courtesy of Naxos of America
A little over two weeks ago, Cedille Records released a thoroughly engaging album arising from an imaginative partnership. The participants consisted of Brazilian guitarist Sérgio Assad, his pianist-vocalist daughter Clarice, and the four members of Third Coast Percussion: Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore. By way of disclaimer, I should note that I have been fortunate enough to listen to all of these artists in performance, all thanks to San Francisco Performances (SFP), having enjoyed Clarice’s SFP debut with her father and his brother Odair in April of 2016 and having seen Third Coast in April of 2019. All of these performers are currently based in Chicago.
The title of the new album is Archetypes. It is basically a “shared suite” of twelve movements with each performer contributing at least one of those movements. More specifically, each Third Coast percussionist composed one of the movements, while each of the Assads was responsible for contributing four of them.
The idea behind this project was a musical depiction of a dozen different personality types, all of which can be found in cultures around the world. Each movement is named for one of those types, which are, in “order of appearance,” rebel, innocent, orphan, lover, magician, ruler, jester, caregiver, sage, creator, hero, and explorer. These may strike many as categories that are too abstract to be “described” through music. However, those willing to pay attention to the titles in the track list while listening to the album are likely to “get” the “connection” that motivated the composer.
Where my own listening experiences are concerned, I found this album to be what might be called a “variation” on a familiar methodology. That methodology figured significantly in those compositions of Virgil Thomson that he called “portraits;” and, on many occasions, the “subject” of one of those portraits would “sit” for Thomson while he developed his composition at the keyboard of his piano. Those listening to these pieces today will probably find most of the names unfamiliar and will have to depend on program notes to appreciate just what made the composition a “portrait.”
On the other hand the movements of Archetypes are much more universal in nature. Every movement title is likely to inspire some form of “portrait” in the mind of the listener. That listener can then “update” the portrait (s)he has conceived in response to the music (which, at the end of the day, is the “portrait” imagined by the composer).
Nevertheless, listening to Archtypes does not have to be reduced to some sort of latter-day parlor game. Over the course of my own listening experiences, I found that I could be just as happy setting aside the titles of the movements. Each has its unique approaches to both thematic invention and rhetorical devices for presenting those themes. Yes, there are sonorities that will make one sit up and take notice, such as the prankish “Jew’s harp” sonorities intended to evoke the jester personality. Similarly, I have always enjoyed Clarice’s prodigious inventiveness when it comes to exploring the diversity of vocal sounds.
I suppose that I have now accumulated enough listening experiences to appreciate that no genre of music is necessarily obliged to signify; but, if signification is clearly an intention of the composer, mind usually finds its way to recognizing what is being signified.
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