Stillpoint Works by Alvin Singleton, Jessie Montgomery, Paola Prestini, Tyshawn Sorey et al Awadagin Pratt (piano); A Far Cry; Roomful of Teeth New Amsterdam NWAM177 79 mins
In Stillpoint, pianist Awadagin Pratt combines his love of poetry with the commissioning of diverse living composers, enabling their engagement with a work which is too often assumed to be outside the experience of the African-American and/or female among them. Those expecting ‘still’ music on the resulting album may be further surprised to find seven, often energetic and sometimes boisterous, pieces offering a range of responses to TS Eliot’s Burnt Norton.
In Jessie Montgomery’s Rounds, a play on ‘rondine’ sees opposites chase through circular patterns like swifts – while Paola Prestini’s Code evokes birds more directly in vocal sounds reflecting on Eliot’s relationship with Emily Hale.
Where Alvin Singleton explores Time Past, Time Future in stabbing octaves alternating sustained and scurrying strings, Judd Greenstein brings oscillation – and homage to the late McCoy Turner – to bear on the notion of Still Point.
Here and elsewhere, ensembles A Far Cry (strings) and Roomful of Teeth (vocal) variously prove effective partners, with Pēteris Vasks’s reworked string duo Castillo Interior a solo piano foil. Most striking is Tyshawn Sorey’s Untitled Composition for Piano and Eight Voices, a Feldman-esque musing on supposed opposites, stillness and dance.
Steph Power