The Classical-Modern Review gets to grips with ‘Heavy Pedal’

Another review of ‘Heavy Pedal’ appeared today, on the Classical-Modern Music Review blog:

“It is a sure-fire winner for those who cherish the organ tradition and crave the spice of modernity. And some of it sounds downright spooky”.

‘I Syng of a Mayden’ published

‘I Syng of a Mayden’, for soprano, harpsichord, treble recorder, violin, and bass viol (or cello) has just been published. It is now available to view and print from my website, and you can also buy hard copies of the score and parts from Etsy.

‘I Syng of a Mayden’ is a setting of an anonymous 15^th century English poem. It was written in 2001 under commission from Loki Music, and first performed by them in All Saints Church, Kingston upon Thames, London.

For anyone not familiar with older forms of English, the title is a 15th century spelling of ‘I Sing of a Maiden’. The poem is religious in character, and the maiden in question is Mary the mother of Jesus. The poem uses exquisite spring-like imagery, which I have aimed to reflect in the delicate instrumentation of the piece. This is balanced by a more focussed passion in the words, brought out by long, arching lines for the singer.

Fifty minutes of brass band music suddenly appears on the web

Over the years I’ve managed to build up an hour’s worth of brass band music in my portfolio of compositions. Design and Build, a perky 10-minute concert piece, was published in 2009 following a play-through by brass students from the Royal Academy of Music. However, the other three pieces have never been put in front of a band, and remain unpublished. In order to encourage bands to explore and perform them, I have uploaded preview scores of these pieces to a dedicated brass band works-in-progress page on my website. I have also provided MIDI-generated (i.e., synthesised) recordings, to give potential band directors and musicians and idea of how they should sound. The pieces are:

• Withington Suite, which is made up of five contrasting movements and lasts about seventeen minutes in total.
• Distant Harbour covers a very wide range of moods, from tranquil to violent. In a single movement, lasting about eleven minutes.
• The ambitious Rigoletto Variations, lasting about 25 minutes, and based on the song ‘Questa o quella’ from Verdi’s Rigoletto.

Anyone with any questions about these pieces, or who would like a set of parts with a view to performing them, are encouraged to get in touch.

Direct link to brass band page: www.midsummersdaymusic.co.uk/band/band.htm

Using Javanese percussion instruments to word-paint low-carbon forms of transport

Listening to Firefly’s winning song Lady Laurie (winning as in appealing, not competitively successful. Though I’m sure it would be successful if it were entered into a competition). The song, written by the band’s singer Bea Hankey, describes a woman cycling through a city, but not finding anywhere to put the bike when she arrives at her destination, resulting in its theft that night.

What interests me most about this song is the word painting that occurs around 0’31”. For the first thirty seconds of the song, all we hear is voice and plucked strings in unison. Then, after the words ‘her beloved bicycle, her shiny new love’, there is an entry of the Javanese gongs that contribute to Firefly’s distinctive sound. There is a clear connection between the shiny metal bicycle and the shiny metal percussion instrument: a very clever bit of word painting.

There is another well-staged entry later on in the song. Lady Laurie’s bike might have been stolen, but in her head ‘the music plays on’: and after these words, at 1’59”, the piano (silent up until this point) makes a grand entry. A musical gesture of defiance against bicycle thieves.

I am very much looking forward to hearing Firefly at the Maneros Bar in Dalston, London, on the 8th November.

http://www.myspace.com/fireflyburning

‘Heavy Pedal’ review on Allmusic

‘Heavy Pedal’ (see post on 28^th July) has been reviewed by Stephen Eddins on Allmusic. He gives the CD four stars out of five for performance and sound, and describes it as an “attractive and eclectic album”. Of my piece, he says:

Michael Summers’ four-movement Variations on an English Folksong is a similarly intriguing work, manipulating its source material in striking and ingenious ways.

Electric Counterpoint, electric harmony

It’s possible that a fair number of audience members at last Wednesday’s Prom were worried about getting home. Riots had been breaking out at various locations across London, and it was a late-night concert, finishing around 11.30pm.

Anxieties were soothed by washes of velvety sound filling the Royal Albert Hall. This was a Steve Reich concert, celebrating the composer’s 75^th birthday. Obviously still full of energy and stamina, he participated in performances of Clapping Music and Music for 18 Musicians, the latter nearly an hour long.

In between these pieces came Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar and tape. Alone on stage, Mats Bergström sent waves of sound reverberating around the RAH for fifteen minutes. For me, it was an emotional release: a restatement of harmonic order in response to the fear and disgust that had been stalking the streets of London since Monday.

In Music for 18 Musicians, Reich and the musicians of Ensemble Modern and Synergy Vocals took us on a journey. Although ostensibly homogenous, the piece is in clearly defined sections: moving from one section to another is like opening a door from one room to another in a big house. The sections are delineated by textural, horizontal changes, such as the entry of shakers, or the pianos shifting from repeated chords to jerky melodic patterns.

As it turned out, London was quiet on Wednesday night (though not in other places). This concert, in this week, showed exactly what the difference is between what people can do when they come together to create, and what they can do when they come together to take down.

