EARL HOWARD/Strong Force
Anthony Davis, piano; Gerry Hemingway, percussion; Earl Howard, synthesizer; Anne LeBaron, harp; Ernest Reijseger, cello
"There is little in today's world of music that is more complex and challenging than Howard's ensemble scores, so alien to melody and rhythm as one can be without sounding cacophonous." Piero Scaruffi
Written for the Parabola Arts Ensemble consisting of Anthony Davis, Gerry Hemingway, Anne Le Baron, Ernst Reijseger, and himself, Strong Force uses the skills of this extraordinary group of players to translate Howard’s personal vision of the ensemble situation so effectively that even the sense of spontaneity is retained, though the material is clearly composed.
Earl Howard has been performing his compositions in the United States and Europe for the past thirty years. His recent compositions include music for live electronics, electronic tape music as well as music for electronics and instruments. Earl Howard's method of creating orchestrated sounds with electronics and adding live, improvisational performance creates a unique, densely layered composition that has been performed to enthusiastic audiences at Merkin Hall, the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, Roulette, and Carnegie Recital Hall. His works have been performed and recorded by a number of musicians including Anthony Davis' recording of Particle W, for piano and tape and Gerry Hemingway's recording of D.R. for solo percussion. The recording, Pele's Tears on Random Acoustic represents ten years of his electronic music and he recorded Fire Song with hyperpianist, Denman Maroney for Erstwhile. In 1985 Ursula Oppens and Anthony Davis commissioned Mr. Howard to compose Monopole for two pianos and tape. The Parabola Arts Foundation commissioned Quarks for tape and the Episteme Ensemble.
Mr. Howard is also a virtuoso saxophonist and has developed an extended repertoire for the instrument including Cinco Centavos for solo saxophone and Naked Charm for saxophone and tape which was performed at the New Music America festival in Hartford, Connecticut. He has received Composer fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation on the Arts. He has produced numerous soundtracks for some of the leading film and video artists including Nam June Paik, Mary Lucier, Rii Kanzaki, Bob Harris, and Bill Brand.
TRACK LIST
Strong Force
1 (17:01)
2 (11:34)
3 (12:41)
4 (4:55)
5 (4:57)
REVIEWS
Ben Watson, The Wire, July 2003
This 50 minute suite was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation from composer Earl Howard. His score has now been deposited in the Harvard Music Library. The performing quintet-recorded live at Merkin Hall, NYC on 18 November 1999-comprises the composer on synthesizer, Anthony Davis on piano, Anne LeBaron on harp, Ernst Reijseger on cello and Gerry Hemingway on percussion. These are all highly individual players so it's hard to imagine the music played by anyone else. However he managed it, Howard successfully moves his composition through different zones of rhythm and harmony without diminishing the buoyant 'presentness' which characterises freely improvised music. At the start, piano, harp and synth are pitched in the same high register, but the notes are kept glitteringly separate, like something from Messiaen or Boulez. Though she never stoops to chromatic cliches, LeBaron's harp is astonishingly pretty. Everything is kept teeteringly ambiguous, but a line of thought threads every event. This focus may be the gift of Howard's score. Butch Morris's first and best conduction, Current Trends in Racism in Modern America (1980) had some of this magical fluidity. In the third movement, Davis plays a delightful solo that sounds like extrapolated Debussy. It's a compliment to say one can't tell how much is improvised or read. A central climax uses Hemingway's drums and Reijseger's arco cello to evoke panic, all fire and crackle and splintering beams.
Although it could only be played by musicians who know every nook and cranny of their instruments, this music bravely dispenses with traditional ways of organising sound, jettisoning all the retro reference indukged in under the name of postmodernism. What results is an electrically sensitive music of collective interplay in which notes alwaysa sound like they result from actions. For something that does not use blues, jazz or rock to mobilise its physicality, this is quite an achievement. When Howard's synth fireworks explode, they integrate beautifully with the acoustic instrumentation.
The cover, by Heidi Howard, is a child's crayon sketch of the ensemble, emphasising oesonality and gesture (and an eye-pricking green/red contrast) which a more grown u drawing would suppress. Given the directness and spontaneity of Howard's musicians, it is absolutely appropriate.
