Coming November 15 – Ethan Iverson: Playfair Sonatas
Six outstanding soloists – teaming up with multitalented composer-pianist Ethan Iverson.
From the press release:
Ethan Iverson Announces New Album: Playfair Sonatas
Cover art by Roz Chast
with Miranda Cuckson, violin; Makoto Nakura, marimba; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Mike Lormand, trombone; Taimur Sullivan, saxophone; and Tim Leopold, trumpet
Release Date on Urlicht AudioVisual: November 15, 2024
Pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson will release his next album Playfair Sonatas digitally and as a 2-CD set on November 15, 2024 via the Urlicht AudioVisual label. Playfair Sonatas features six sonatas composed by Iverson for six different instruments and piano, and recorded by Iverson with some of today’s most vibrant classical performers – Miranda Cuckson, violin; Makoto Nakura, marimba; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Mike Lormand, trombone; Taimur Sullivan, saxophone; and Tim Leopold, trumpet. The album is bookended by a Fanfare and Recessional performed by the whole ensemble.
Playfair Sonatas was born in 2020 during the pandemic, when Iverson met curator, producer, and frequent commissioner of new work Piers Playfair for a summertime outdoor dinner. Like most musicians that year, Iverson had downsized and was concerned about making a baseline income. He had recently moved and rented a smaller, cheaper studio, and when Playfair asked if there was anything he could help with, Iverson replied, “Yeah, I’d love to cover the studio rent for a few months.” The two agreed that in exchange for six months of rent, Iverson would write six sonatas, and that Playfair would be allowed to choose the instrumentation.
Writing these Playfair Sonatas led Iverson to composing larger works, including his Piano Sonata, recently recorded as part of his album Technically Acceptable on the Blue Note label. Seth Colter Walls wrote of the piece in The New York Times, “Classical in conception… it also contains traces of crunchy harmonic modernism and the bumptious sounds of vintage American jazz styles.”
Iverson’s Playfair Sonatas similarly showcase this signature approach. The sonatas intertwine 21st-century jazz gestures with the formal structures of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. While the outer movements are titled with traditional tempo indications (Allegro, Rondo, Scherzo, and similar), the middle movements of each work are dedicated to an artist whose work blended jazz and classical.
“These dedications came about late in the game,” says Iverson. “I had scrapped a previous Adagio for clarinet, and wrote a new middle movement I really liked. However, was this ‘oom-pah’ rhythm too much like one of Carla Bley’s amusing ‘music hall’ pieces? Well, what if I dedicated the movement to her? That would fix the issue of appropriation. As it turned out, Carla passed away the same day I finished ‘Music Hall’ and devised the ‘dedications’ stratagem. The other five salutations to Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Paul Desmond, Joe Wilder, and Roswell Rudd came easily, for they had been in the back of my mind the whole time.”
Piers Playfair adds, “It’s cool that out of a Covid dinner we were able to put a project together that so encapsulates one of our joint core beliefs, that the divisions that divide music, such as jazz, classical, blues etc, into neat little boxes are really just names that people put on them and shouldn’t define the artists.”
“Ethan and Piers assembled an absolute dream team of soloists, each of who brought their A game to Oktaven Audio for two days of amazing and inspiring music-making,” says producer Gene Gaudette. “The recording sessions were spirited, crackling with energy, and seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye. The Playfair Sonatas are such terrific music – engaging, witty, and still fresh even after multiple hearings. They will no doubt find not only a wide listening audience via this recording but surely be embraced by players looking for new, challenging, genre-crossing repertoire.”
• Read Ethan Iverson’s notes on each of the Playfair Sonatas, including the dedication movements, here.
• Alongside the album, Iverson will publish the scores for all of the Playfair Sonatas, making them available to interested musicians free of charge.
• Listen to Movement II, “Music Hall (for Carla Bley)” from the Clarinet Sonata and follow along with the score:
• Playfair Sonatas are commissioned by Piers Playfair and 23Arts Initiative.
• The album is released worldwide on Gene Gaudette’s Ulricht AudioVisual label.
About Ethan Iverson:
Pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson was a founding member of The Bad Plus, a game-changing collective with Reid Anderson and David King. The New York Times called TBP “Better than anyone at melding the sensibilities of post-60’s jazz and indie rock.” During his 17-year tenure, TBP performed in venues as diverse as the Village Vanguard, Carnegie Hall, and Bonnaroo; collaborated with Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, and the Mark Morris Dance Group; and created a faithful arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and a radical reinvention of Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction.
Since leaving TBP, Iverson has released critically-acclaimed jazz albums on ECM and Blue Note, often accompanied by bonafide jazz stars such as Tom Harrell or Jack DeJohnette. Downbeat has called Iverson “A master of melody” while Hot House recently raved, “Known for his intellectual depth and adventurous musical spirit, Ethan Iverson has traversed the boundaries of jazz tradition while leaving an indelible mark on its evolution.” After witnessing a 2024 concert of standards spontaneously chosen by the audience, Stereophile wrote, “Iverson is a natural, consistent crowd-pleaser. For his entire career, he has been finding ways to be accessible while pushing the envelope.”
