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SOUNDS OF AMERICA Composer Steven Mackey converses with the Arx Duo, who provide a colourful array of percussion sounds for Memoir, a play based on his mother’s writings Mackey Memoir Natalie Christa Rakes, Steven Mackey spkrs Dover Quartet; Arx Duo Bridge (BRIDGE9601 • 76’) Steven Mackey’s affecting play for actor, string quartet and percussion, based on his mother’s unpublished and colourful memoir, was originally suggested by the folk tale told in Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat. Among many other musical echoes there is a recurring solo violin riff that echoes Soldat. The connection to Stravinsky extends to the easy confidence with which Mackey uses his musical materials and the casual pace of the story. Elaine Mackey’s fast-paced diorama of snapshots from the first half of the 20th century and her often earthy language suggest the energy of John Dos Passos’s USA Trilogy; blending his original music with evocations of music from her life, Mackey mirrors her personality with an affection that suffuses every bar. He has fun with his mother’s memories of her son, the composer; at the end, during several moving episodes dealing with her alcoholism, he takes a speaking role himself. Both as narrator and actor, Natalie Christa Rakes sets a high standard for subsequent performances of Memoir with her uncanny ability to inhabit Elaine through all her improbable adventures from Pittsburgh to Hollywood, and yet still leave an intriguing amount to the imagination. The Dover Quartet take full advantage of Mackey’s idiomatic writing for strings, and the Arx Duo play with a wide range of sounds from simply percussive to astoundingly beautiful. Although the booklet doesn’t have a libretto, it does include a selection of the black-and-white photographs that are projected when Memoir is staged. The sound at Curtis Institute of Music’s Gould Rehearsal Hall has audiophile clarity with warmth and plenty of bandwidth for the percussionists. Laurence Vittes ‘Shapes in Collective Space’ Figgis-Vizueta Shapes in Collective Space Flagello Burn as Brightly Lanzilotti silhouette, mirror Mitze Seesaw Peacocke Fluorescein Ravaei Navazi AA Tucker Breathing Sunlight Tallā Rouge (Aria Cheregosha, Lauren Spaulding vas) Bright Shiny Things (BTSC0202 • 42’) For further evidence of the porous borders that lie between classical, contemporary, folk, pop and non-Western musics, look no further than Talla¯ Rouge’s debut album ‘Shapes in Collective Space’. Formed by American viola players Aria Cheregosha and Lauren Spaulding in 2020, Talla¯ Rouge (which means ‘the Red-Gold’ in Farsi and French), takes the duo’s Persian and Cajun heritage as a starting point for a musical journey that travels far and wide across what the performers have called ‘genre-defying compositions’. Folk and non-Western influences are present in the four-movement Navazi gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE NOVEMBER 2024 III

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