Anthony Coleman: You

Anthony Coleman's Lapidation is an uncompromising self-portrait album by an artist whose creative growth as a composer has resulted in numerous works of considerable depth. With the exception of "The King of Kabay," each composition realized here is based upon a notated score, with results that may at times bring to mind the works of Alfred Schnittke, Pierre Boulez, or Ernst Krenek. The title track, named for the barbaric practice of public execution by stoning, was created in response to a news report describing the slaying of a Sudanese woman by that gruesome method in 2001. Lapidation contains elements recognizably drawn from Octandre, a clarion work composed in 1923 by Edgar Varèse. Coleman wrote the piece in 2002 for House Blend, a group that performed regularly at that time in the Kitchen Club at the corner of Prince and Mott in Manhattan's Nolita district. This realization features a ten-piece unit conducted by the composer. "East Orange," played solo by pianist Joseph Kubera, is from a suite entitled (in close and deliberate emulation of Charles Ives) "Three Places in New Jersey." "East Orange" and "I Diet on Cod" were both composed in 2007, shortly before the release of this album. The nonet heard on "Cod" bore the thought-provoking name Retake Iowa and included bassoonist Dana Jensen, accordionist Cory Pesaturo, and electric guitarist Jameson Swanagon. "Mise en Abîme" is played by a septet and is one of three pieces on this disc featuring Doug Wieselman, who handles several different types of clarinet. The title, which translates roughly as "placed into an abyss," can be used to describe what you see when you position yourself between two endlessly reflecting mirrors. More specifically, it refers to an object replicated within itself, or any motif that recurs with reflective persistence. This loaded term fits the nature of the piece quite well. "Mise en Abîme" was composed for the Bang on a Can All Stars in 1997. "The King of Kabay" dates from 1988 and is the only ensemble piece in this collection on which Coleman actually plays rather than conducts. His electric organ mingles rather shrilly with the clarinets of Wieselman, Ned Rothenberg, and Marty Ehrlich. This final episode conjures visitations from Igor Stravinsky and Duke Ellington. The influences detectable in Coleman's music stem directly from first-hand experience, for at the age of 13 he began studying with Mingus-affiliated pianist Jaki Byard, then with modern jazz theorist/bandleader George Russell and composers Malcolm C. Peyton and Donald Martino. None of the pieces on this collection align themselves with conventional entertainment-based expectations. While parallels could be drawn with creative works by musicians linked to modern jazz traditions, and even if some of the action on "East Orange" has been compared with that of Cecil Taylor, these notated works could best be described as cerebral, searching, and somewhat astringent chamber music. "Mise en Abîme," for example, successfully summons the spirits of Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, and Arnold Schoenberg.