Chicago contemporary classical | Peter Margasak
Chicago is in the midst of a revolution in contemporary classical music, with young artists taking matters into their own hands and forming bold, forward-looking groups rather than waiting for that elusive symphony job. Northwestern, DePaul, and the University of Chicago have been producing a dazzling number of fearless composers and hungry, open-minded musicians. The following five albums, presented in no particular order, feature some of the greatest talents.
Ryan Muncy, executive director of fearless new-music group Ensemble dal Niente and member of the all-saxophone Anubis Quartet, has been a party to the performance or commissioning of more than 100 new works for saxophone—an instrument that remains on the periphery of new music. On his dazzling solo debut, Hot, he continues to fight the good fight: with only one exception, its diverse saxophone pieces were composed in the current century. A series of bracing duets shows off the instrument’s versatility and freakish extended range as well as its delicacy and refinement. The album includes compositions by Georges Aperghis, Chaya Czernowin, and Marcos Balter; Muncy duets with violist Nadia Sirota, harpist Ben Melsky, and flutist Claire Chase, and on the Franco Donatoni title piece he’s accompanied by Ensemble dal Niente.
Janice Misurell-Mitchell, Vanishing Points (Southport)
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Composer and flutist Janice Misurell-Mitchell, codirector of long-running ensemble CUBE, represents the old guard of Chicago’s new-music community. But her latest portrait album proves that there’s nothing outdated or musty about her work. On the aptly titled Agitacion, vibraphone and drum kit alternately intersect and propel Winston Choi and Abraham Stokman’s jagged piano lines, and “Dark Was the Night,” performed by guitarist Maria Vittoria Jedlowski, takes inspiration from the Blind Willie Johnson classic referenced in its title, and its bracing, splintery gestures owe as much to Derek Bailey as to the blues.
Peak minimalism
In June, when Kanye dropped Yeezus, industrial music went from a quaintly bygone artifact of 90s alternative culture to a bleeding-edge aesthetic seemingly overnight—the album combines the stark, combative drum programming of vintage Wax Trax! with a tonal palette lifted almost wholesale from Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. But Yeezus is just the tip of the industrial-revival iceberg—most of it is below the surface, where underground artists such as Gesaffelstein are putting a hard edge on vintage techno that sounds like it’d fit right in upstairs at Exit on bondage night.
I didn’t arrive early enough to see front man Erlend Hjelvik in his taxidermied owl helmet, but everything else about this show was awesome. In keeping with the party-time vibes of Kvelertak’s jean-jacket black ‘n’ roll, the sweaty jostlers in the pit were more like to throw an arm around your shoulders than elbow you in the eye—and during the last song, the band hoisted more than a dozen people onstage, hanging all four of their guitars around the necks of unsuspecting fans for an enthusiastically out-of-key encore.
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