Composer and pianist Richard Carrick's recent work fuses his penchant for long form composition, fluency in extended techniques, versatile performance practice, and interest in structured improvisation. This newest album-length work, l’Algérie is the second part of a trilogy of large-scale works inspired in part by the music of the Maghreb region of North Africa, drawing on Carrick's own family background and a fresh approach to the region's diverse musical heritage.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 44:32 | |||
l’Algérie |
||||
| Either/Or, Bahar Badieitabar, oud, Richard Carrick, piano, Jennifer Choi, violin, Justin Jay Hines, percussion, John Popham, cello | ||||
| 01 | Mémorial | Mémorial | 3:50 | |
| 02 | Aïn Bessem | Aïn Bessem | 1:48 | |
| 03 | Joie | Joie | 6:30 | |
| 04 | Interlude | Interlude | 3:48 | |
| 05 | La Reine | La Reine | 8:59 | |
| 06 | Les Cloches | Les Cloches | 5:55 | |
| 07 | Gnawa Loops | Gnawa Loops | 5:16 | |
| 08 | Inconnue | Inconnue | 2:39 | |
| 09 | Traverser | Traverser | 5:47 | |
Composer and pianist Richard Carrick conjures an evocative travelogue for an imagined journey through Algeria on his compelling new album-length work, l’Algérie. The second part of a trilogy of large-scale works inspired in part by the music of the Maghreb region of North Africa, l’Algérie is the most introspective and autobiographical piece of the project, drawing on the composer’s own family heritage and deeply personal exploration of the area’s richly varied musical traditions.
L’Algérie is scored for extended piano, oud, violin, cello and percussion, and performed by the acclaimed experimental chamber ensemble Either/Or: Carrick on piano, Bahar Badieitabar on oud, Jennifer Choi on violin, Justin Jay Hines on percussion and John Popham on cello. The concert-length composition is atypical in the contemporary and avant-garde chamber music world, where shorter, self-contained pieces are the norm — evidencing, as does much of his genre-blurring music, the influence of jazz, world music, and other forms on Carrick’s wide-ranging worldview.
L’Algérie is a vivid and original amalgam of refracted elements from Carrick’s North African influences; textural and timbral experiments with the composer’s innovative array of preparations and extended techniques; the intricate architecture of North African polyrhythms in contemporary chamber music; and excursions into improvisational elements.
The nine-movement work traverses an impressionistic landscape shaped by historical research and personal reflection, familial recollections and musical evolutions, abstract geography and improvisatory interpretation — shaped by Carrick’s compositional vision and singular vocabulary for the piano.
Read More“I've always had a passion for Algerian and North African music,” Carrick explains. “But there came a point when it seemed I would be unlikely to visit the country anytime soon. So I decided that to let the music guide me, to write a journal describing an imagined voyage to Algeria through music that I love from that region.”
Carrick’s fascination with the sounds and culture of the Maghreb was inherited from his mother, who was born in the town of Aïn-Bessem in northern Algeria. She left the country with her family after the Second World War to settle in France, where Carrick was born. He can still recall growing up with the cultural artifacts of the family’s past in North Africa: his grandparents conversing in Arabic and enjoying delectable meals of couscous.
Carrick’s fascination with the music of the Maghreb began to emerge in his compositions in 2009 after an inspirational visit to Morocco, when he wrote “Moroccan Flow (unfolding from unity)” as part of his Flow Cycle for Strings. The interest came to full fruition with 2023’s The Atlas, the first part of Carrick’s expansive, globally-minded trilogy — a trek into the titular mountain range composed for extended piano and string quartet. The third work, The Path, utilizes instrumentation similar to l’Algérie with Cuban tres in place of oud and drum set rather than percussion, allowing for a heavier, more groove-oriented approach inspired in part by ‘70s fusion and North African dance music.
Carrick set out to write l’Algérie with the danceable polyrhythms of Chaabi and the transcendent grooves of Gnawa music in mind, but as he wrote, he found that the suite began to draw more heavily on Arabic and Cantorial song. “Unexpectedly,” he says, “I ended up creating some of the most melodic music I've ever written through the inspiration of interesting meters and polyrhythms of Algerian music.”
The album opens with “memorial,” an embarkation point that sets out not only into unknown terrain but into a remembered past, evoked by haunting tones generated by the use of e-bows on piano strings. The impressionistic nature of the sojourn allows for travel in both time and place. The second movement sets down in the small desert town where Carrick’s mother was born, incorporating an echo of Cantorial melody in the pairing of oud and violin.
Explicit references to music and artists from Carrick’s research abound: the blind singer and oud player Reinette l’Oraniste, who introduced Arab-Andalus music to European audiences after relocating to Paris, in the fifth movement, “la reine;” the percussionist and composer Karim Ziad, a collaborator with popular raï singer-songwriters like Cheb Mami and Khaled, on the third movement, “joie,” which hints at his tune “The Joker;” while movement eight, “gnawa loops,” pays homage to “Kommi,” Ziad’s collaboration with pianist Omri Mor and guembri player Mehdi Nassouli.
“les cloches” reverberates with one of Carrick’s most inventive techniques inside the piano, creating a chiming, resonant tone with magnets, mutes, and a device he calls a “harmonizer” that interacts mesmerizingly with the oud and percussion. “interlude” and “inconnue” are both wholly improvised movements, though the line is blurred in Carrick’s work. “traverser” culminates the piece with a through-composed movement that builds in intensity and layered beauty.