Piero Scaruffi
Strong Force (Mutable, 2003) was premiered in the fall of 1999. The CD version, performed by Howard on synthesizer, Anthony Davis on piano, Gerry Hemingway on percussion, Anne LeBaron on harp and Ernst Reijseger on cello, is divided into five movements. There is little in today's world of music that is more complex and challenging than Howard's ensemble scores, so alien to melody and rhythm as one can be without sounding cacophonous. Each movement relies on counterpoint and juxtaposition, not on narrative development. It takes a while to realize that the synth is being used as a peer instrument to the others, not as a "novelty item" that "must" play a different role, and to realize that very few musicians have managed to demistify electronics the way Howard does. Whenever the harsh tones prevail, for example, Howard resists the temptation to use the synth to outperform everybody else. In fact, one could even argue that, most of the time, Howard does not use the synth as a keyboard at all. All the instruments are merely tools in the hands of the musicians: it is the musicians, not the instruments, that create the music. These cold, disjointed, loose, open-ended streams brings to mind alternatively Anton Webern's Concerto for Nine Instruments, Elliott Carter's Piano Sonata, Olivier Messiaen's Quatour, Roscoe Mitchell's chamber music, John Cage and many others. It is almost a summary of 50 years of avantgarde, but from a different, more "biological" and less heroic perspective.
Ken Waxman, Jazz Word
STRONG FORCE is a true American mongrel. A through-composed piece, written by someone very much on the New music side of things, it’s still given a distinct sense of spontaneity through the contributions of improvisers, whose sympathies usually lie on the jazz side of the fence. Commissioned by The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, much of the music bubbles along thanks to the individual players’ skills, as well as its creation by Sunnyside, N.Y.-based composer Earl Howard who sits in on synthesizer. In fact, STRONG FORCE’s main weakness is definitely extra-musical, with some contributions distant or muffled because of the live recording situation at New York’s Merkin Hall.
Born in 1951, Howard now concentrates on creating pieces for live electronics and electronic tape, as well as those that add live improvisation to orchestrated sounds created by electronics. Also an alto saxophonist, Howard has written and performed pieces for solo saxophone, for saxophone and tape and recorded improvisations with hyperpiano specialist Denman Maroney.
Two of the musicians here -- who collectively make up the Parabola Arts Ensemble for which this composition was shaped -- have recorded other Howard works individually. Pianist and academic Anthony Davis, best known for his operas X and TANIA, and his work with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, has recorded two of Howard’s compositions for piano and tape. Gerry Hemingway, associate of exploratory musicians ranging from composer Anthony Braxton to saxophonist John Butcher, has recorded a Howard piece for solo percussion. Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger’s reputation comes from his work in Hemingway’s quintet and the ICP orchestra; while harpist Anne LeBaron, a contemporary composer, has also performed in improv situations with pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and Braxton. Within this composition, Howard has evidentially created particular solo passages for each.
Often, for instance, LeBaron’s silvery harp glissandos and Reijseger’s arco lines meld, approximating an even larger stringed instrument. On his own, though, the cellist seems to prefer abrasive scratching and rumbling bow slices than conventional string lines. There is a point in the final section, however, where with more torque added, he strums and flat picks different sections, creating complementary vibrations that may or may not be in the score.
Cello pummeling and LeBaron’s contrasting descending runs frame Hemingway’s solo section in Part 2. Trading vigorous drum strokes with Davis’ arpeggio-rich continuum and Reijseger’s string slides, he then turns to kettle drum and crash cymbals to color the performance. Although the piece appears to reach a climax here, the live sound muddies some of the composer’s multi-layered conceptions.
The same sort of thing happens in the next section, where thunderous strokes and bell-tree shakes from the percussionist give way to an extended passage where he seems to be emphasizing the beat with his bass drum pedal, rolling his sticks upon the drum heads and whacking the sides of his snares and toms. You may have to leap up and turn your playback system down though, since the thunderous results becomes almost as unbearably loud as the introductory sections of a couple of other tracks are inaudible. STRONG FORCE’s final seconds also appear to fade to silence following focused harp plucks. Hopefully the fade was the decision of Howard, not the hall’s acoustics.
Prominent on the keys as soon as the percussion interlude subsides, Davis -- who earlier on indulges in internal string strumming -- plays an extended, semi-classical fantasia of splayed notes and underlying harmonies, with left handed harmonic interjections using sympathetic voicing to create a capacious soundscape. Occasionally too, you hear synthesizer whorls that ascend from underneath the other sounds then vanish.
That sort of restrain characterizes Howard’s other electronic interjections here. Usually he’ll provide an underlying ostinato, a split-second note commentary or create oscillating overtones, leaving the fireworks to others, most notably the percussionist. Howard is obviously satisfied that his composition is receiving a first class reading.
Indeed STRONG FORCE is played as well as can be expected from the humans. But be aware of reproduction weaknesses when investigating this CD.
