: ericchasalow.com | Available at AppleMusic, Spotify, Soundcloud, Amazon.com
ARTIST: Eric Chasalow
WORK: Eric Chasalow: Ghost of John William [2:41]
RECORDING: Ghosts of our Former Selves
SOURCE: Suspicious Motives Records
INFO: ericchasalow.com | Available at AppleMusic, Spotify, Soundcloud, Amazon.com
ARTIST: Eric Chasalow
WORK: Eric Chasalow: Ghosts Forever Falling [7:27]
RECORDING: Ghosts of our Former Selves
SOURCE: Suspicious Motives Records
INFO: ericchasalow.com | Available at AppleMusic, Spotify, Soundcloud, Amazon.com
ARTIST: Eric Chasalow, with Lydian String Quartet
WORK: Eric Chasalow: Ghosts of our Former Selves [5:19]
RECORDING: Ghosts of our Former Selves
SOURCE: Suspicious Motives Records
INFO: ericchasalow.com | Available at AppleMusic, Spotify, Soundcloud, Amazon.com
ARTIST: Susanna and the Magical Orchestra
WORK: Scott Walker: It's Raining Today [4:26]
RECORDING: Melody Mountain
SOURCE: Rune Grammofon #2057
INFO: susannamagical.com
ARTIST: Ute Lemper
WORK: Scott Walker: Scope J [3:44]
RECORDING: Punishing Kiss
SOURCE: Decca/Universal Classics #289 446 473
INFO: Available at AppleMusic, Spotify, and Youtube
