The Brooklyn Rail

The winter solstice (from the Latin sol/sun and sistere/to stand still) marks the point when the sun is at its farthest from Earth. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it hits in late December, as we’re roughly tallying what the last year has wrought. As the darkest, shortest day of the year, it can take one in the direction of gloom. Given the state of the world, with ongoing horrifying war in Ukraine and Gaza, that gloom feels very present. It can be hard to imagine brighter, sunnier days. But at least in the natural world, we know that spring lies ahead; with that metaphor to guide us, we’re compelled—required, I suppose—to keep hoping.

One bright light I came upon recently was an ambitious series of filmed performances that were released on this year’s solstice, though recorded in February 2022. It involved six duos, grouped by instrument—performed by some of the best improvisers out there—interacting with the sound-sculptures of the extraordinary designer Harry Bertoia. This program, called “Sculpting Sound: Twelve Musicians Encounter Bertoia,” was organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas as one part of a major Bertoia retrospective there.

Much of the show was devoted to Bertoia’s furnishings, like the ubiquitous Diamond chair, and other objects that contributed so much to the look and feel of mid-twentieth century design. But “Sculpting Sound” focuses on work that Bertoia created in the last twelve years of his life that took him in a very different direction. He retired from his successful career at Knoll and moved into sculptural work. The pieces he produced include a number of his “Sonambient” sculptures, objects that are also meant to be played as musical instruments. Some are made of clusters of metallic rods, others are variations on gongs and cymbals. The curator of the show, Jed Morse, notes in a superb accompanying film by Quin Matthews that with these works, Bertoia was “investigating the nature of sound—sound as a sculptural material, the way that it affects our experience of space.”

To realize this series, the museum utilized more than forty sound-sculptures borrowed from the Bertoia Foundation. In the concerts at the Nasher, produced and curated by David Breskin, the musicians dive in with gusto. Discussing the ethereal sounds that are produced by these instruments, guitarist Ben Monder, who starts the series in a duet with guitarist Nels Cline, observes that “it’s hard to tell where the sculptures end and the instruments begin.” The tones and overtones vibrate, fusing into one another. Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusure, who plays with trumpeter Nate Wooley, comments on how the sculptures relate to his own work and its focus on “sustain, and what happens to sound.” In these performances, you can feel the musicians’ attentiveness to that moment of creation, when sound becomes form, and it compels your own close listening.

Bertoia came to the United States from Italy as a teenager (his birth name Arieto was changed to Harry) and wound up studying at Cranbrook. This prominent design academy was then led by architect Walter Gropius, whose philosophy is summarized in the form of a question: What can you do with objects in space? Bertoia’s sound-sculptures take this question in another direction, because what they produce, sound waves, are not visible, but felt. Still, “the whole space is energized,” says pianist Craig Taborn, who plays a free-roaming duet with pianist Kris Davis. Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, who plays with saxophonist JD Allen, talks about the “sympathetic vibrations” present between the instruments and the space. String players Brandon Seabrook and Jen Shyu reach an emotional and expressive peak in their duet, and percussionists Dan Weiss and Marcus Gilmore bring the physicality of the instruments and their playing to the forefront. All of these musicians are fully alive to the possibilities at play.

The sound-sculptures can be considered valedictory, Bertoia’s value, as a designer and artist, was well established. But I also recently came across work inspired by an artist whose music was created in the few years leading up to her premature death at age twenty-four, composer Lili Boulanger. If her name strikes a chord, it is because her sister was Nadia Boulanger, the composer and preeminent composition teacher of the twentieth century. Lili was a prodigy, the first female winner of the Prix de Rome, who began having her compositions performed while still a teenager. She studied at the Conservatoire under composer Gabriel Fauré, who greatly admired her. She, in turn, draws from his sonorities in her work, along with those of her contemporaries Maurice Ravel and Darius Milhaud.

Boulanger was ill much of her short life, and her work conveys an attendant melancholy. This quality is partly what drew French pianist Frank Woeste to learn more about the composer. He wound up making her the principal source of inspiration for Shooting Star – Étoile Filante, a new recording by his ensemble Reverso, which also features trombonist Ryan Keberle and cellist Vincent Courtois. Each contributed several compositions to the recording, drawing on Boulanger’s tonal palette. The result is material informed by the past but easily and surely standing on its own.

Hearing the trombone as a lead voice in a trio is unusual, but Keberle has established a clear and compelling presence on his instrument. The group finds an impressive balance in this material throughout, with a type of third-stream music that draws on jazz and chamber traditions without being beholden to either. The current recording is only the most recent from this trans-Atlantic collaboration, in which, as one critic put it, French elegance meets American energy. As the group’s name implies, the music creates a kind of easy translation between these different styles.

Speaking of translation and crossing genres, a number of groups in recent decades have made a point of using a jazz vocabulary to reach into once distant musical territories like rock and pop. The Bad Plus was one of the first to do so effectively and with a sense of humor, pulling Nirvana, Queen, and Radiohead into the mix, among many others. More recently, bassist Joe Policastro, whose trio includes guitarist Dave Miller and drummer Mikel Avery, has been mining this territory with cleverly chosen and reimagined covers mixed in with originals.

On their recent recording Ceremony, the title track is an especially seductive interpretation of a New Order cut from their debut album. The trio’s version is light and nimble, and taken at a faster tempo than the original, but it casts its own particular spell. Toward the end, it incorporates phrases from Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, which add still another caste to the composition. I can’t seem to get it off repeat. Something I hear in all three of the very different projects touched upon here—from the Bertoia sound-sculpture collaborations to the chamber-jazz of Reverso to a new way into a recent classic tune—are shimmers of sound, rising from or descending into darkness, but casting light into the void.