Weekly Music Roundup: Arvo Pärt, Titanic, and Ndlovu Youth Choir Sings Queen

This week, Arvo Pärt at 90 (almost), an unsinkable Titanic from Mexico City, and a Zulu Bohemian Rhapsody. Also, composer/pianist/producer Kelly Moran and Berlin-based Colombian experimental musician Lucrecia Dalt.

Arvo Pärt Looks Back To The Renaissance

Arvo Pärt’s music is a bewitching combination of quasi-medieval chant and Minimalist aesthetics. The Estonian composer turns 90 next week, but this week the Estonian choir Vox Clamantis released an album called And I heard a voice…, a collection of Pärt’s works, some familiar, and others less so. The Seven Magnificat Antiphons, for example, have been widely recorded. But this piece, Für Jan Van Eyck, is not nearly as well known. A 2020 work written for the rededication of a magnificent Renaissance altar in Ghent, Belgium, painted by Jan Van Eyck and his brother Hubert, it is for choir and organ, but typically for Pärt, the organ part doesn’t storm the heavens, instead providing a sonic carpet for the singers. The music is simple – an act of musical defiance when he began writing in this style a half century ago – but the subtle interplay of the voices and organ proves what a gift that simplicity can be. There is also a magical effect towards the end where we hear a bell ringing off – despite the fact that we hadn’t noticed it being struck. 

Mexico City’s Unsinkable Titanic

Titanic is the duo of cellist/singer/composer Mabe Fratti and guitarist/producer Hector Tosta, who records as I. la Católica. Fratti is originally from Guatemala, but in the past several years has established herself as a linchpin of a vibrant experimental/pop music scene in Mexico City. Tosta has contributed to Fratti’s own records, but when the two of them formed the duo Titanic and released their debut album, Vidrio, in 2023, the results were a kaleidoscope of sounds and textures that challenged listeners and rewarded them at the same time. Now comes Hagen, the duo’s new LP, and it too brings the listener along through dark, sometimes menacing sonic places, only to emerge into a brightly-lit rock arena. The sounds of avant-garde classical music, metal, and free improvisation swirl around the duo’s often tautly-constructed songs – the element of surprise is clearly something they’re going for. And getting. This track, “La Trampa Sale,” or “the trap springs,” is a good example: it begins with a ritualistic, ominous sound, but a rare layering of Fratti’s vocals changes the song to something almost triumphant. A Latin-tinged, piano-led coda ensures the song ends in a very different space from where it began.  

From South Africa, A Bonkers Version of “Bohemian Rhapsody”

The Ndlovu Youth Choir is a South African group that has been around for more than 15 years, and after a failed run on the TV series America’s Got Talent, began attracting attention for their inventive covers. Their latest is a version of Queen’s iconic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” sung in Zulu and some English. The ensemble seems pretty big – and if the video is any indication, some of the members may be a little more “veteran” than you’d expect from a youth choir. But they are clearly having a blast taking on the hyperbolic drama of the song, and that video – well, I was getting Wizard of Oz in Wakanda vibes. Now look, singing most of the song in Zulu is quirky, but not in itself so creative. But there are moments where this arrangement really comes into its own. One is the “so you think can stone me and spit in my eye?” section, where, instead of Queen’s heavy rock guitars, we get the sharp, stinging guitar lines of South African mbaqanga, or “township jive.” Suddenly we’re transported to an alternate Soweto that’s just as colorful as the video’s over-the-top set.  

An Eerie Song From Lucrecia Dalt

The Colombian musician Lucrecia Dalt is based in Berlin, and first made a name for herself as part of the city’s electronic dance music scene. But lately her songs have become more atmospheric and dark; this one, “no death no danger,” is a sparse, ominous work that has the feel of a David Lynch movie set in dark and lonely night in the American Southwest. Behind Dalt’s almost whispery English-language vocals, restless percussion is underscored by the slow thud of an electronic drum, with ghostly wisps of sound that disappear almost before you can register they’re there. As for the title, well, there are clearly intimations of death and danger here. The song is taken from the new album, out today, called A Danger To Ourselves.  

Kelly Moran Shares Music From Her Next Album

Kelly Moran fell in love with the sound of the prepared piano while studying composition. The metallic, percussive clanging of a piano with bits of wood, screws, paper, etc, placed on the strings inside the instrument became a hallmark of her earlier records. But Moran also loves electronic music and metal, so her pieces tended to be multilayered and richly textured. Then she began doing solo piano works, and last year released an album of duos – between Moran and her Yamaha Disklavier, a digital version of the old player piano. Her next album, Don’t Trust Mirrors, comes out on October 1 and synthesizes the various keyboard sounds that she’s been exploring. The single “Echo In The Field” has a kinetic, propulsive sound, with bubbling electronics underneath the piano’s majestic chords and the sharp attack of the prepared piano.