Hush by Roberta Michel

Physical/Digital release

Flutist Roberta Michel releases Hush, a collection of new works for solo flute and with electronics by Victoria Cheah, Angelica Negron, Jen Baker, Mert Morali, and Jane Rigler that are the result of close collaborations. Michel brings her wide ranging virtuosity to all of the pieces, from acrobatic passagework to deep timbral excavation.

The five pieces on flutist Roberta Michel’s Hush create a dialogue between the different aesthetic forces at play, each expanding the sonic footprint of the instrument in their own way. Jane Rigler and Jen Baker’s solo works celebrate the challenges of conquering limitations on one’s instrument, in this case, through the intricate integration of an extended vocabulary of sounds into an already virtuosic texture. Victoria Cheah and Angélica Negrón’s pieces use the electronic element to create an environment of charged stillness, an opportunity to absorb the vulnerable intricacies of sound and highlight the flute’s innate capacity to shape micro-inflections of pitch, timbre, and shape. Mert Moralı’s electro-acoustic work acts as the bridge between those impulses in a way, using the electronic element to create a new sonic world, but one that is dialogic and teleological over its large scale form. Michel tackles the diverse demands of this repertoire with command and sensitivity, matching her curatorial ingenuity with powerful performances.

Jane Rigler’s Red for piccolo is a tour-de-force of activated trills, virtuosic swirling figures, and vocal extended techniques that create a Coltrane-esque wall of sound. Opening with delicate key clicks, Red accumulates steadily, expanding its register through implied, and eventually, timbral counterpoint. The dramatic finale features the voice accompanying a charged high register trill, almost as if the performer is screaming to be released from the confines of the instrument.

Victoria Cheah’s music often explores the rarefied nuances of slow moving textures, mining their subtleties of pitch and timbre for poignant meaning. In And for you, castles for flute and fixed media, we hear the live performer pushing and pulling up against the pitch material in the playback with microtonal variations, fragile multiphonics, and swelled gestures. Cheah examines the elusive nature of sonic stability, establishing a quasi-drone in the electronic part, but resisting resolution through the flute’s elusive figuration.

Jen Baker’s The Great Bridge and The Lion’s Gate captures a state of transition as well as enhanced power and energy. Opening with a driving figure of repeated notes punctuated by vocal sounds and accented flutter tongue sustains, the work transitions to a secondary lyrical section, marked by haunting multiphonics that frame the melodic line like a halo of sound. The texture diffuses into airy breath sounds and delicate syllabic utterances before a heroic melody enters, harmonized by multiphonics in a striking chorale. Baker recalls the perpetual motion of the opening for a dramatic coda, further integrating extended technique vocabulary into the rhythmic fabric, before the work ends with a sotto voce whisper.

Mert Moralı’s Quintet is an ambitious work for bass flute and four loudspeakers that examines spatial and timbral parameters that emerge from the electro-acoustic format. As is the tradition with many electro-acoustic works, there is an intentional obscuring of the boundary between live human and pre-recorded sound, in this case, the electronic medium includes some unmodified flute timbres which further cloud the distinction. Subtle pitch bending creates a sense of refracted imagery, like a subtly distorting aspect ratio on a screen. Imitation with variation between the live performer and electronics establishes a dialogue between similar but distinct voices – as the piece progresses Moralı stakes out new timbral territory in the electronics through varied processing, drawing a greater distinction between the flute and the playback. In a striking contrast four minutes before the end of the piece, the electronics briefly coalesce into an rhythmically cohesive ensemble unit that establishes a much clearer accompanimental role to Michel’s improvisational solo line. Moralı swiftly deconstructs this duality with spatialized percolating figures that culminate in unison stabs that cycle around the stereo field of the recording. The work’s denouement returns to the slow, elastic lines of the opening before closing on a series of succinct stop tongue articulations.

Angélica Negrón’s title piece for flute and electronics is inspired by plant photographs by Fred Michel, Roberta’s father. The electronics highlight the glow of the attack and sustain of chimes and tactile percussive sounds, while the flute flows inside and above the resonance of the ringing overtones. Negrón establishes structural pillars through a hierarchy of ensemble arrivals. In the work’s middle section, the texture shifts towards a moderate tempo groove featuring an off-kilter microtonal duet between synthesizer and flute over morse-code and wave-like sounds in the electronics. Negrón adds layers to the texture as the flute floats above it with unstable multiphonics, eventually playing a fragile whistle solo while the chimes reenter. Hush ends with five repeated pitches in the flute, a reinforcement of the core of stillness at the heart of the composition.

- Dan Lippel

Brooklyn-based
flutist Roberta Michel is dedicated to the music of our time. Praising her “extreme adventurousness,” New York Concert Review said she “riveted with her performance, inspiring one to want a repeated hearing.”

robertamichel.com