My point of entry into Tak Ensemble’s first decade came in 2016 with the release of Ecstatic Music, their remarkable recording of Taylor Brook compositions. The dedication and engagement, not to mention the mind-meld with the composer, shown by Laura Cocks (flute), Madison Greenstone (clarinet), Charlotte Mundy (voice), Marina Kifferstein (violin), and Ellery Trafford (percussion) immediately elevated them to my pantheon of new music groups. And they have gone from peak to peak ever since, working with Mario Diaz de Leon, recording Scott L. Miller’s Ghost Layers and Brook’s Star Maker Fragments, releasing collaborations with bassist Brandon Lopez and composer Ashkan Behzadi, and kickstarting their own label with the fearless Oor and the kaleidoscopic Studio Session by Ensemble Interactivo. That’s not even mentioning the many appearances on other albums and a steady stream of live performances, including their Lincoln Center debut last December.
So when they announced Swoonfest, a two-day festival acknowledging their 10th anniversary at The Clemente on May 5th and 6th, there was no doubt that they had much to celebrate and would do so with incomparable style. Rather than taking a self-congratulatory victory lap, both nights were curated like mixtapes of Tak’s enthusiasms and musical values, each including a world premiere played by the ensemble themselves. No laurels would be harmed by someone resting on them, that’s for sure! Because of the Lael Neale show on 5/5, I could only make it to the second night, but based on my experience I can imagine seismic ripples from both nights spreading far from the space and time in which they took place.
The Clemente is located in an old (and I mean old - completed in 1898) public school on the Lower East Side that has been converted into a Puerto Rican/Latinx multi-arts cultural institution filled with galleries, educational spaces, rehearsal rooms, and performance settings. For Swoonfest, Tak had taken over a large room that appeared to have once been an auditorium or maybe even a gym. It was perfect for them in that it was large and flexible enough that they could have preset areas for a number of different things going on at once, a bit like a rough and ready three-ring circus of avant garde music and performance. This did mean that no matter where you sat, something would be hard to see, but I wasn’t there for forensic detail but rather an experience - and what occurred in that space was electric.
Top row: The “spirographic sound machine;” Natacha Diels performing “Untitled Art Piece”
Bottom row: Diels playing the spirographic sound machine; the Fluke-Mogul/Holmes/Rosenbloom trio
Natacha Diels
The evening opened with a performance piece by Natacha Diels, whose The Colors Don’t Match was on Oor and featured a tour de force performance by Mundy. This piece, a three part set called Somewhere Beautiful, had some of the playful and edgy qualities of that one while also putting Diels in good company with genre- and medium-fluid artists like Laurie Anderson and Miranda July. The first section, also called Somewhere Beautiful, began with Diels knocking away at a glockenspiel, producing bell tones and triggering electronics, making sounds that gradually grew in complexity and volume. Deeper sounds emerged when she struck a triangle and put down her mallets. Picking up a little box, which seemed to be generating sound, she began to vocalize, and a video began behind her.
As childlike animation assembled a house, a car, a road, Diels recited a slightly chilling narrative in a tuneful but detached fashion: “This family is happy. This family is happy because they are going somewhere beautiful.” Then: “This is an accident.” She then proceeded to describe a cemetery - “somewhere beautiful” - as her head rotated mechanically. There is pain here, but it is held firmly at bay.
The second section, Untitled Art Piece had her sitting on the floor and rotating the gears on a very homemade instrument based on the drawing tool known as a Spirograph. As she turned a large wheel with a plexiglass tube, scratchy, rumbly sounds occurred and an actual Spirograph appeared on screen, making drawings. A bright banjo melody played briefly, ending the section. When I spoke to Diels later, she said the instrument didn’t have a name and seemed reluctant to give it one as it was so closely based on the Spirograph. We settled on “spirographic sound machine,” and that seemed to work.
For the last section, The God-Fearing Woodsman, all Tak members save Cocks took the stage with Diels in the center, like a priestess with her acolytes, as she told a story of the titular woodman, who was searching for a “sapphire, the most precious of stones.” Mundy began interweaving her voice into the story and soon all were repeating various modules of the tale. As the repetitions gained tragicomic force, the entirety of Somewhere Beautiful became a witty meditation on the nature of storytelling. Sprawling and ambitious, it was the perfect synecdoche for Swoonfest itself and a most captivating way to begin the night.
