A Song For Friday: NO HAY BANDA & Steven Kazuo Takasugi

Takasugi's Il Teatro Rosso amazes. Also, releases from Hypercube Ensemble, Richard Festinger, Raven Chacon, Zosha Warpeha & Mariel Terán, Josephine Odhil, Avery Friedman, The Convenience, and Fan Club

My recent experience of Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s music has been based on performances, whether a revival of the “masterful and discomfiting” Strange Autumn or the New York premiere of his “mind-blowing” Piano Concerto, both of which I got to see last year. I’ve been yearning to revisit these complex pieces, especially the Piano Concerto, or spend time with other music by him. That makes it even more exciting to have the spectacular recording of his piece Il Teatro Rosso by Montreal-based ensemble NO HAY BANDA that came out today.

While there is a performance aspect to this piece, which Takasugi composed for the ensemble, including video, cabaret-like theatrics, and “trompe-l'oreille (fool the ear) electroacoustics,” from a purely musical point of view, there is more than enough here to intrigue and entertain. Il Teatro Rosso, which has some conceptual roots in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, is structured in two acts and seven scenes. The one section I keep coming back to is Scene II: The Spasms of Trapped Animals, a mind-boggling series of fragmented notes, sounds, and textures that seems to expand outward like a pane of glass shattering in slow motion. Listen.

The commitment of the players seems total here and throughout Il Teatro Rosso. Kudos to Sarah Albu, soprano, Geneviève Liboiron, violin, Émilie Girard-Charest, cello, Lori Freedman, bass clarinet, Felix Del Tredici, bass trombone, Daniel Áñez, piano, and Noam Bierstone, percussion.

Takasugi is also an incredibly articulate narrator of his musical aims, remarking in a 2019 lecture, “The mixed-media work, especially those that bring together recorded samples of acoustic instruments with their live counterparts, offers the composer a unique opportunity to reflect on today's ambiguous, uncertain, paradoxical, and contradictory world. Predictive faculties are thwarted; assumptions are tested: in short, a house of mirrors, whose reflections and actualities become confused and exchanged. It is an art of misdirection, sleight of hand, ventriloquism, imposters, and role reversal."

It seems like Il Teatro Rosso was made for these times. To get an idea of the total experience, take a look at this trailer for a recent performance. If you want to see it for yourself (and I know I do!), you’ll have to get over to Germany for the Darmstädter Ferienkurse this summer.

For a hint of the sound-world Takasugi is working with here, check out Distractfold’s 2021 recording of Trapped Animals: An Allegory. But NO HAY BANDA’s recording of Il Teatro Rosso is only available on Bandcamp or a limited edition CD. Make the effort!

You can listen to most of the rest of the songs for Friday here or below.

Also Out This Week

Hypercube Ensemble - the force for good Since the Michael Fiday piece that gives this EP its title is named for a quote from John Coltrane (“I want to be the force which is truly for good.”) and based on his composition Giant Steps, I’ll paraphrase trumpeter Lee Morgan and say these “very bright, very busy” pieces will improve your mood. Fiday’s piece follows a recording of Louis Andriessen’s Hout, the 1991 work composed for electric guitar, saxophone, piano, and marimba that inspired the formation of Hypercube. The playing of Erin Rogers (tenor sax), Jay Sorce (electric guitar), Andrea Lodge (piano), and Chris Graham (percussion) is beyond reproach, making the complex intricacies of both pieces feel very natural and even swinging. This is the second release from Hypercube, who also enlivened Doug Bielmeier’s excellent Music For Billionaires in 2023. Based on everything I’ve heard, I plan to see their show at the Queens New Music Festival on May 18th. See you there?

Richard Festinger - Then And Now: Chamber Music This expansive collection of works across 30 years of pieces by this American composer and performer is a great introduction to an accomplished musician. There’s a consistent elegance combined with a steely architecture that draws you in and through each piece. A perfect example is To A Pilgrim, here in a gorgeous recording by Alan R. Kay on bass clarinet and the great Michael Nicolas. For nearly ten minutes, Festinger explores the rich sonorities of the instruments while pursuing a series of questing melodic lines that invite contemplation and meditation. This is what chamber music is supposed to do, and all the works here, featuring performances by the Calefax Reed Quintet, Cygnus, Collage New Music, and Windsong, are equally adept and involving.

Zosha Warpeha & Mariel Terán - Orbweaver I’m a sucker for any music that seems in direct contact with the ritualistic strands in music’s most elemental DNA and Warpeha, who wields her Hardanger d’Amore with both mastery and pure wonder, lives in that ancient place. This richly atmospheric collaboration with Terán, who plays a variety of Andean flutes, is no different. Together, they mimic the sounds of nature at times, and not only spiders, but birds and other creatures of bone and breath. Lose yourself in the menagerie.

Raven Chacon - Voiceless Mass. In these three works, expertly performed by Present Music and conducted by David Bloom, Chacon demonstrates an awe-inspiring ability to maintain a smoldering tension over time. Whether composing for a pipe organ and a large ensemble (percussion, winds, strings, and electronics) as on the Pulitzer Prize-winning title track, or a quintet, as in Biyán (based on the Navajo word for “Song”), Chacon maintains a clear sense of time and place throughout each work. Like Bernard Herrmann, who came to mind when playing this album, Chacon is a storyteller, and the narrative of Voiceless Mass, which “considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power,” is implicit in the music and deeply relevant for these times. This stunning collection is an intense experience that will reward the patient listener with entrée into a brave new world of sound.

Josephine Odhil - Monstera On this second solo album, Amsterdam’s Odhil builds on the foundation set on 2023’s Volatile with greater variety and seems ready to take on all comers. From percussion-heavy post-punk and synthy rock to Motown-inflected pop and stripped-down folk, she approaches everything with conviction and depth. Citing such influences as American Psycho, Taxi Driver, and Dexter, the shiny surfaces may be sheathing some bloody impulses, which only increases the fascination with her music. Her sweet, hypnotic voice and light, melodic touch lend consistency to an album that got under my skin on the first listen.

Avery Friedman - New Thing A Brooklyn-based writer of often dreamy, even languorous songs that explore life and love, Friedman has surrounded herself with a community of great players to help realize them with detail and passion. From James Chrisman’s (Sister., Ciao Malz, etc.) touches of guitar noise on Photo Booth and Biking Standing to Felix Walworth’s (Florist, Told Slant, etc.) sensitive drumming throughout, this debut announces a new, and very good, thing to listen to.

The Convenience - Like Cartoon Vampires When not providing bass and keyboards for super-fun 80s-disco-popsters Video Age, Nick Corson and Duncan Troast travel spikier highways as The Convenience. Perhaps because they’re from New Orleans, their second record retains some of the warmth of their other band but is unafraid of getting noisy and tense. The album is well-sequenced, too, with plenty of variety, from angular to hypnotic. Wire is a definite (map) reference point, lyrically and musically, but the sense of play is all The Convenience’s own.

Fan Club - Ain’t No Saint With machine-gun drums buried under flame-thrower guitars and blaring vocals, these Seattle rockers prove that five songs in less than eight minutes can be a delightfully exhausting experience. While the original recordings were filled with plenty of chaos and fun, both qualities have been amped up here. Sometimes the second time is the charm.