Michael Jones: The Promise of Escape

Michael Jones’ The Promise of Escape is a rich addition to the growing repertoire of expansive solo percussion works that focus on timbre, sustain, and texture. Often, and for many years, percussion music has celebrated a kind of vigorous physicality, but quietly behind the scenes, a counterbalancing trend has been growing. These three works by Pluto Bell, Nicholas Deyoe, and Scott Wollschleger represent that subtler, inward looking impulse in percussion writing, and document the cultivation of an alternative virtuosity for the instrument. A few New Focus releases by solo percussionists come to mind as contributors to this space as well: Haruka Fujii’s Ingredients, Greg Stuart’s Subtractions, and Christopher Whyte’s Cold Stability. On this collection, Michael Jones brings his own artistry and sensibility to these substantial works, two of which (Bell and Wollschleger) are the result of his own commissions.

Pluto Bell’s A Moment or Two (2021) draws the ear in to the resonance of a range of pitched percussion. A battery of instruments, including singing bowls, small tuned bells, bell plates, crotales, and individual glockenspiel bars ring in spacious phrases that highlight their unique timbral profiles. The texture allows the listener to examine the subtle distinctions between each, the purity of a finger cymbal note versus the graininess of a spring coil and the complexity of a triangle. Bell punctuates these sound constellations with terse accents on the bass drum. After the six minute mark, the piece focuses its meditation on bell sounds, creating a slow, ritualistic chorus.

Nicholas Deyoe’s Lullaby (2011) affords a significant deal of variability in its realization. The work is scored for drums, wood blocks, glockenspiel, and cymbals. Deyoe inverts the conventional roles of the glockenspiel and drums, giving the former harmonic accompanimental material to support implied lullaby melodies on the latter. Because of this orientation, each performer’s decisions about how to tune the drums, mallet choice, and balance between glockenspiel and drums have a profound impact on how the piece is heard. As the piece evolves, the roles pivot around a haunting series of cymbal scrapes and percussive attacks after the 7:45 mark, and the glockenspiel eventually emerges as the primary melodic voice. Jones’ performance is austere and restrained, holding the ritualistic mood throughout with a taut intensity.