Composer Ryan Vigil releases an album featuring two of his expansive works for violin and piano. Featuring sensitive performances by violinist Lilit Hartunian and pianist John McDonald, Vigil’s music unfolds slowly but navigates a diversity of expression within its frame.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 72:41 | ||
| 01 | untitled work for violin and piano (2009) | untitled work for violin and piano (2009) | 50:56 |
| 02 | untitled work for violin and piano (2019) | untitled work for violin and piano (2019) | 21:45 |
Composer Ryan Vigil’s music transports the listener to a rarefied musical space. One way to understand compositional style is through the lens of temporality, that is, how a composer frames the experience of time in their music. Some composers fill temporal space with dense activity, using musical information to propel the listener through the duration of a piece. What that musical material is, and how it is organized has a profound impact on how we perceive time unfolding. Pierre Boulez’ scores are rich in percolating, irregular gestures, and the resultant energy can often make the works feel shorter than they are. Steve Reich’s music is anything but sparse, and yet the pulse oriented repetition and subtle development of motivic groupings can nevertheless create a feeling of timelessness in his best scores. Elliott Carter can shift from one way of inhabiting temporal space to another from one section of a piece to the next. One moment, Carter accelerates our perception of time with a wealth of sonic information and connections, the next he uses silence and long range polyrhythmic phrasing to stretch a passage so that it seems like it occupies a much larger footprint than it actually does. Morton Feldman is an iconic example of a composer whose relationship to time in his music takes an extreme stance. Long form, slow moving works focus our attention on the subtlest shifts in phrasing syntax and instrumental color, while suspending our experience of time for the duration of his pieces.
The two works for violin and piano on Ryan Vigil’s current release share much with Feldman’s camp in terms of their approach to temporality, unfolding in a fashion that is designed to take us out of the frenetic pace of modern life and into a contemplative mode. And yet, Vigil and Feldman are quite distinct in terms of what they do within that frame, with Vigil focusing on harmonic and instrumental color events as opposed to Feldman’s microscopic attention to melodic and rhythmic syntax.
Vigil’s titles warrant mention as well — the two works on this recording, along with all of his other compositions, are all titled, or perhaps not titled, untitled. In Rob Haskins’ program note, he muses that Vigil’s negation of communicating specific meaning through his titles is apropos to the meditative nature of the music itself, akin to the emptiness one seeks through Zen Buddhism. This certainly resonates with the experience of the music — additionally, one can understand the lack of title, or consistency of the same non-title throughout his oeuvre, as a representation of the shared space that each of these pieces occupies. It is as if they are merely sections of a larger ongoing Vigil work that only needed to be divided for earthbound reasons.
untitled (2009) features long, clarion tones on Lilit Hartunian’s violin over pairs of sensual, watery chords on John McDonald’s piano. The violin fades in at different registers, varying the frequency of its entrances and the duration of its sustains. Elementary parameters, such as how much resonance remains in the piano chord when the violin enters or how quickly the violin comes to the climax of its crescendo, have a profound impact of the character of each new phrase.
Just before the 25 minute mark of the piece, and nearly at its midway point, Vigil makes a striking textural change that is set off by two poignant silent pauses.The violin articulates quick double stops with a kind of morse code pattern embedded in the shift between pitches while the piano supports with enveloping, low bass notes. After this dramatic change, the piano shifts to short, separated ascending melodic fragments that gradually elongate over an evocative cantus firmus style melody in the violin. Vigil fuses the tremolo articulation with these sustained lines before a coda introduces a pizzicato pedal point as a new timbral element that closes the work with a series of ceremonious gestures.
The second work, untitled (2019), immediately establishes contrast with the first with its articulation. The piano plays chords of varying durations, emphasizing their cutoffs and the resultant silences as part of the expressive fabric of the piece. Vigil divides the piano voicings into registral sections, sometimes calling for one part of the chord to ring beyond another to give a sense of multi-dimensional layers of harmonic material. The two instruments initiate their sonorities together, a contrast to the prior work which explored overlapping entrances. Once again, Vigil signals a significant structural change with a tolling pizzicato, this time paired with a piano unison, and followed by a slowly oscillating violin sustain and a fragile double stop. Ethereal violin harmonics are at the center of the subsequent section, with the piano enveloping them in sonorous harmonies, closing the work with reverent stillness.
– Dan Lippel
Recorded July 11 and 12, 2019 at Distler Performance Hall, Granoff Music Center, Tufts University, Medford, MA
Produced by Lilit Hartunian, Rob Haskins, John McDonald, Ryan Vigil
Recorded, edited, and mastered by Joel Gordon
Mary Logue, piano technician
Design & layout: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Cover & photos: Henry & Co. (Pexels)
Ryan Vigil began playing the piano at the age of three. He started private lessons in music theory at seven and formal composition instruction the following year. From 12 to 18 he studied piano, theory, and composition with Marti Epstein, a decisive encounter that shaped the distinctive relationship with sound and time which continues to define his music today. Other major teachers include Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, John McDonald, and Elias Tanenbaum. Recognized for its open, uninflected approach to time and a refined sense of sonic restraint, his music has been performed on four continents and is frequently heard on new music programs throughout the northeastern United States.
Ryan holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, Tufts University, and Yale University. After teaching at the college level for over 15 years—including stints at Colby College, Connecticut College, Amherst College, and, most extensively, eight years on the music faculty at the University of New Hampshire—he transitioned to a career in publishing. Currently a product manager at The Christian Science Publishing Society, Ryan divides his time between Brookline, Massachusetts, and Littleton, New Hampshire.
Lilit Hartunian performs at the forefront of contemporary music innovation, both as soloist and highly in-demand collaborative artist. First prize winner in the 2021 Black House Collective New Music Soloist Competition, her “Paganiniesque virtuosity” and “captivating and luxurious tone” (Boston Musical Intelligencer) are frequently on display at major concert halls and leading academic institutions, where she often appears as both soloist and new music specialist. Lilit appears regularly with A Far Cry, Emmanuel Music, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Sound Icon, and Ludovico Ensemble. Recent highlights include co-founding violin and cimbalom duo
Lamnth, performing at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s “Ligeti 100” chamber music concerts in Symphony Hall, and appearing on the 2023 Grammy-winning album for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Described as “brilliantly rhapsodic” by the Harvard Crimson, she can be heard on New Focus Recordings, Innova Recordings, Albany Records, and New Amsterdam Records.
Described as “the New England master of the short piece,” John McDonald is a composer who tries to play the piano and a pianist who tries to compose. He is currently Professor of Music at Tufts University, where he teaches composition, theory, and performance. He was the Music Teachers National Association Composer of the Year in 2007 and served as the Valentine Visiting Professor of Music at Amherst College in 2016–2017. His new recordings include At All Device (Bridge Records, 2020), a collection of piano works played by soloist David Holzman; PanSync (Arsis Audio, 2022), works by Su Lian Tan and John McDonald; and States of Play (Bridge Records, 2022), a retrospective of music by Robert Carl and John McDonald.
John’s research interests include composition and new music pedagogy; intermedia collaboration involving composing and performing solo and chamber music; writing for young and non-professional performers; music applications for visual art and science; advocacy of new and overlooked composers through research and performance. His book, Stirring Up the Music: The Life, Works, and Influence of Composer T(homas) J(efferson) Anderson, is forthcoming from Borik Press. McDonald’s works are published by American Composers Alliance, and he is currently serving a term on the Board of Governors for ACA.
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 …
Listen to full streaming tracks while you browse the site. New tracks enabled for streaming every month. Click on the button to open up the radio player.
