Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009) Lossless

SKU:

$10.00

Unavailable

per item

Lossless Digital AIFF (16bit/44k)

This album contains LA-based composer Michael Pisaro's recent composition 'Barricades,' a 63-minute piece for piano and electronics. Consisting of thirteen studies (piano pieces, some with electronics) and two electronic interludes, the piece is performed by Israel-based pianist Shira Legmann, with Pisaro on electronics. Cover photo by Michael Pisaro, design by Yuko Zama.

For CD format, go to this page.
For digital HD FLAC (24/96), go to this page.

Quantity

Add to Cart

Excerpts from Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades
(Study No. 5 / Study No. 6 / Interlude No. 1)

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere 009)

1. Study No. 1       5:38
2. Study No. 2       3:20
3. Study No. 3       1:53
4. Study No. 4       2:01
5. Study No. 5       2:15
6. Study No. 6       2:04
7. Interlude No. 1       2:03
8. Study No. 7       4:47
9. Study No. 8       6:41
10. Study No. 9       3:42
11. Study No. 10       10:30
12. Study No. 11       1:42
13. Study No. 12       3:37
14. Interlude No. 2       4:45
15. Study No. 13       8:29

Michael Pisaro Barricades (2018-2019)

Shira Legmann - piano
Michael Pisaro - electronics

composed by Michael Pisaro

recorded by Michael Pisaro at The Wild Beast (CalArts, Valencia, California) in March-April, 2019
piano: Yamaha CF III S, Serial No. 5543100
mixed and mastered by Michael Pisaro

photography by Michael Pisaro
design by Yuko Zama
produced by Yuko Zama

with special thanks to Fred Tauber & the Avaloch Farm Music Institute

p+c 2019 elsewhere music
www.elsewheremusic.net

"Barricades has a distant but decisive relationship to the keyboard music of Louis and François Couperin. The title refers to 'Les Barricades Mystérieuses' by François Couperin – and to the technique of overlapping, interlocking voices, creating a thicket or web-like texture. I have loved the music of the Couperins since college, but it was when Shira sent me some of her favorite music to play, and 'Les Barricades Mystérieuses' was among the scores, that the idea for this piece began to crystallize. The process of writing and working on the piece with Shira was one of watching the barricades, which I pictured as a network of twisted vines, unravel." (Michael Pisaro)

Shira Legmann's clean, supple yet solid piano sounds, employing a wide dynamic range, add a sense of organic life to the composition. Her whispery nuances and mysterious atmosphere, intertwining with Pisaro's underlying sine tones, create a compelling balance between coolness and emotion, distance and closeness, and result in a tranquil yet captivating contemporary work with an echo of the French Baroque.

Dusted Magazine review by Bill Meyer

Barricades takes its name from “Les Barricades Mystérieuses,” a composition by the Baroque composer and keyboardist, François Couperin. The work of Couperin and his family, whose members played the organ at the church of Saint Gervais in Paris for several generations, is a long-time favorite of Pisaro’s. But the instigation for writing music inspired by Couperin came when Pisaro found out that he shared this affinity with Shira Legmann, an Israeli pianist whose repertoire encompasses music of the Baroque era and the late 20th century. He wrote the fifteen piano studies that make up Barricades, and played the electronics that appear on certain of the studies and two purely electronic interludes. And he recorded it himself at The Wild Beast, a concert hall located on the CalArts campus where Pisaro teaches.

While Pisaro wrote the piece, he did so in consultation with Legmann, and he’s written of the experience as being “one of watching the barricades, which I pictured as a network of twisted vines, unravel.” While the music is made up of ornaments and interlocking patterns, both of which are defining devices of the Baroque era, they have been abstracted. Instead of adding elaborate figures, he adorns the piano with decaying swells and sine tones. And instead of fitting parts so closely that they lock together, Legmann’s cleanly articulated lines span empty spaces like power lines.

The pattern is a spacious web, bounded but barely solid. This redirects the listener’s attention from the watch-like action of your average Baroque to the individual turns of the gear; put another way, the focus is on the manipulation and decay of each note rather than the precise action of a machine made of notes. While this discussion has focused on process, it’s quite possible to appreciate this music without doing so. Instead one can appreciate the elegance of Legmann’s clean arcs, as well as the quietly strategic way that Pisaro shades and smudges them. (Bill Meyer)