Composer and soprano Susan Botti's River Spirits features her eclectic musical language, fusing elements of Renaissance motet, operatic aria, and the experimental avant-garde to create a beguiling work that floats above era and stylistic specificity. Featuring performances by Botti and her vocal colleagues Mary Bonhag and Katherine Lerner Lee, River Spirits revels in lush textures and earthy expression.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 47:02 | |||
River Spirits |
||||
| Susan Botti, voice, Mary Bonhag, voice, Katherine Lerner Lee, voice, Dan Meyers, bass recorder, tenor recorder, zampogna, Irish flute & sackbut, Tyler Neidermayer, bass clarinet, Robert Eisenstein, electric viola da gamba, John Mark Rozendaal, viola da gamba, Evan Premo, double bass, Ayano Kataoka, percussion | ||||
| 01 | Prologue | Prologue | 15:08 | |
| 02 | Scent | Scent | 5:00 | |
| 03 | Taste | Taste | 6:42 | |
| 04 | Cool to the Touch | Cool to the Touch | 10:55 | |
| 05 | Narration of Prologue (“Once Upon Time”) | Narration of Prologue (“Once Upon Time”) | Susan Botti, voice | 4:44 |
| 06 | Eau de Waltz | Eau de Waltz | Susan Botti, voice, Tyler Neidermayer, bass clarinet, Samuel Zagnit, double bass | 4:33 |
Composer and soprano Susan Botti's musical language fuses varying compositional and vocal traditions, from motet, to opera, to the avant-garde. Botti describes River Spirits as an "abstract fable," and her eclectic approach serves the otherworldly tenor of this quasi-music theatre piece very well. Several paths towards eliciting layers of meaning from language are employed throughout the piece, from an operatic intensification of repetition to a deconstruction of the component sounds and syllables of text to mine their germinal expression. This hybridity is further reinforced by the work's ensemble instrumentation, a unique marriage of period instruments (viola da gamba, electric viola da gamba, sackbut, and recorders) with modern instruments (double bass, bass clarinet) and folkloric instruments (Irish flute and Italian zampogna, a kind of bagpipe). Overall, River Spirits lives in a world of intentional ambiguity, grazing fixed stylistic and era identifiers to create a persistent quality of mystery.
The fifteen minute long "Prologue" opens with a murky rustling from the ensemble as the spirits stir into a waking state. They begin to trade mournful lines before a steady rhythm in the percussion ushers in the three vocal soloists, immediately dissecting the iconic text "Once Upon a Time" with heterophonic treatment, non-pitched vocalizations, and syncopated repetitions. An ethereal haze of instrumental swells and layered harmonies provides the backdrop for lyrical, interwoven vocal lines. Botti finds a balance between sectional composition and moment to moment word painting, pausing the texture for a pointed utterance of "Dark," before an ominous tutti verticality expands. Freer, improvisatory passages in the instruments support melismatic, bel canto flights in the voices. The movement ends with joyous dotted rhythms on a wordless text, fading into whistling over an unsettling bass drone.
Read More"Scent" explores a rich extended vocal and instrumental technique language to mine a primordial expressive language. It is as if Botti is searching here for a pre-linguistic form of communication, as the voice explores a poignant, visceral soundscape and the string instruments punctuate it with angular hairpins and high register, sul ponticello figures. The sackbut enters towards the end of the movement to offer a ritualistic, clarion call.
In "Taste," the trio of singers rejoins for a suite of fricative timbres that grow in intensity before we hear the sound of sniffing and lip smacking, a prelude to a meal no doubt. The electric viola da gamba introduces a persistent pulse before the zampogna produces a towering drone over which Botti's soprano and Tyler Neidermayer's bass clarinet spin swooping, cathartic passagework. The movement unfolds in waves, as a growing intensity rises to a fever pitch several times before breaking into interlocking, rhythmic machines, and the vocalists toss off impressive passages of syllabic virtuosity.
An early music presence is felt most clearly in "Cool to the Touch," as a ground bass is established near the beginning of the movement. The percussion paints the harmonic structure with hollow, off-kilter pitches, as the other instruments color the progression with sustained tones, trills, and imitative figuration with the voices. As in an early music Passacaglia, the voices use the static structure as an opportunity for progressively detailed ornamentation, as the harmonic implications of the bass line become more and more obscured and stretched. A climax leads to a dramatic cadenza of sorts for the voices on the text, "too hot." When the text returns to "too cool, so cool," the voices come together for glimmering, sensual harmonies, closing the four movement work in an ephemeral halo.
