Three PRISM Quartet Albums Released Together

I first became aware of the PRISM Quartet towards the end of 2016, when ECM released its recording of Gavin Bryars’ madrigal cycle The Fifth Century, scored for choir accompanied by saxophone quartet. At that time the members of the quartet were Timothy McAllister on soprano, Robert Young on alto, Matthew Levy on tenor, and Taimur Sullivan on baritone. However, about half a year later, when XAS Records, the “house label” for PRISM released Color Theory, Young had been replaced by Zachary Shemon.

Last month XAS Records released three new PRISM albums simultaneously. Taken together, all three albums present about an hour’s worth of music, which could easily have fit on a single CD. However, each album has its own character, which is so individual that one can appreciate the decision to avoid juxtaposition. Since, as of this writing, Amazon.com has decided to release all three of these album only as MP3 downloads, any issue over the number of physical discs involved is, for all intents and purposes, out of the question.

Each of the albums is unique with regard to both instrumentation and genre. The basic summary, with hyperlinks to the relevant Amazon.com Web pages, is as follows:

1. The Book of Days: This is a seven-movement suite composed by Uri Caine. Caine is a jazz pianist, and he performs with PRISM, whose personnel for this recording brings Young back to the alto chair. As might be guessed, the seven movements of the suite correspond to the seven days of the week; but Caine also affixes a distinct time of day to each of those movements. Caine’s own piano work involves improvisation along with playing from the score.
2. Ba Yin: This is a concerto for saxophone quartet and wind ensemble by Chen Yi. The translation of the title is “the eight sounds.” Each movement has its own title: “Praying for Rain,” “Song of the Chu,” and “Shifan Gong-and-drum.” The work was commissioned by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, but the ensemble is that of the Conservatory Wind Symphony at the Kansas City campus of the University of Missouri, conducted by Steven D. Davis.
3. Tooka-Ood Zasch: This album consists of only a single composition of a duration less than ten minutes. The composer is Bradford Terrance Ellis, who joins PRISM playing synclavier. All the members of the quartet play electronic wind instruments. This time there are three personnel changes, Reginald Borik on soprano, Michael Whitcombe on alto, and Timothy Miller on baritone.

“Tooka-Ood Zasch” (the composition) is actually the oldest of the compositions. It was completed in 1990 and recorded in the same year. As might be guessed, the personnel are the founding members of PRISM. This was a time when real-time processing of audio content was just beginning to come into its own; and it may best be approached as a pioneering effort in electronic jamming. The music is high-spirited and frequently amusing, reminding me that the score dates from a time when so-called “serious” musicians were finally coming to terms with the premise that having fun with composition and/or performance was a perfectly good way to go about making music.

Caine’s music, on the other hand, is much more serious. This will not surprise those who recall that, during the second half of the Nineties, Caine’s performances often involved his jamming his way through the scores of Gustav Mahler. (He would eventually receive an award from the German Mahler Society; but I have to confess that, personally, I cannot say that I ever managed to dig his point of view.) The Book of Days, on the other hand, is very much its own music, so to speak. I am not sure if the entire cycle constitutes some kind of journey (narrative or otherwise); but I was definitely struck by the contrasts that emerged by virtue of the uniqueness of each of the movements.

The eight sounds of Chen’s title refer to the eight different materials from which instruments may be made: metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, leather, and wood. I must confess that this is the one album of the set that I feel requires more listening before I can “get it.” I can appreciate the Chinese connotations in the score; but I feel as if I have not yet grasped the connections between the movement titles and the content, let alone the significance of having those titles in the first place.

I first encountered Chen when I wrote about Susan Chan’s solo piano album Echoes of China for Examiner.com. Chen was the most recent of the five composers on the album. While I could grasp the imagery that had inspired her “Northern Scenes,” the music did not have the “visual impact” that one could experience in images evoked by Claude Debussy. My guess is that, if I had more opportunities to experience more of Chen’s music, I would probably emerge a better listener.