Composer Robert Honstein releases his third New Focus album, this time featuring three of his works for string quartet. Written through a filter of his interest in natural landscapes, the three works on Horizon Line explore how pastoral expressions, both visual and auditory, open up spaces in our psychology, an oasis from an overcrowded mental environment. Featuring performances by Bergamot Quartet with percussionist Abby Fisher, Mivos Quartet, and esteemed freelancers, Horizon Line is an excellent manifestation of Honstein's gracious and singular approach to post-minimal chamber music.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 53:14 | |||
Continuous Interior | ||||
| Abby Fisher, percussion, Bergamot Quartet | ||||
| 01 | I. Flickering, light | I. Flickering, light | 5:45 | |
| 02 | II. Languid, dreamy | II. Languid, dreamy | 5:37 | |
| 03 | III. Urgent, breathless | III. Urgent, breathless | 5:47 | |
The Great Marsh | ||||
| Alyssa Wang, violin, Kiyoshi Hayashi, violin, Beste Tiknaz Modiri, viola, Jacques Lee Wood, cello | ||||
| 04 | I. Salt Hay | I. Salt Hay | 5:25 | |
| 05 | II. Mudflats | II. Mudflats | 3:57 | |
| 06 | III. Seaside Sparrow | III. Seaside Sparrow | 2:03 | |
| 07 | IV. Estuary | IV. Estuary | 7:37 | |
Arctic | ||||
| Mivos Quartet | ||||
| 08 | I. Midnight Sun | I. Midnight Sun | 3:07 | |
| 09 | II. Polar Night | II. Polar Night | 13:56 | |
Spanning over a decade of creative work, the pieces on this album reflect my dual fascination with the string quartet and the concept of landscape. I have always been drawn to nature—not just as a source of wonder, but also as a place of fear, discomfort, and even irritation. Nature is a blank slate; it is a neutral space that nonetheless serves as a mirror to our own quest for meaning. This paradox lies at the heart of the “pastoral.” While the pastoral in art is often a byproduct of urban longing—a desire to escape man-made structures—in this collection, I search for a new understanding of the concept. Here, the pastoral becomes a psychological space, bound only by projections of our mind. In this paradigm, the Horizon Line represents the limit of our vision: the point where immediate surroundings meet the infinite, and the known meets the unknown. Whether drawn by the fluorescent ceiling of a sprawling warehouse or the frozen edge of the Arctic tundra, the horizon orients us, allowing us to situate ourselves within the landscapes we inhabit.
In Continuous Interior (2022), the metallic tones of the vibraphone blend with the flickering resonances of the quartet to evoke an “urban pastoral.” The vast, climate-controlled expanses of modern life—shopping malls, transit hubs, silent warehouses—engender a new kind of sublime. We feel the grotesque artificiality of these spaces, yet we are struck by a sense of awe as we lose ourselves in their immense scale.
Bergamot Quartet and Abby Fisher navigate the work’s pulsing contours with relentless precision, drawing out shifting lines and harmonies across synthetic landscapes. Here, the horizon is fixed and artificial, yet it still offers a strange and meditative allure.
Read MoreWith The Great Marsh, we arrive at a more traditional pastoral. Completed in 2016, the music adopts a lyricism reminiscent of early landscape painters, evoking the organic fragility of an estuarial ecosystem along Boston’s North Shore. Moving away from the metallic interiors of the previous work, this piece returns to nature as a source of poetic solace, stillness, and rejuvenation. Performed with elegance and power by Jacques Lee Wood, Alyssa Wang, Beste Tiknaz Modiri, and Kiyoshi Hayashi, the quartet sketches the marsh’s life cycle across four movements: the raucous energy of “Salt Hay,” the heavy stillness of “Mudflats,” the delicate song of the “Seaside Sparrow,” and the undulating power of the “Estuary.”
Finally, the album turns toward the extremes of the North. Inspired by the photography of Chris McCaw, Arctic pushes the pastoral sensibility to its breaking point. We leave the warm embrace of the marsh’s tidal waters and enter a vast, unyielding tundra defined by extremes of weather, exposure, and light. Fueled by the fearless Mivos Quartet, the relentless, bright energy of “Midnight Sun” stands in stark contrast to the bleak chill of “Polar Night.” Composed in 2013, this is the oldest work on the album and, in many ways, represents the beginning of my fascination with the string quartet. Here, the horizon becomes absolute—a sublimation of our identity into the vast, indifferent landscape.