The release includes a dramatic reading of the text to the "Prologue," featuring Botti's characteristically expressive text delivery over gentle water sounds. Finally, a charming trio for soprano, bass clarinet, and double bass, Eau de Waltz, closes the collection, with a light take on a waltz form that gives each performer a chance to spin increasingly intricate lines. As per her penchant, Botti cannot resist the temptation to deconstruct the form, as it steadily rises in registers and becomes more unhinged timbrally and gesturally, closing on a fade out of a wry whistling passage. Botti's instinct for pacing is the glue that ties the diverse materials on this album together, knowing how to create a textural contrast with stylistic incongruity in such a way that the listener barely notices the shift, and only perceives the keen sense of a dramatic balance.
– Dan Lippel
Recorded in the Gordon K. and Harriet Greenfield Hall at Manhattan School of Music
Producer: Susan Botti
Associate producer: Todd Whitelock
Recording and mixing engineer: Johnathan Smith, Orto Center for Distance Learning and Recording Arts
Mastering engineer: Christopher Gold
Musical consultant: Lucy Shelton
Musical assistant: Shahar Regev
Special Thanks to:
Lucy, Mary, and Katie (Spirits extraordinaire); Yellow Barn; Christopher Kendall and the Consorts; Manhattan School of Music; Kayo Iwama/VAP Bard; Mike and Myung
River Spirits premiered 11 Sept. 2024 at Yellow Barn, Putney, VT, developed at the 21st Century Consort, the Folger Consort, and Yellow Barn
Cover image: Photo by Ray Bilcliff, Pexels
Design: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Photo credits: RS ensemble and RS voices photos (p.5): Susan Botti
Susan Botti photos (p.2 & p.5): John Rizzo
All works published by SUBO Music (ASCAP)
Composer/Performer, Susan Botti creates music which encompasses traditional, improvisational, and non-classical composition and singing styles with theater and visual arts playing a formative role in the practice and aesthetic of her work. Botti is the recipient of numerous awards, including: a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Rome Prize, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund, the Fromm Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Chamber Music America, NY Foundation for the Arts, NY State Council on the Arts, the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and ASCAP. She was the third Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow with the Cleveland Orchestra. In many cases, she is the vocal soloist as well as composer of her works. Botti’s commissions include EchoTempo for Soprano, Percussion & Orchestra (New York Philharmonic/Kurt Masur/Botti and Christopher Lamb, soloists), and Within Darkness (Orpheus Chamber Orchestra/Martha Caplin, violin soloist). Botti’s recordings include: Mangetsu (Duo della Luna/New Focus); Gates of Silence (Blakemore Trio/Albany/with poetry by Linda Gregerson); and listen, it’s snowing (New World/CRI). Recordings of her wind ensemble works include Cosmosis (Equilibrium), Terra Cruda (Naxos), and sull’ala (Naxos).
https://www.susanbotti.com/Mary Bonhag (soprano) is an “extraordinary” singer (Classical Voice N. America) committed to the healing powers of song. She is both a new-music specialist and a singer deeply devoted to sacred music across the ages. Mary was featured on Resonant Bodies Festival, and has sung with 21st Century Consort, and San Francisco Contemporary Players and has soloed in great works of early music under the batons of John Butt and Filippo Ciabatti. After studies at University of Michigan and Bard College (under Dawn Upshaw’s mentorship), she was invited to hold residencies at SongFest, Fall Island, and Tanglewood. Mary is Artistic Director of Scrag Mountain Music, now in its 14th season presenting innovative chamber music concerts around her home state of Vermont.
http://www.marybonhagsoprano.com/Mezzo-soprano Katherine Lerner Lee performs a wide variety of opera, art song, and contemporary music. She has performed notable works by George Crumb, Edvard Grieg, Juliana Hall, Peter Lieberson, Lori Laitman, and Olivier Messiaen. Whether in front of an orchestra, in a chamber setting, or in recital, Katherine is fascinated by language and is driven by a life-long pursuit of exceptional vocal technique and dramatic intent. An interpreter of new works, she has premiered pieces by Jon Deak, John Musto, Schott Wheeler, Tim Mukherjee and Laura Poe. She is honored to record Susan Botti’s River Spirits, singing a part originated by the incomparable Lucy Shelton.
