Jennifer Koh

National Sawdust Log
By Steve Smith
September 13, 2019
original link

Album of the week

Jennifer Koh
Limitless
Compositions by Qasim Naqvi, Lisa Bielawa, Du Yun, Tyshawn Sorey, Nina C. Young, Wang Lu, Vijay Iyer, and Missy Mazzoli
Çedille; CD, DL

Let’s get the publication-specific disclaimer out of the way promptly: Limitless, the newest album by Jennifer Koh on the Chicago-based independent label Çedille, is based on two concerts the enterprising violinist presented at National Sawdust in March 2018. Reflecting on those events in the portion of my end-of-year roundup reserved for National Sawdust events and presentations, I wrote this:

More than just a pair of exciting chamber-music programs – though undoubtedly they were that! – what the enterprising violinist Jennifer Koh offered with Limitless was a quiet manifesto about inclusivity in choosing as her collaborators a slate of accomplished composer-performers: Zosha Di Castri, Missy Mazzoli, Qasim Naqvi, Lu Wang, Lisa Bielawa, Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, Nina C. Young, and Du Yun. The programs were deeply personal; the impact was universal and revelatory.

What’s most fascinating about the program, both live and now on record, is the point it makes without shouting about the point it’s making. The project description on Koh’s website reads like so:

Limitless celebrates the collaborative relationship between composer and performer, while also exploring the historical role of the composer as performer. This spirit of collaboration contrasts with the conventional notion that composition and performance are discrete and detached parts of the musical process.

What goes unspoken is that Koh, a highly visible artist who travels to play the canonical violin concertos in parallel with her busy life as a new-music advocate, demonstrates her point about collaboration by choosing a coterie of composers who are not white men—but then doesn’t make a big issue of that point. It’s not that she’s unmoved by the implications and impact of what she’s assembled – this is what happens when a woman of color is given a chance to curate, she proudly proclaimed to a National Sawdust audience (I’m paraphrasing for lack of precise recorded evidence) – but rather that she seems intent on offering this worldview as a matter of fact, plain and simple.

Also a matter of fact: the recording – which comprises everything from the recitals except for Zosha Di Castri’s Sprung Testament (for which one hopes there’s another destination in the offing) – presents a fantastic panorama of contemporary compositional approaches. Opening with the contemplative, ragalike The Banquet, where Qasim Naqvi’s modular synthesizer provides luscious tonal ambiguities, the first disc proceeds purposefully through Lisa Bielawa’s emphatically vocalized (and emphatically timely) Sanctuary Songs and Du Yun’s fiercely visceral Give Me Back My Fingerprints. Tyshawn Sorey’s profoundly meditative In Memoriam Muhal Richard Abrams prefaces the tactile mystery of Nina C. Young’s Sun Propellers: an electroacoustic evocation of the physical magic produced by Tuvan throat singers.

Disc two starts with Wang Lu’s Her Latitude, a strikingly original contemplation of cultural identity, dislocation, and difference that sets Koh’s soaring violin among electronic samples of Buddhist chant, Korean pop, warning alarms, and more. Vijay Iyer’s The Diamond, meant to evoke a teaching in which the Buddha described four disparate views of impermanence, serves as well to represent Iyer’s own view of the delicate dance between composition and improvisation—and, incidentally, provides Koh with her most extended opportunities for lyrical virtuosity. The set ends with two pieces Missy Mazzoli originally created for other performers and opportunities – A Thousand Tongues, played first by cellist Jody Redhage, and Vespers for Violin, introduced by Monica Germino and Frank van der Weij – recast here into what feels like a bespoke two-part benediction.

Koh, needless to say, is sensational throughout: responsive to each composer’s demands, and fiercely committed to making each piece sing true in collaboration with its creator. The project is a paradigm shift in thinking about composers who perform, and about representation on the concert platform; the result is a beautiful, compelling collection of intimate conversations and collective statements.

Jennifer Koh performs Vijay Iyer’s concerto Trouble with the Knights at Miller Theatre on Oct. 24 at 8pm; millertheatre.com

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