{"id":22,"date":"2009-07-03T21:08:44","date_gmt":"2009-07-04T02:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/winedarksea.com\/?p=22"},"modified":"2025-02-10T17:59:47","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:59:47","slug":"spectralism-maya-lin-show-at-corcoran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/winedarksea.org\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"Spectralism, Maya Lin Show at Corcoran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two items worth mentioning: today I had a chance to hear the new record from the Steve Lehman Quartet called Travail, Transformation and Flow<\/em><\/a>, which shows off some of what is new in spectralism<\/a>, an aesthetic that involves analyzing a tone from a single instrument with a computer and developing improvisations out of its overtone series. \u00a0The album — check out “Echoes,” which can be downloaded free here<\/a> — reminds me of recordings I once heard of glass harmonicas, which are really sets of rotating glasses filled with water that “sing” when touched, like a champagne glass rubbed on its rim. \u00a0The music shimmers like a school of fish: you hear a set of tones developing in one of his arpeggiated, darting solos and it fans out in a number of semi-dissonant directions. \u00a0It reminds me also of the sound of those prayer bowls that are struck during meditation. \u00a0Forerunners of spectralism include Debussy, Bartok, Messiaen and Stockhousen, but the music seems to go beyond any of these influences, especially when it takes the form — in the case of Lehman’s quartet — of an octet with tuba, bass, a few horns and an incredible vibraphone player who is constantly charting the harmonic offramps. \u00a0There is something vaguely medieval about this music in the way it interlaces and suspends dissonant moments in a progression. \u00a0I would not want to listen to Lehman’s music in a cathedral, however.<\/p>\n