https://www.katherinelernerlee.com/A versatile multi-instrumentalist, Dan Meyers (bass recorder, tenor recorder, zampogna, Irish flute, sackbut) is an enthusiastic performer of both classical and folk music; his credits range from contemporary chamber music, to the Newport Folk Festival, to playing Renaissance instruments on Broadway. He is a founding member of the early music/folk crossover group Seven Times Salt, and in recent seasons he has performed with groups such as the The Folger Consort, The Newberry Consort, Hesperus, Dünya, Xacarilla, The 21st Century Consort, and In Stile Moderno. He enjoys playing traditional Irish music with the band ISHNA, and eclectic fusion from around the Mediterranean with the US/Italy-based group Zafarán. He has taught historical wind instruments for the Five Colleges Early Music Program in MA, at Tufts University, and at workshops around the US.
https://danmeyersmusic.com/Tyler Neidermayer is an electro-acoustic performer, composer and audio engineer based in New York City, whose musical work utilizes amplification and live signal processing to elevate his instruments’ sonic capabilities. His music incorporates modular synthesizers, pedals and software controllers to form his clarinets into spacious clouds, brutally driven textures, and entirely new hybrid instruments. Tyler is the clarinetist and technical director for the BlackBox Ensemble, a contemporary chamber collective with recent performances at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, the Southern Exposure New Music Series, the Whitney Museum, and Bang on a Can’s LongPlay Festival in New York City. He also performs regularly at Little Island’s Summer Season, having played multiple reed instruments and electric guitar for 2024’s critically acclaimed production of Le Nozze di Figaro starring Anthony Roth Costanzo.
Robert Eisenstein (electric viola da gamba) is a founding member and co-artistic director of the Folger Consort, early music ensemble in residence since 1977 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. He has performed with many ensembles including the Washington Bach Consort, the Newberry Consort, the National Symphony, Western Wind, and at Tanglewood, Amherst Early Music, and other summer festivals. He is Director Emeritus of the Five College Early Music Program and Faculty Emeritus of the Mount Holyoke College Music Department.
John Mark Rozendaal (viola da gamba) is a human being, a climate justice activist, and a musician, residing in Manahatta, Lenape Hoking, Turtle Island.
Evan Premo is a double bassist, composer, and deep listener who creates immersive musical experiences that explore the intersection of sound, consciousness, and spirituality. Known for his expressive performances and adventurous spirit, Evan is a founding member of Decoda, the Carnegie Hall-affiliated chamber collective with which he has toured globally. His performances have been featured at Carnegie Hall and on NPR’s Performance Today. As Artistic Director of Northwoods Music Collaborative, which spans Vermont and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Evan curates place-based performances and interdisciplinary residencies that connect artists, audiences, and nature. He also founded Beethoven and Banjos, a festival blending folk and classical music traditions. Evan’s compositions have been commissioned by ensembles including the Pittsburgh Symphony Chamber Orchestra and the Aizuri Quartet. When not performing or composing, he’s likely out in the woods or crafting a new instrument by hand.
http://www.evanpremo.comA native of Japan, percussionist Ayano Kataoka has been a seasoned artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2006 when she was chosen as the first percussionist for the society’s prestigious residency program, The Bowers Program, a three-season residency program for emerging artists offering high-profile performance opportunities in collaboration with The Chamber Music Society. Together with cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the American Museum of Natural History, Ms. Kataoka gave the world premiere of Bruce Adolphe’s Self Comes to Mind for cello and two percussionists. She presented a solo recital as part of the prestigious B to C (Bach to Contemporary) recital series at Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall. Other highlights of her performances include a theatrical performance of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale at the 92nd Street Y with violinist Jaime Laredo and actors Alan Alda and Noah Wyle, as well as performances of Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion with pianist Emanuel Ax. Her performances can also be heard on the Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos, New World, Bridge, and Albany recording labels. Ms. Kataoka is a full professor of percussion at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she received the Chancellor’s Medal as part of the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series in 2024. She was a visiting professor at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (2023-24), and has been a faculty member at Yellow Barn’s Young Artist Program and Sō Percussion Summer Institute at Princeton University.
https://ayanokataoka.com/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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