Lisa Bielawa, voice; MATA Ensemble; Roger Rees, voice; Jessica Gould, soprano ("Gloria"); Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band; Corey Dargel, voice; Margaret Lancaster, piccolo; Eve Beglarian, voice and electronics; Bill Ware, vibes solo; FlamingO Ensemble, Brad Lubman, conductor
"One of new music's truly free spirits" and a "remarkable experimentalist," Eve Beglarian (b 1958) is a composer and performer whose music has been described as "an eclectic and wide-open series of enticements." Tell the Birds is her latest sampler plate of ideas, a set of pieces both cohesive and pleasingly eclectic. Four of the six pieces here deal with texts, from such disparate writers as William Blake, Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, and American poets Linda Norton and Stanley Kunitz. Musically, Beglarian charts her progress in finding ways to combine her use of samplers and electronics with breathing, real-time musicians, extant new music ensembles, and an orchestral showpiece for good measure.
The compositions contained here－The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1994), Creating the World (1996), Robin Redbreast (2003), Wonder Counselor (1996), Landscaping for Privacy (1995), FlamingO (1995, revised 2004)－represent a range of ideas and vintages in the Beglarian oeuvre, from the mid-nineties forward, with some revision of older works and a generally gleaming account of her continuing artistic saga. Beglarian continues to carve out a path in music not quite like any other in contemporary music, not so much breaking rules as ignoring the ones she has no use for, and nurturing ideas or combinations she finds useful and appealing.
