Click on the title for audio preview.

1. pneApnea (2007) 10:03
   Nathan Davis (b. 1973, US)
   for alto flute and live processing

2. 16 (2003) 12:30
   Jason Eckardt (b. 1971, US)
   for amplified flute and string trio
   Jennifer Curtis, violin; Wendy Richman, viola; Kivie Cahn-Lipman, cello

3. Poison Mushroom (2003) 9:33
   Dai Fujikura (b. 1977, Japan)
   for flute and electronics

4. Prometeo & Epimeteo (2004) 7:58
   Edgar Guzmán (b. 1981, Mexico)
   for flute and electronics

5. Aliento/Arrugas (1998) 4:47
   Marcelo Toledo (b. 1964, Argentina)
   for solo flute

6. Run in a Graveyard (2009) 13:07
   Du Yun (b. 1977, China)
   for bass flute and electronics
   
   
   Download individual tracks or the entire album at iTunes (search for Claire Chase). Also available at CDBaby.
   More info on Claire Chase
   

Total playing time: 57:58

In our shared air, in the artist's active breathing, adventure. Aliento, 'breath' in Spanish, reminds us of the body's trafficked borders (alien air in, exhaled sound out) and calls us to recall ourselves as strangers, giving welcome to the wondrous strange. Over and over, the voyage out, a risking of everything, and a profoundly transformed return to an origin also changed. At once vulnerable and powerful, Claire Chase's debut doesn't feel like a solo album: the completely involved player, astonishing in her range, becomes exemplary, communing, communicating-- and a listener (taken with her to the edge of what is possible to utter and take in), involved and active, one more among a number of presences invoked. Chase's breathtaking physicality gives her the uncanny ability to sound, at points, like a crowd, and the mixture of the electronic and acoustic makes these works by international composers both urgent and echo-y, present and distant, equally physical and cerebral, wild and controlled; always in motion, emotional. Pushing off into the frantic breakers of the opening, Nathan Davis' pneApnea struggles toward some centered presence to make what follows possible, finding a way to a shimmering wisdom, a charm-like rhythm, and the deep grace we want in order to be honest. A hard reminder that the breath which centers us can carry lies and spell out death, Jason Eckardt's 16 violently enacts the costs of alienation and interference, the scribble of its opening monologue loosening into muted chaos against which, at last, music reappears as precarious gesture toward a future, perhaps. But that complex hope has to be balanced against the unthinkable past Dai Fujikura makes tactile in Poison Mushroom: here horror is sensual, immediate, seething through a widened, meditative present. The work by Edgar Guzmán, Prometeo & Epimeteo, goes inward, locates its permeable listener as the site of restless inspirations, completely finished with every kind of denial and so (at moments) close to divine madness. The album's turn is the title work by Marcelo Toledo. In Aliento/Arrugas what we have gone through becomes what is going through us-- transformative, consoling, exasperated, grieving, clownish, insistent and unsettling-- as if what ought to be still is moving and what should move, still, waits. Come out: layered caress, improvised ritual measurement of life against death, Du Yun's Run in a Graveyard is eerie and seductive, stark and immensely generous. Completely present at every instant of her playing, Chase keeps reminding us of the electric, fantastic charge of existence itself, and the apparent contrast of the final setting becomes an assertion of connection. 'After a while,' Du Yun writes, 'the motion and stillness are inseparable'-- after a while to be lost is to be home and to be home is to be lost. Each of these extraordinary compositions (many written for Chase) discover or create a renewed spaciousness past various barriers, going farther in-- and farther out-- than most artists dare. Take a deep breath-- if you think you know what the flute can do, if you believe you know what music is, you haven't heard Claire Chase...

- Laura Mullen

REVIEWS

Listed Among "Best of 2009" in Time Out Chicago
"International Contemporary Ensemble flutist Claire Chase took her instrument on a brave, animated adventure with Aliento."

ICE Cofounder Claire Chase Steps Out With Debut Solo Recording
Is it just me, or is the killer new-music group and Chicago-New York presenting force International Contemporary Ensemble responsible for an inordinately large proportion of the exciting new music shows that happen in the city? A few weeks ago I saw violinist David Bowlin give a knockout performance of rarely performed work by Luigi Nono, and I'm super pumped about a program of works by the brilliant Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho happening next month at the MCA.

From the very start one of the key forces behind the organization has been the remarkable flutist Claire Chase, who plays a record release party at the Velvet Lounge tonight.

Most of my limited interactions with her have been through e-mail, where she's tirelessly provided information and insight about various ICE events. Although I knew she was a musician, it wasn't until I got a copy of her stunning new album, Aliento (New Focus), that I finally heard her play. Like nearly everything ICE does, the album emphasizes new work - all six pieces are world premiere recordings.

Of course, given how so much 20th-century classical work is bypassed by most "serious" institutions, there's an awful lot of music from the last hundred years that's in some ways 'new.' Here, though, all but one of the composers were born after 1971, and the sixth, Marcelo Toledo, was born in 1964. Age would be irrelevant if the music wasn't any good, but it is - these are bold, harrowing works.

Four of them feature processing or electronics abrading or complementing Chase's instrument. The opener, "PneApnea" (2007), by Nathan Davis, demands the most of the flutist's technique and agility, with a zigzagging barrage of terse sound bursts and thick, percussive breath sounds; live processing shadows the acoustic sounds with a kind of eerie, complementary sibilance. Chase also brings nonflute sounds to "16" (2003), a piece by Jason Eckardt, whose title refers to the 16 fallacious words George Bush spoke in his 2003 State of the Union address about Iraq's acquisition of uranium from Niger. Here Chase uses more breathy pffts and splats as well as harsh vocal interjections, which all interact with a discordant set of lines from a string trio. The Eckardt piece is the only one here where Chase is joined by other acoustic musicians.

I've always been ambiguous about the flute. But Chase is doing for classical music what Nicole Mitchell has done for jazz in my mind - making me realize that in the right hands (and I guess with the right lips) the flute can kill it. The entire album is a knockout. I'm not exaggerating when I say I was reeling a little when I finished listening to it for the first time; this is a pretty heavy-duty program.

Chase plays tonight (Tuesday, October 27) at Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge in celebration of the album's release - having concerts at nontraditional classical venues is another nice ICE thing. She'll be performing four pieces that're on the album - by Davis, Dai Fujikura, Edgar Guzmán, and Du Yun - along with a couple that aren't: one by Chicago-based Brazilian Marcos Balter (for which she'll be joined by fellow ICE flutist Eric Lamb) and a playful adaptation of Paganini's Caprice No. 24 for violin, featuring solo flute, electronics, and "gadgets."

Posted by Peter Margasak on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:59 AM. Original Link.