David Crowell : Point / Cloud
Performed by Sandbox Percussion, Dan Lippel, mak grgić, and eco|tonal
The works of Point / Cloud, from the New York City-based composer and instrumentalist David Crowell, are transmissions from in between. Four compositions for percussion, guitar, and singing cellist offer pause amidst periods of transit—highway drives, detours to underwater pipe organs, or contrapuntal developments. Crowell’s intricate notions take flight, then build us a home in midair.
Verses for a Liminal Space is the most recent composition to have emerged from Crowell’s decade-long relationship with the quartet Sandbox Percussion. Commissioned by a university consortium and completed during Crowell’s fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, the work occurs in three “verses”: short, spaced circumnavigations, flowing into one another. A statement featuring vibraphone first winds up and down; vibraphones and marimbas then seem to freeze the music in place. The last verse is a bright, rotating canopy, grounded by repeated drum strikes.
Crowell considers the eponymous Point / Cloud a response to Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint (1987), a defining three-movement work for guitar in which the soloist plays with pre-recorded tracks. (Lippel, who recorded Point / Cloud, also consulted with Reich on his own recording of Electric Counterpoint.) The title here evokes the work’s pointillistic texture and thick counterpoint, amassing over time into “clouds” of sound. Crowell follows a contemplative first movement with an introverted second, where wandering phrases hurdle gently over one another. Short sections in the last movement glow, settle, then bid adieu, if all too soon.
Pacific Coast Highway, which follows, began life as an electric guitar and electric bass composition for one of Crowell’s previous bands, a virtuosic burst to be deployed in the middle of sets. Since then, the work has assumed what Crowell describes as “multiple personalities,” including the classical guitar duo version here performed by guitarists Dan Lippel and Mak Grgic. Crowell, who grew up partially in California, named the work in honor of one particular drive along the titular highway, imbued with an open-ended, exalted sensibility. Via dancelike passages that bend and wind after their namesake, Pacific Coast Highway routes us towards a novel destination.
For Crowell, the concluding work 2 Hours in Zadar—performed by eco|tonal (Iva Casián-Lakoš and David Crowell), with text by Casián-Lakoš’s mother Nela Lakoš—is something of a surprise, an episode of spaciousness after three explorations of pulse and rhythm. The work, Crowell said, stands at the intersection of Crowell’s own compositional sensibilities and Casián-Lakoš’s musical strengths, as well as her Croatian ancestry. At the start of 2 Hours in Zadar, snatches of Casián-Lakoš speaking Croatian are embraced by organ-like electronics, derived from manipulations of Casián-Lakoš’s voice. Soon begins Gregorian-style chanting, accompanied by Casián-Lakoš’ fluid lines on cello and, later, samples of the peculiar hollow trumpeting of the Sea Organ: a marble stair in the Croatian coastal city of Zadar that conceals within its steps a group of pipes, “played” by the passing waves. Casián-Lakoš goes on to sing her mother’s text, describing a speaker who ponders the endlessness of the sea, surrendering to and yet—with plainspoken sweetness—refusing the water’s power.
—Jennifer Gersten
Praise for Point / Cloud
Out May 3rd, 2024 on Better Company Records
“Crowell’s minimalism is wonderfully rich and harmonically complex: busy arpeggios sketch out dense, extended chords that constantly mutate and move in unexpected directions…Throughout, Crowell constructs geometric structures that have a rare sense of kinetic energy: this is music that glistens, sparkles, and dances with joy.” John Lewis, The Guardian (named Contemporary Album of the Month)
"Composer and multi-instrumentalist David Crowell has minimalist bona fides: he played in the Philip Glass Ensemble for nearly a decade. But Crowell draws from a number of traditions in his work: prog rock, jazz, folk, and other contemporary classical idioms. His latest, Point / Cloud, features works for percussion, guitars, and a moving finale for voice, cello, and Crowell’s instrumentation…Point / Cloud is uniformly excellent, a recording that is among my favorites thus far in 2024.”
Christian Carey, Sequenza21
“Crowell proves his expertise at creating nuanced landscapes of feeling using spare forces…across the whole album, Crowell dazzles in both the conception and execution of his smart miniatures.”
Jeremy Shatan, AnEarful
“The sounds are haunting and captivating [2 Hours in Zadar], as is the entire disc.”
David Olds, WholeNote
recent press quotes for previous work
"Depending on the tune, the interwoven triple-guitar gamesmanship of Empyrean Atlas can run in a few different directions: toward the mathy post-punk of Horse Lords or Battles, toward warmly anesthetic ambience (say, Pink Floyd meets Bradford Cox), or toward West African high life. On “Echolocation,” the clangy, lapping repetitions feel most in line with that last influence. The quintet’s movements are coiled and contained, but pulsing with small, ecstatic fibrillations." Giovanni Russonello, New York Times
"At eighteen minutes, Poly Rush might seem more EP-length teaser than full-length argument on behalf of Empyrean Atlas, yet what a teaser it is...I can't recall another outfit whose polyrhythms lock quite so tightly together as do Empyrean Atlas's...Brief it might be, but a track like “Echolocation,” for example, is very much capable of inducing an entranced swoon the moment that dazzling interplay appears." Textura
“The four movements of David Crowell’s Music for Percussion Quartet range from energetic flourishes and layered rhythms to sustained halos of sound. Patterns change organically as the instruments - including guitar, played by the composer - interact with seamless animation or stillness.” Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone (reviewing Sandbox Percussion’s album And That One Too)
“The shining star of the album are tracks 2 through 5; David Crowell’s Music for Percussion Quartet…The piece is as joyful as it is evocative. Crowell’s use of form is masterful, and every moment of the music captivates the listener. It is a well-balanced, overwhelmingly lovely piece of music.” Olivia Kieffer, Earrelevant (reviewing Sandbox Percussion’s album And That One Too)
Point / Cloud credits
Produced and mixed by David Crowell
Mastered by Charles Van Kirk
Artwork by Rebecca Crowell
Cover Design by Kate Gentile
Notes by Jennifer Gersten
Verses for a Liminal Space:
Performed by Sandbox Percussion
Engineered by Mike Tierney at Bunker Studio
Point / Cloud:
Performed by Dan Lippel
Engineered by Ryan Streber at Oktaven and David Crowell in Ditmas Park
Pacific Coast Highway:
Performed by Dan Lippel and Mak Grgić
Engineered by John Schneider
2 Hours in Zadar:
Performed by eco|tonal (Iva Casián-Lakoš and David Crowell)
Croatian Text by Nela Lakoš
Engineered by Aaron Nevezie at Bunker Studio and David Crowell in Long Island City
Text:
Dalje i dalje
prije i poslije
beskraj i vječnost
prstima češljam
Ja more slušam
ja more gledam
moru se predajem
moru se ne dam
Translation:
Farther and farther
before and after
combing my fingers
through vastness and eternity
Listening to the sea
watching the sea
to the sea I surrender
I don’t give in to the sea