BBC Prom no.36, 10th August 2011, Royal Albert Hall, London

Yare flow whisperingly

The Yare is a river. It rises in the county of Norfolk, England, and flows east into the North Sea, passing south of the city of Norwich on its way. Further on, it enters the inland lake of Breydon Water, before flowing into the sea at Great Yarmouth (‘mouth of the Yare’). Breydon Water is on the edge of Halvergate Marshes, a vast area of marshland that used to be an estuary before it silted up. Standing by the river at night, looking out into the Marshes, all you can see are the lights of distant houses and farms, and all you hear is the gentle rush of the river through the reeds.

In 1994 I wrote a viola duet called The Yare at Night. This has just been published on the website, and is also available in hard copy from Etsy.

VEF hits Spotify

Celebrations this week as Variations on an English Folksong, an organ piece I wrote a few years ago, is released by Navona Records, on the album Heavy Pedal. The recording was made in Olomouc, Czech Republic, in September last year, and features an ear-grabbing performance by the organist Karel Martínek.

There is more information about this piece on my website, so all I will say here is that the folksong that inspired the piece is unusually dark and violent – not the as-I-walked-out-one-May-morning kind – and my piece explores some of the stranger and more grotesque sounds available on the organ. The cavernous church of St Maurice in Olomouc provided an appropriately gothic setting for the recording.

Variations is available through Amazon and you can also download/stream it from emusic, iTunes, Spotify and other digital music sites.

'Heavy Pedal', featuring 'Variations on an English Folksong' by Michael Summers

Nine Types of Light

2006’s ‘Return to Cookie Mountain’ and 2008’s ‘Dear Science’ were compulsive listening, so it was with some excitement that I approached TV on the Radio’s new album, ‘Nine Types of Light’. It turns out to be a mixed bag of delights and disappointments. The edgy sound and daring invention that can be heard right through the earlier albums are missing from parts of this one.

Starting at the end, All Falls Down creates a hazy soundscape that manages to be warm and chilling at the same time. Blurred harmonies create transient discords that add an anxious flavour to the track. A bass line picks up the groove in the chorus, joined by a brass section later on. The brasses contribute to a bigger sound, but, as in other places in this album, make it seem less special somehow. They make the band sound like they’re playing in a studio, rather than in your head.

Skipping back to track 4, No Future Shock contains all the energy and ballsiness that’s missing from other parts of the album. Cutting, acid synth sounds and punchy drums leap out of the speakers and pick the listener off the floor. Out-of-tune gong sounds in the mid-section create an air of anxiety, drawing a parallel with the discords in All Falls Down.

The album suffers a loss of energy in the next two tracks, relieved by a perky banjo tune in Killer Crane.

In New Cannonball Blues (track 7), the band finds its focus again, with raw synth bass lines and electro bleeps that sound like a modem having a bad day. As in All Falls Down, however, the entry of the brass section turns this intriguing soundscape into something more symphonic, more normal. The ending is great: a sudden dribble of bass notes into nothing.

There is another loss of momentum over the next two tracks, before the album picks up again for the penultimate song (barring remixes), Caffeinated Consciousness, with a big brassy sound (which works better here) and a tingly chorus.

Moving now to the start of the album: the first two tracks suffer from overly regular melodic formulations, and harmonic schemes that just aren’t adventurous enough. Second Song, the opening track, brings in a big, swinging bass line for the end section, but the saxes that end it sound plastic and flimsy (they would possibly sound better if I was listening to a CD or LP, rather than online).

You, track 3, provides a welcome weirdness, with synth washes and kooky sliding guitars.

Blackbird in F-sharp

In a previous post I observed that the engines of the Airbus A319 produce a humming low E (the same note as the bottom string of a 4-string double bass) while at cruising altitude. I have now found a blackbird in F-sharp: spending Easter in Suffolk, I recorded a blackbird whose song clearly contained F-sharp major triads (in this clip, at 0’21”, 0’45” and 0’53”). The owner of the garden where this bird was recorded has pointed out that this triadic phrase resembles the first part of a melody that occurs in the Stravinsky Violin Concerto. Last spring, there was a blackbird in the garden that could mimic the whole of this melody. Perhaps this is the same bird, trying to replay last year’s song but forgetting the notes half-way through. Or is this year’s bird offspring, or not even family, imperfectly mimicking the first bird?

I was also told once that the first phrase in the last movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto was based on a blackbird song, which I didn’t believe at first, until I heard a real blackbird get it almost note-perfect.

Another bird I recorded in Suffolk was the Marsh tit (scientific name: Poecile palustris). Although its song is fairly ordinary, when slowed down to a quarter speed (and the pitch lowered by two octaves), it takes on a rich, gloopy quality. In a variant of this song I recorded, again slowed down by a quarter, you can hear jittering cascades of sound that would pass for a mouse-squeak at normal tempo.

Now close your eyes and listen to a full length, normal speed blackbird song, and imagine yourself in a May garden, whatever time of year it is outside.