Circles and Lines is interviewed by Melanie Wong of Feast of Music.
“In preparation for their upcoming concert, composer collective Circles and Lines—Angelica Negron, Eric Lemmon, Dylan Glatthorn, Noam Faingold (via Skype), Conrad Winslow (absent)—and contemporary chamber group Cadillac Moon Ensemble—flutist Roberta Michel, violinist Patti Kilroy, cellist Meaghan Burke, and percussionist Sean Statser—sat down with FoM to discuss contemporary music and their unique collaboration.”
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Circles and Lines featured on WQXR’s Q2, Live Concert Series from their September 12th, 2010 concert at (le) Poisson Rouge.
“Featuring pieces which involve everything from electronics to prepared piano to banjo to chamber orchestra, this (L)PR concert exemplifies Circles & Lines’s colorful backgrounds and mission to program a performance that runs the gamut of today’s emerging composers.”
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Circles and Lines Reviewed by Alan Kozinn of the New York Times
“There was something appealingly luxurious about having so many players at the service of five composers.
The program began with Noam Faingold’s “Berlin Songs,” a pair of gracefully chromatic vocal pieces with lightly dissonant piano accompaniments, sung fetchingly by Meray Boustani, a soprano. A second work by Mr. Faingold, “Continuums,” for solo cello, is clearly the work of the same hand: the cello line, played by Leat Sabbah, shares the songs’ plaintive, melodic quality, and even as the writing grows increasingly elaborate, a lyrical impulse remains at its heart.
Angélica Negrón’s most striking contribution to the program was a quirky approach to scoring. Her “They Swim Under My Bed” is for three violins and piano, an oddly top-heavy ensemble, and you can tell that there will be mischief afoot the moment the piano begins its nursery-rhyme-like introduction. Simple, repeating and slowly evolving string chords take over, and just when you start wondering whether the piece will achieve its apparent desire to become the Barber Adagio, the violins take off into a trilled flight.
Ms. Negrón’s capacity to surprise was on display in a second work as well, “I Can Still Hear You,” for accordion and tape. The electronic sound evolved constantly and included both instrumental lines and field recordings. The accordion part, which Ms. Negrón played herself, was generally less compelling, but occasionally departed from standard chording to create unusual effects using, for example, air from its bellows.
Conrad Winslow’s string and wind sextet “Flying Patterns” injected a touch of harmonic thorniness and rhythmic vitality into the program. More interesting, though, was his “Dilating Music,” an atmospheric exploration of meaty lower brass textures, complete with subtle slides and juxtapositions of muted and open timbres, expertly played by the trombone quartet Guidonian Hand.
Dylan Glatthorn contributed some of the most assured writing of the evening in “Imagining Paradise,” a string quartet that has some of the steaminess and drive of Janacek’s “Intimate Letters” and the harmonic allure of the Debussy quartet. And Eric Lemmon provided an ambitious dramatic work for a large ensemble, “The Cure at Troy,” a scene from Seamus Heaney’s retelling of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes.”
Mr. Lemmon’s work nods at Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach,” both musically (repeated, simple figures are its primary engine) and in its use of overlapping and simultaneous spoken texts. But Mr. Lemmon’s own voice comes through as well, and this setting left a listener curious to hear how he will develop it.”