Gabby Fluke-Mogul/Tcheser Holmes/Mara Rosenbloom Trio
Next up was the trio of Gabby Fluke-Mogul (violin), Tcheser Holmes (drums), and Mara Rosenbloom (piano), all powerhouse performers who seemed to have first gathered in public at Ibeam Brooklyn this past January. This was the second time in recent weeks that I was able to see Holmes, a fantastic musician who plays in Irreversible Entanglements with Moor Mother, but it was also a long-awaited opportunity to start getting a fix on Fluke-Mogul and Rosenbloom, both mutable and exciting artists who pop up in various contexts with disarming regularity.
Once they kicked it off, all playfully wearing sunglasses, we were served 20 or 30 minutes of high-flying violin, splashy, driving drums, and powerful piano. There were moments of space and simplicity, but it was mostly a dense mesh of interlocking and tightly connected agendas in a celebration of improvisation and all its possibilities. Fluke-Mogul occasionally played their violin like a ukulele and employed other extended techniques. Eventually she played a lyrical and bluesy cadenza, which led to a fanfare from the trio before they took flight again and brought the piece home. Because of where I was sitting, I could not see Fluke-Mogul’s face, but based on their movements they seemed to be having as much of a blast as Holmes, Rosenbloom, and the rest of us.
Michelle Lou - A Forest (World Premiere)
Yet another way Tak has proven themselves invaluable is through their Tak Editions podcast, which is a must-listen. Recent episodes featured Swoonfest performers and composers, including Michelle Lou, an astonishing artist whose CV suggests I should have known about her years ago. After listening to the podcast and HoneyDripper, an intense work for solo trombone, I was beyond primed to hear Tak play the world premiere of A Forest.
The piece began with alien transmissions, electronic noises surrounding us, as speaker talked to speaker. The instruments joined in, playing long notes and doing their best to align with the electronics, occasionally becoming indistinguishable from the synthetic sounds. Each member of Tak was locked into the world of the piece and to their interface as an ensemble, working together as one to bring it to life.
At one point, Trafford brought forth a low rumble from a tom tom, which soon underscored a two-note motif, an impending theme they returned to after some scrappy violin noises and suspended notes from the other instruments.
There are no still images in music, as time is always a factor, yet Lou seems to have developed some new approaches to the intersection of sound and time. A Forest, for example, eventually took shape as an assembly of blocks of time-sound - for lack of a better descriptor - that alternated in sequence with growing intensity. I would try to get a fix on a sonic image but kept having the experience of holding on to a time-sound block only to realize it had been summarily replaced - and with something that ever slowly ramped up tension.
A Forest was ultimately deeply immersive and not a little disquieting, taking a decisive turn when Trafford began to define the rhythm with a ONE on the bass drum and a TWO on the snare - ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO - in startling fashion, adding to the ghostly and dramatic sound painting. After the rhythmic plodding continued for a bit, growing increasingly inexorable, it seemed to walk towards an exit and step through an invisible doorway, ending the piece. The ovation was deservedly long and loud. Fingers crossed Tak records A Forest soon, as I can only imagine what additional gifts would be revealed upon further listening.
Sour Spirit
The night was not yet over, but the crowd thinned out a bit, leaving a hardy and adventurous remnant for noise-jazz assassins Sour Spirit. This duo of Rodnie King and Riot Dent, brothers from Philadelphia, specializes in creating a sonic supercollider generated by bass, drums, and electronics. Having been prepped by their Tak Editions episode, I grabbed a pair of earplugs from the snack table, along with fortifications in the form of Nestle’s Crunch bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
They launched in without ceremony, dishing out rafts of chaotic, cleansing noise, with occasional bursts of vocals, the rumble of Dent’s drums competing with a dense sound bed of electronics set in motion by King. The stage thus set, King picked up his bass and strummed it with a lethal disregard for convention, swinging it around, before laying it on the floor to generate more noise. Brilliantly cathartic and somehow serenely joyful, Sour Spirit also cannily did not overstay their welcome, ending their set, and the night, to an explosive onrush of applause, whoops, and cheers.
Some of that ovation - to say the least - was for the Tak Ensemble themselves, all of whom glowed with the satisfaction of a long held dream finally realized. When I caught up with Mundy on the way out, she mentioned they may do something like this every two years or so, rather than waiting another decade. If this inaugural Swoonfest is any guide, I can hardly imagine a better idea!
From the archives:
Live Log 2023: Written For Talea
MATA’s Bad Romance At The Kitchen
Cage Tudor Rauschenberg MoMA