– Shaun Brady/Richard Carrick
Recorded October 1, 2024 at Miller Theatre, NYC
Producer: Richard Carrick
Engineer: Joseph Branciforte
Editing: Richard Carrick
Mixing and mastering: John Escobar in RedRoom of EscobarMusic
Mixing and mastering assistant: Mar Giménez Marín
Cover painting: “Abundance” by Nomi Jovál (used by permission)
Additional paintings by Nomi Jovál
Design: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Richard Carrick (b. 1971, Paris, France) is a musician of wide-ranging vocations and interests, whose activities spans composition, performance, conducting, teaching artistry, education, lecturing, ensemble leadership, and curation. His reputation as an international leader in contemporary music rests on his tireless curiosity, intercontinental body of experience, and ceaseless exploration across disparate musical fields. His music is characterized by spatial depth and robust stasis; continual development and the evocation of profound human experiences.
Described both as "charming, with exoticism and sheer infectiousness" and "organic and restless" by The New York Times, Carrick's music is influenced by his multicultural background and experiences as well as his commitment to inspire professionals, audiences and youth through composition and live performance. His music spans beyond solo, chamber and orchestral compositions to include conceived works incorporating dance, graphic scores, multiple video projections, and group and conducted improvisation.
Carrick’s music has been programmed and presented internationally at festivals including NYPHIL BIENNIAL, ISCM World Music Days-Switzerland, Library of Congress, Enescu Festival, Pacific Rim Festival, Miller Theatre, Mid-American New Music Festival, and Darmstadt Summer Festival, and performed by musicians including the JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Nieuw Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, Hyperion Ensemble, String Noise, Sequitur Ensemble, Musica Nova, Hotel Elefant, Marilyn Nonken, Taka Kigawa, Margaret Lancaster, Vasko Dukovski, Jennifer Choi, Tony Arnold, Magnus Andersson, Steven Schick, Rohan de Saram, and others. Recent Concert Portraits were presented by Miller Theatre (2019, 2024) Either/Or (2023, 2025), MIT (2023) Berklee (2024) and by New Chamber Ballet (2023, 2021) with whom he has written a number of new works for dance. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2015-16 Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition and a 2011 Fromm Foundation Commission.
Carrick is co-founder and co-artistic director of the contemporary music ensemble Either/Or, declared 'first rate' and ‘a trustworthy purveyor of fresh sounds’ by The New York Times, and winner of the 2015 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. As conductor and pianist, Carrick has worked closely with many celebrated composers including Helmut Lachenmann, Jonny Greenwood, Chaya Czernowin, Elliott Sharp, George Lewis, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Iancu Dumitrescu, Robert Ashley, Karin Rehnqvist and Raphael Cendo. Carrick conducting E/O's ambitious single night concert of “John Cage Party Pieces” premiered 125 scores by renowned composers from around the world.
As teaching artist of considerable experience, Carrick was instrumental in the development and international expansion of the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composer program internationally, in which he mentored hundreds of young composers to compose pieces to be performed by New York Philharmonic musicians (including over 20 pieces premiered by the full NY Philharmonic Orchestra). He helped develop VYC ground breaking programs for young composers in Korea (with KACES), Japan and at the Barbican in the UK. During his work as a Guggenheim fellow, Carrick started two young composer programs, in Tel Aviv, Israel and Kigali, Rwanda.
Carrick serves as Chair of the Composition Department at Berklee College of Music, possibly the largest composition department in the world, where he has developed a number of new courses including the Neither/Nor Composer/Performer Ensemble, Composing New Music for Dance, Advanced Projects in Composition, and Introduction to Composition. He has presented masterclasses and lectures throughout the US, Canada, Holland, France, UK, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Israel, Rwanda, Japan and South Korea. Former posts include composition faculty at Columbia University (Graduate program) and New York University.
His latest release, The Atlas, for extended piano and string quartet, features his longtime collaborators Either/Or, and is the first in three projected CD’s based on hour long concept works. His previous release, Cycles of Evolution, incorporates pieces commissioned and performed by Musicians of the New York Philharmonic, Either/Or, Sweden’s Ensemble Son, Hotel Elefant and String Orchestra of Brooklyn. Carrick conducts or performs on all works on this CD, which includes his 'apocalyptic' multimedia work for performers and video, Prisoner's Cinema. Carrick's first recording, also on New World Records, the “rich, beguiling” (The New York Times) extended chamber composition Flow Cycle for Strings, translates psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'flow' principle into sonic terms. 2020 release lanterne (New Focus Recordings)includes solo and chamber works by close collaborators, including his second string quartet Space:Time. Carrick's improvisation-based disc Stone Guitars (NFR) garnered critical attention in both the new music and guitar worlds, causing American Record Guide to note 'it may change your perception of electric guitar'.
A US/French citizen born in Paris of French-Algerian and British descent, Carrick received his BA from Columbia University, MA and PhD from the University of California-San Diego working with Brian Ferneyhough, and pursued further studies at IRCAM and the Koninklijk Conservatorium. Scores distributed by Project Schott New York.
Bio by Brad Balliett
http://www.richardcarrick.comOnce again collaborating with the Either/Or Ensemble, Carrick follows up the “dazzling versatility” of 2023’s The Atlas with a deeper dive into his mother’s Algerian roots. Joining Carrick on his trademark “extended” piano are Either/Or’s Bahar Badieitabar on oud, Jennifer Choi on violin, Justin Jay Hines on percussion, and John Popham on cello. The resulting 45-minute work is atmospheric and evocative, moving through its nine sections like flipping through a family photo album.
— Jeremy Shatan, 1.30.2026
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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