Yi-Ting Lu: An Unopened Seashell

One way to ensure different sounds in works for a single instrument is to create pieces for different single instruments, which is what Yi-Ting Lu (born 1993) has done for a New Focus Recordings release featuring five pieces for soloists. Although this disc, at 49 minutes, is even shorter than Zhang’s, it does have the advantage of a variegated sound world – although it also has longer pieces that do not necessarily stand up well from start to finish. Slimy Tracks for guitar does not sound like guitar music: white noise from a radio underlies the kinds of percussive elements of which avant-garde composers are fond, including tappings and pizzicati – the idea is to evoke the track of a snail, although that connection is far from evident. Taxidermy is for bassoon and turns the instrument into an electronic amplification of itself, with a series of irregular self-interruptions on top of amplified note sequences. Half Decorations, for harp, starts with what sounds like an evocation of birdsong from the instrument’s highest strings, then continues with individual, clear notes interspersed with ones on prepared strings that therefore do not sound particularly harplike – one of Lu’s primary interests appears to be in figuring out what individual instruments sound like and then doing what is necessary to make them sound like something else. Sewing in Thin Air for piano, however, does allow the piano to sound like the keyboard percussion instrument that it is – although as the work’s title indicates, part of the piece is designed to replicate the sound of a sewing machine. An Unopened Seashell, for alto saxophone and the longest piece on the disc, returns to Lu’s approach of using an instrument’s inbuilt sound world to produce something aurally different. The idea here is to draw attention to the techniques – some typical, some extended – used in playing the sax, all while producing a kind of sound cloud representing what Lu imagines the inner world of a seashell must be like. Whether or not that is accurate is beside the point: the focus is on extending the natural sound production of the alto saxophone into new realms and in so doing to pull listeners into those environments. Like much contemporary music, Lu’s works make no attempt to reach out to audiences beyond those that already gravitate to new ways of hearing instruments and experiencing the extension of those instruments’ capabilities. Certainly for a narrow audience, these five pieces will provide some interesting aural experiences with material that may not strictly qualify as music in the traditional sense, but that is intended to engage the ears of listeners who are strongly inclined to want to hear beyond instruments’ typical ranges and methods of sound production.

— Mark Estren, 6.06.2024

Like Luciano Berio with his Sequenza series, Yi-Ting focuses on the possibilities of individual instruments in this first collection. However, there’s less of Berio’s cataloging approach (admittedly part of the charm of the Sequenzas) and more of a sense of an intuitive attraction to the guitar (Dan Lippel), bassoon (Ben Roidl-Ward), harp (Ben Melsky), piano (Lam Wong), and saxophone (Thomas Giles) as featured here. Everyone contributes incredible performances, addressing Yi-Ting’s challenges flawlessly and with flair.

— Jeremy Shatan, 6.10.2024

An album consisting entirely of works for solo instruments poses some issues before listening begins. New Music composers seem to be inordinately attracted to the genre, using it as an opportunity to explore the limits, technical and expressive, of the chosen instrument. The process of finding new sounds is creative for the composer and fun for the performer, but the listener, who should be part of the equation, is left out too often. Self-involvement is a chronic issue in New Music, but even if you grant the young Taiwanese composer Yi-Ting Lu her own personal aesthetic, which is only fair, something must be communicated that is enjoyable and meaningful.

I know I’m veering into the didactic, and I hasten to say that Yi-Ting, who received her master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and is currently pursuing her doctorate in Chicago at Northwestern University, has several things going for her. She applies considerable imagination in devising these five works for guitar, bassoon, harp, piano, and alto saxophone. The performances are expert and totally involved. There is an intriguing hint of cross-cultural influences from traditional Chinese music, even if these hints are generally evanescent and obscure.

We start off strong with Slimy Tracks for guitar. The semi-repellent title doesn’t inhibit the composer in her program notes, who writes that the piece draws inspiration (?) from “the distinct textured and colors of tracks left by various types of snails.” To a small extent I can see some interest in snail tracks when they are iridescent, but this is a good place to warn that Yi-Ting chooses titles and descriptions that, for me at least, have close to nothing to do with the music, a common trait in New Music.