– Robert Honstein
Continuous Interior
Performed by Abby Fisher and Bergamot Quartet (Ledah Finck, Sarah Thomas, Amy Tan, Irene Han)
Recorded June 25, 2023
Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, NY
Engineered, Edited, Mixed by Mike Tierney
The Great Marsh
Performed by Jacques Lee Wood, Alyssa Wang, Beste Tiknaz Modiri, and Kiyoshi Hayashi
Recorded January 15, 2025
Futura Recordings, Boston, MA
Engineered, Edited, Mixed by Mike Tierney
Arctic
Performed by Mivos Quartet (Olivia De Prato, Joshua Modney, Victor Lowrie, Mariel Roberts)
Recorded June 13, 2015
Oktaven Audio, Yonkers, NY
Engineered, Edited, Mixed by Ryan Streber
Tracks 1–7
Produced by Mike Tierney and Robert Honstein
Tracks 8–9
Produced by Ryan Streber and Robert Honstein
Mastered by Ryan Streber
Design by Greystudio
Artwork by Chris McCaw, Sunburned GSP#487
Liner Notes by Robert Honstein
Celebrated for his “waves of colorful sounds” (New York Times) and “smart, appealing works” (The New Yorker), Robert Honstein (b. 1980) is a New York based composer of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music. Raised in New Jersey, Honstein creates music rooted in performance and personal narrative. His background as a pianist and singer brings a deep love of instrumental and vocal practice to collaborations with leading musicians from around the world.
Fueled by an omnivorous musical appetite, Robert’s compositions are noted for their “dry humor” (San Francisco Classical Voice), “breathless eruptions” (New York Times) and “devilishly fun writing” (The Arts Fuse). At times “profoundly moving” (Shepherd Express) and “genuinely touching” (Chicago Classical Review), Robert combines a fascination with narrative, environment, and everyday experience to create “deeply contemplative” (Bandcamp) works that probe the vicissitudes of contemporary life from the banal to the sublime. A growing interest in story-telling, physicality and expressive embodiment infuses his work with a direct, evocative sensibility that is equal parts riotous frenzy, austere lyricism, and minimalist-tinged romanticism.
Leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists from around the world have performed Robert’s music including the Chicago Symphony, Albany Symphony, Orchestre Symphonique du Mulhouse, Slovenian National Theater Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, American Composers Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Dal Niente, Present Music, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Third Angle New Music, New Music Detroit, Quince, Mivos Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, Argus Quartet, Hub New Music, Chatterbird, TIGUE, New Morse Code, Colin Currie, Theo Bleckmann, Doug Perkins, Michael Burritt, Karl Larson, Michael Compitello and Ashley Bathgate, among others. A keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration has led to projects with artists across many disciplines, including photographer Chris McCaw, projection designer Hannash Wasileski, graphic designer Laura Grey, and director Daniel Fish. His music has also been choreographed by numerous dance companies such as the Cincinnati Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Nancy Karp and Dancers, Urbanity Dance, and Frame Dance, among others.
Robert has received awards, grants, and recognition from Carnegie Hall, the Barlow Foundation, Copland House, the New York Youth Symphony, ASCAP, the Albany Symphony, New Music USA, and the League of American Orchestras. His work has been featured at festivals around the United States, including the Tanglewood Music Center, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and the Bang on a Can Summer Institute. He has also received residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Copland House, and I-Park.
Robert is a founding member of the New York-based composer collective Sleeping Giant, a group of “five talented guys” (The New Yorker) that are “rapidly gaining notice for their daring innovations, stylistic range and acute attention to instrumental nuance” (WQXR). Projects have included evening length works for Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble ACJW and the Deviant Septet as well as a multi-year residency with the Albany Symphony. ‘Hand Eye’ for Eighth Blackbird was released on Cedille Records to critical acclaim, while the Giants most recent project ‘Ash’ was released on New Amsterdam Records with cellist Ashley Bathgate.
With a commitment to building community around the music of our time Robert co-founded Fast Forward Austin, an annual marathon new music festival in Austin, TX and Times Two, a Boston-based concert series that paired artists from diverse backgrounds in a laid back, accessible context. As an educator, Robert has participated in outreach projects around the country, while also serving as Program Manager and Composition Faculty at NYU, Steinhardt.
His debut album, RE: You, was released by New Focus Recordings in 2014 and his second album, Night Scenes from the Ospedale, a collaboration with the Sebastians, was released on Soundspells Productions in 2015. In 2018 his album ‘An Economy of Means’, featuring Doug Perkins and Karl Larson was released on New Focus Recordings. NPR included his piece ‘Pulse’ from Eighth Blackbird’s ‘Hand Eye’ as one of their top 100 songs of 2016. ‘Pulse’ was also featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series featuring Eighth Blackbird.
Robert’s original score to the Showtime Documentary The Real Charlie Chaplin was nominated for a 2022 News and Documentary Emmy for best original score. Recent commissions include, Juvenalia, a percussion concerto for Colin Currie, Endless Landscape, a chamber orchestra work for Ensemble Connect, and Lost and Found, a work for prepared solo marimba, for Michael Compitello and a consortium of percussionists. Upcoming projects include new works for Duo Vis, No Exit New Music Ensemble, and flutist Michael Avitable.
last updated 3/6/23
http://www.roberthonstein.comNew 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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