A Song For Friday: David Crowell
The composer's portrait album offers sonic sparkle and emotional complexity
Millennia of music making and we still don’t know precisely why certain chord progressions, notes, or melodies inspire happiness or sadness, let alone more complex feelings that blend a little of both. But on Point / Cloud, composer, saxophonist, guitarist, and producer David Crowell proves his expertise at creating nuanced landscapes of feeling using spare forces.
Take the title piece, a 12-minute work for layers of electric guitar that evokes hope, introspection, excitement, and joy across its three movements. Written in response to Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint (1987), Point / Cloud was performed live in 2019 by Daniel Lippel, who also created the definitive recording found on the album. Listen to the first part and revel in how Crowell builds phrases and repetitions into a rich tapestry of sparkling sound.
Across the whole album, which also includes Sandbox Percussion, guitarist Mak Grgić, and eco|tonal, the duo of Crowell and singing cellist Iva Casián-Lakoš, Crowell dazzles in both the conception and execution of his smart miniatures. If you like what you hear in Point / Cloud (I), you will not be disappointed in the whole collection, which should appeal to fans of minimalism, progressive rock, and the arty almost-pop of Sō Percussion’s work with Caroline Shaw.
Lippel is also the co-founder of the New Focus label, which keeps him so busy that it makes any opportunity to hear him play a moment to be savored and Point / Cloud offers a rich helping indeed.
From the archives:
Record Roundup: Song Forms
Record Roundup: Contemporary Kaleidoscope
Focus On: Contemporary Classical