This is connected with another trait: New Music typically departs from common identifiable emotions, which is a problem for the general listener. Slimy Tracks has the guitarist, the eminently skillful Dan Lippel, combining taps and raps on the case, glissandos, and strumming to create the texture of the piece. I can detect no structural or thematic features, so it is a testament to Yi-Ting’s imagination and Lippel’s bravura performance that the music is always compelling on its own terms, the major effect deriving from a wide range of dynamics and moods that extend from the delicate to the raucous. The ear is captivated even when the meaning of these sounds remains opaque.

The notes make no attempt to explain why Yi-Ting’s solo bassoon piece is titled Taxidermy (just as well), part of a series of works she is composing for the instrument. As usual in New Music bassoon pieces, overtones and multiphonics are employed, along with fuzzy and blurry tones, to add interest. In the absence of linear progression, what sounds like a random scramble has been organized in the composer’s mind—here the scheme is obscurely related to opening and closing the holds on the bassoon—while leaving the listener in the dark. Yi-Ting adds tapping and scraping on the bassoon’s shell for variety. As an incentive, the performance by Ben Roidl-Ward is thoroughly engaging. Individual reactions will vary, naturally, but I heard enough imagination in the piece to hold my attention, however baffling the actual panoply of strange sounds. The image that comes to mind is of a chuffing choo-choo train running into very rough tracks, which steadily demolish it.

The other piece restricted to a single line is the title track, An Unopened Seashell, for alto saxophone, the title for once being relevant to the music: “By metaphorically ‘opening’ an ‘unopened seashell,’ this piece experiments with the use of breath … introducing a variety of harmonics and multiphonics.” The music is as good as its word—we hear hushed breathing and ethereal harmonics that vaguely evoke the sea. There is a sense overall of fleeting yips and disconnected fragments, along with occasional harsh outbursts. Saxophonist Thomas Giles conveys every gesture vividly, and he is fearless in the face of the score’s sonic complexity. Yi-Ting’s imagination for novel effects, which I’ve been repeatedly praising, is just as effective here.

Making a harp sound new or strange would seem to be difficult. Yi-Ting’s attempts, in Half Decorations, are ingenious if esoteric. The most typical harp technique, the sweeping glissando, is sparingly employed compared with repetitive single notes and faint harmonics. Some effects are harsh and ballistic, which is at odds with the harp’s celestial personality. I wonder if the courageous and virtuosic performer, Ben Melsky, enjoyed taking the instrument into such forbidding terrain. The description by the composer that the music alternates stasis with movement, stillness with disruption ,is a helpful, but I have no idea what is meant by “the imagery of the harpist decorating the instrument.”

Finally, Sewing in Thin Air for piano is evocatively titled, and stretches of rapid constant passagework could be viewed as sewing. Here Yi-Ting faces a major challenge because of the piano’s vast contemporary repertoire. Much reliance is placed on single isolated notes along with simple repetitive figures in the left hand. In keeping with Minimalist practice, the dynamic level is often static. There are also scale passages and other familiar keyboard gestures, all enthusiastically handled by pianist Lam Wong, but for me, the result is unmemorable. Deprived of her ear for unusual instrumental sounds, Yi-Ting puts the piano through very familiar paces in which I heard little originality or personal expression. This is a case where leaving the listener out has serious consequences.

Yi-Ting’s bio lists a number of prizes, and as her career unfolds, she has a chance to join the elite among New Music composers. That is hard to judge in repertoire restricted to solo instruments, and for many general listeners, the drawbacks I began with might be decisive. Yet as a showcase for one strong suit in Yi-Ting’s abilities, her ear for instrumental color, this release is valuable and well worth a listen.

Four stars: A worthy New Music exploration of exotic instrumental sounds

— Huntley Dent, 6.30.2024