New Chamber Music: Part II
By Clive Paget
Violinist Rachel Lee Priday's Fluid Dynamics is a collection of works—several newly commissioned—intended to complement videos of underwater phenomena created by Ocean scientist Georgy Manucharyan. For the visuals, which are informed by chaos theory, wave motion, and ocean currents, you need to surf the net—Google Rachel Lee Priday Fluid Dynamics and visit YouTube or Instagram—but as a purely aural experience it works just fine.
Gabriella Smith, who also happens to be an ecologist, opens the collection with "Entangled on a Rotating Planet," a fluttering, abrasive solo inspired by patterns of wind on water. Paul Wiancko's "Waterworks" is equally dynamic, though more obviously tonal, a swirling four-minute vortex that creates complex structures through demanding double-stopping. Judicious use of a loop pedal throws up multiple violin lines in Cristina Spinel's meditative "Convection Loops." the music reflecting drops of colored ink pulled this way and that within a column of moving water. Priday dispatches all three with flawless intonation and opulence of tone, especially appealing in the lower register.
Leilehua Lanzilotti's "to speak in a forgotten language" is the most elusive music here, its spare notation and extended techniques flirting with white noise and other indeterminate musical effects. Her free-flowing "ko'u inoa" (translating as "my name is") is more effective on disc, perhaps because the score preceded the fluid dynamics project and so is not intimately bound up with absent video imagery. The same goes for Timo Andres's shimmering "Three Suns," and especially for Christopher Cerrone's mesmeric 15-minute Violin Sonata.