Listening is central to composer Mariel Roberts Musa’s music, which engages landscapes shaped by physical presence, human meaning, and the subtle intersections of sound and politics. Sunder, for solo piano, transducers, and field recordings, is built from recordings made directly on the U.S.–Mexico border wall, allowing the piano to interact with the wall’s subtle resonances and surrounding environment. Rather than treating the wall purely as symbol, the piece listens to its material reality. Lightning Field draws inspiration from Walter De Maria’s land artwork of the same name, translating its sense of electricity, vast space, and underlying structure into sound. Together, these pieces reflect Musa’s interest in place, perception, and the ways sound can reveal hidden relationships within constructed and natural environments.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 55:13 | |||
sunder |
||||
| Conor Hanick, piano | ||||
| 01 | sunder I | sunder I | 6:10 | |
| 02 | II | II | 4:07 | |
| 03 | III | III | 2:59 | |
| 04 | IV | IV | 1:57 | |
| 05 | V | V | 7:05 | |
| 06 | VI | VI | 7:57 | |
| 07 | I | I | 7:02 | |
| 08 | Lightning Field | Lightning Field | Mariel Roberts Musa, cello, Felix Fan, cello | 17:56 |
Listening is central to composer Mariel Roberts Musa’s music, which engages landscapes shaped by physical presence, human meaning,and the subtle intersections of sound and politics. Sunder, for solo piano, transducers, and field recordings, is built from recordings made directly on the U.S.–Mexico border wall, allowing the piano to interact with the wall’s subtle resonances and surrounding environment. Rather than treating the wall purely as symbol, the piece listens to its material reality. Lightning Field draws inspiration from Walter De Maria’s land artwork of the same name, translating its sense of electricity, vast space, and underlying structure into sound. Together, these pieces reflect Musa’s interest in place, perception, and the ways sound can reveal hidden relationships within constructed and natural environments.
Sunder is a large work for solo piano, transducers, and field recordings from the border wall between the US and Mexico.The recordings were made using ultra-sensitive microphones placed directly on the wall, and each movement represents a different point along the wall. They were recorded over the course of a 10 day road trip along the full length of the border wall, starting in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez and ending in San Diego/Tijuana. Sunder is a dialogue between the piano and the inner subtle vibrations of the wall, as well as the sounds of the open environment. The source material for this work was created by attaching vibration sensors (accelerometers) directly onto the border wall, revealing the resonances of the various types of metallic structures which make up the barrier. This trip was undertaken with the incredible sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard, who captured the recordings and with whom I created another collaborative work (Traverse) using this source material. The piece explores the abstract concept of a political border by engaging on an intimate level with the most concrete physical representation of that idea — the monumental wall which denotes that border. Its mammoth physicality expresses the sentiment behind its construction — power, fear, safety, belonging, all of which are driving forces behind the choices which are propelling the world forward in our current political climate. Yet its physical manifestation belies the wall's basic inability to serve its purpose, in that it fails to prevent the movement of people from one country to another and violently cuts through communities and sacred spaces.
Read MoreLightning Field is based on the Walter De Maria land work of the same name. The artwork is located on a fat, empty plateau about 40 miles from the nearest town. It’s made up of 400 stainless steel poles arranged in a grid which allows visitors to experience the feeling of being inside a lightning storm. I wanted to capture the feeling of electricity, static, and wide open spaces. Within the composition of the piece, I created harmony and rhythms based strictly on mathematical derivations surrounding the material installation of the original artwork, including measurements of the proportions of the poles to each other and to the land area that they are contained in. I think of this piece as psychic geography as much as a spatial work.
– Mariel Roberts Musa
Cellist and composer Mariel Roberts Musa is widely recognized not just for her virtuosic performances, but as a “fearless explorer” in her field (Chicago Reader). Her passion for collaboration and experimentation as an interpreter, improviser, and composer have helped create a body of work which bridges avant-garde, contemporary, classical, improvised, and traditional music; and has established her as “one of the most adventurous figures on New York’s new music scene—one with a thorough grounding in classical tradition but a ravenous appetite for and tireless discipline in new work.” (Bandcamp).
Roberts Musa has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician around the world, and is a current member of Wet Ink Ensemble and the International Contemporary Ensemble. She performs regularly on major stages for new music such as the Lincoln Center Festival (NYC), Wien Modern (Austria), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), Klang Festival (Denmark), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), and Aldeburgh Music Festival (UK). Roberts Musa has been featured on a wide variety of outstanding recordings, including titles on Innova Records, Albany Records, New World Records, New Amsterdam, Carrier Records, New Focus, and Urtext Records.
Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times) Hanick’s playing, “a revelation of clarity and bite,” recalled to the Times’ Anthony Tommasini a “young Peter Serkin,” and his performance of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes was, according to Times’ critic David Allan, “the best instrumental concert I have seen all year,” praise echoed by the Boston Globe, which named the performance “Best Solo Recital” of 2019.
Hanick has recently performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, been presented by the Barbican, Gilmore Festival, New York Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie, De Singel, Centre Pompidou, Caramoor, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Park Avenue Armory, and the Ojai Festival, where in 2022 with AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) he served as the festival’s artistic director. A fierce advocate for the music of today, and “the soloist of choice for such thorny works” (NYT), Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers both emerging and iconic; among them, Hanick has worked with Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, Steve Reich, Tania León, and Charles Wuorinen, in addition to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, inti fggis-vizueta, Chris Cerrone, Anthony Cheung, and Samuel Carl Adams, whose piano concerto, No Such Spring, he premiered in 2023 with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. Since 2014 Hanick has been a faculty artist at the Music Academy of the West and in 2018 became the director of its Solo Piano Program.
Felix Fan is a rare talent in the world of contemporary music. Described by Gramophone as “particularly sublime”, he is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected cellists performing today. As a soloist, collaborative artist and advocate for new music, Felix is admired for his technically refined interpretations and independent spirit, working with diverse and contemporary composers including Philip Glass, Michael Gordon, Hans Werner Henze, Oliver Knussen, David Lang, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Kaija Saariaho, Tan Dun, Julia Wolfe and Charles Wuorinen.
Felix continues to collaborate with the most cutting-edge composers and instrumentalists, “navigating the structural complexities and layers of shifting tempo with flair” (New York Times). A strong advocate for the creation and commissioning of new music, Felix has premiered over 100 works and dozens of recordings in his career. On the world stage, he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Musikverein and the Royal Festival Hall and as a soloist with orchestras including the Hong Kong Philharmonic, National Symphony (Taiwan), and the Munich Chamber Orchestra.
Beyond the world of contemporary music, Felix believes in the power of collaboration between musicians, filmmakers, actors and artists. In this capacity, he worked with director Charlie Kaufman and the Coen Brothers (Fargo) on a live radio play featuring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Steve Buchemi. He has also performed with members of Sonic Youth, Wilco and The National.
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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