(+++) DISTINCTIVE INSTRUMENTS

Asuka Kakitani: The Garden. Mark Urness, double bass. Neuma Records. $15. 

Steven Ricks: Motor Culture; Caroline Louise Miller: Ansible; Elainie Lillios: Living Between Seconds. SPLICE Ensemble (Keith Kirchoff, piano and electronics; Adam Vidiksis, drum set and electronics; Sam Wells, trumpet and electronics). New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     Double-bass virtuosi, although few and far between, are nothing new: Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889) remains world-famous, Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846) preceded Bottesini in skill and fame, and Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951) was famed for his bass playing (and to a lesser extent his compositions for the instrument) before he cemented his career as a conductor. Nevertheless, the double bass is unusual enough as a solo instrument so it is always surprising and a touch amusing to hear its clever elephantine appearance in The Carnival of the Animals – where Saint-Saëns uses only its highest register. An extended work for solo double bass, using all the capabilities of the instrument, is exceedingly rare, which makes Asuka Kakitani’s The Garden immediately noteworthy. And its notes are indeed worthy, although 43 minutes of them – briefly relieved only at the start of each movement, when the title is announced verbally by Kakitani, her daughter Mia, and cellist Mark Urness – will be a bit much for most listeners. In her seven through-composed movements, Kakitani does try to have the double bass produce differently distinctive sounds, and Urness cooperates fully with that approach in four movements that he improvises: Ants’ House, Apple Tree, Fireflies, and Hummingbird Moth. Knowing the movements’ titles is important for understanding and accepting the musical portrayals of the various garden conditions, for instance through the pizzicato emphasis of the start of the first movement, Seeds, contrasted with the non-pizzicato bow strokes of the second and longest, Germination, which eventually moves into more legato expressiveness. The improvised movements are all short and technically quite adept, often using techniques not usually associated with the double bass to produce effects such as the skittering in Ants’ House and the deeply resonant buzzing in Hummingbird Moth. Kakitani’s greenery-focused movements have a modicum of advocacy (the insistently percussive Ditch the Chemicals) but focus mostly on quotidian plants and their life cycles: Apple Tree, Rooting, Pollinators, and eventually Fly, Fly, Fly Away, Seeds – before the closing Beneath Our Feet. Impressionism is at most partially present in these movements, although listeners who pay attention to the titles will be able to focus fairly easily on how Kakitani tries to interpret them musically. The pleasantly arpeggiated finale, with an underlying buzz that gradually permeates the sonic tapestry, rises in volume to a conclusion that simply stops – not so much a climax as a proclamation of continuity. The Garden has many interesting elements and, although it is a bit much to listen to a solo double bass for this length of time, Urness certainly brings his instrument’s capabilities and in particular its expressive potential to the fore on this Neuma Records CD – in ways that audiences wanting to hear something different that does not rely on electronic modification will find intriguing. 

     Even for those who do gravitate to electronics combined with acoustic instruments, some performers offer combinations beyond the avant-garde norm. One example is the SPLICE Ensemble, which offers three of its commissioned works on a New Focus Recordings release. The three members of the group not only produce unusual combinatorial sounds using their respective instruments but also are all versed in electronic expressiveness, which they contribute in varying ways. As is often the case in modern music, a clear understanding of the not-always-clear titles of works and their individual movements is necessary for the pieces on this CD to have their intended effect. And none of this titling is as clear as Kakitani’s in The Garden. Steven L. Ricks’ Motor Culture, for example, is supposed to be about how cars influence modern life. Its three movements are called Hank’s Drive Through the Multiverse, Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, and Disastrous Experiment. The amusement underlying the words is by no means apparent in the raucous intensity of the first movement, the complex and multifaceted and constantly shifting middle movement, or the swells and silences of the finale – which includes recordings of people discussing auto accidents. Whether Ricks intends Motor Culture as a cautionary tale or simply as descriptive is unclear and pretty much beside the point – the instruments and electronics exist and interweave for their own sake. Ricks’ work is partly inspired by a movie scene, and Caroline Louise Miller’s Ansible is entirely grown from a device used by science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Without knowing that, and without being familiar with the novels in which Le Guin uses the ansible (an instantaneous communicator that functions over interstellar distances), audiences will be unable to make much sense of the four movements: Antiphony, Gethen / Icecaps, Urras / Walls, and Passacaglia – although at least the first and fourth provide musical referents. The first movement deliberately uses a piano with poor sound, with microtonality adding to an impression of decay; the second has an Arctic chill about it, with trumpet shivers as emphasis; the third is percussive, disjointed, and incorporates recorded voices, including one saying “I knew fear.” Then the fourth movement, which scarcely lives up to its title, lays the instruments and electronics over each other to produce a kind of sound cloud. The work is quite extended, lasting more than half an hour, but exactly how all its elements connect to Le Guin’s ansible, and exactly what sort of commentary Miller intends through that connection, audiences are left to decipher for themselves. Elainie Lillios’ Living Between Seconds is half as long and in a single movement, features an extended opening of recorded birdsong, and is the most intensely electronic work on the CD: the SPLICE Ensemble’s instruments are often not recognizable as acoustic at all. Lillios’ title implies a philosophical or metaphysical orientation toward acceptance of and thoughtfulness regarding the moment, but nothing in the piece especially invites a contemplative response. All the works here are of primary musical interest because of the way the unusual instrumental combination of the SPLICE Ensemble produces the sounds the composers seek. All will be engaging exclusively to listeners captivated by those sounds, and their electronic enhancements – or willing to invest the time and effort to find out what the composers are trying to express or illustrate in these pieces, then listen to them with those desired expressions and intended illustrations front-and-center in their ears and minds.