Iverson holds down the piano chair in the critically acclaimed Billy Hart quartet and has recorded with other elder statesmen like Albert “Tootie” Heath and Ron Carter. In terms of performing classical music, Iverson has accompanied Mark Padmore in Schubert’s Winterreise and Johnny Gandelsman in the three Brahms Violin Sonatas.
On top of his activities as a pianist and composer, Iverson has an active career as a writer, publishing significant criticism in The Nation, JazzTimes, The New York Times, and the Culture Desk of The New Yorker. He also posts frequently on his Substack, Transitional Technology.
About the Instrumentalists:
Miranda Cuckson, violin: www.mirandacuckson.com
Makoto Nakura, marimba: www.makotonakura.com
Carol McGonnell, clarinet: www.carolmcgonnell.com
Mike Lormand, trombone: www.deviantseptet.com/mike-lormand
Taimur Sullivan, saxophone: www.taimursullivan.com
Tim Leopold, trumpet: www.mostlymodernfestival.org/tim-leopold-trumpet
Playfair Sonatas
Music by Ethan Iverson
Fanfare – The Ensemble
Violin Sonata – Miranda Cuckson, violin • Ethan Iverson, piano
Marimba Sonata – Makoto Nakura, marimba • Ethan Iverson, piano
Clarinet Sonata – Carol McGonnell, clarinet • Ethan Iverson, piano
Trombone Sonata – Mike Lormand, trombone • Ethan Iverson, piano
Alto Saxophone Sonata – Taimur Sullivan, saxophone • Ethan Iverson, piano
Trumpet Sonata – Tim Leopold, trumpet • Ethan Iverson, piano
Recessional – The Ensemble
Ulricht AudioVisual | Release Date: November 15, 2024
Recorded December 2 & 3, 2023 at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY
Recording engineer: Ryan Streber
Piano technician: Shane Hoshino
Edited by Ryan Streber and Gene Gaudette
Produced by Gene Gaudette
Executive producer: Piers Playfair
Cover art: Roz Chast
Preorder Miranda Cuckson on Vinyl!
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“I have had the privilege and pleasure of working with Miranda Cuckson for over a decade, and take particular pride in her recordings for Urlicht AudioVisual. With the resurgence of the LP format, it is high time to showcase her exceptional insight and talent on vinyl.” – Gene Gaudette
Violinist Miranda Cuckson has achieved international recognition as America’s leading proponent of new music for the violin. Her career delighting audiences as soloist and collaborator in a wide range of music spans three decades, and her recordings for Urlicht AudioVisual, ECM Records, and Centaur have been received with consistently high critical praise.
This newest release from Urlicht AudioVisual marks Miranda’s LP debut, and features three works on two very distinctive LP sides.
Stewart Goodyear‘s “Solo; A Suite for Solo Violin”, commissioned for Miranda and debuted in 2022, comprises one side of the LP – five strongly contrasting movements in one engaging and delightful tonal-centric work drawing not only on on traditional classical forms but Caribbean-influenced melody and rhythm, reflecting Goodyear’s ancestral heritage.
The other side features two pivotal postwar works for solo violin: Iannis Xenakis‘s “Mikka S“, a breakthrough work with microtonal glissandi and dynamic voicings that places it among the most challenging in the violin repertoire, and Franco Donatoni‘s “Argot“, a work drawing on minimalism and late-20th-century European avant-garde styles, with moods that are at once playful and intense.
The unique jacket design showcases both sides of the LP with individual front covers.
This limited-edition release utilizes Direct Metal Mastering for maximum fidelity to the original high-definition sources and is pressed on 180-gram audiophile-quality vinyl by Precision Record Pressing, and includes an insert with complete liner notes and credits.
You can download a .pdf of the release sheet here.
New from Toblach Ausgabe: ‘Gesualdo Renaissance’
If you are a fan of Stravinsky, Varèse, and/or the Second Viennese school – Webern, Berg, and in particular Arnold Schoenberg – you likely recognize the name Robert Craft, a conductor best known as a champion of that esteemed group of composers. You may not be aware that he was also profoundly interested in renaissance- and baroque-era polyphony, particularly the music of Carlo Gesualdo.
Craft’s first pioneering recording of the Italian master’s madrigals, made before his long-term partnership with Columbia Masterworks, was made with a handful of Hollywood’s most gifted singers – including the young Marilyn Horne. The result of these independent studio sessions proved an important catalyst in the revival of interest in Gesualdo’s unique and revolutionary oeuvre, and a landmark recording at the dawn of “historically informed” early music performance practice.
Unavailable for over six decades, this recording has been restored and remastered by Urlicht AudioVisual and will be available on our sister label Toblach Ausgabe for streaming, sale on CD, and download in HD formats on February 18.
You can download the liner notes in .pdf here.
AVAILABLE NOW!
Kodály: Duo for Violin and Cello, Sonata for Solo Cello – Darvarova, Starker (UAV 5983)
Kodály: Duo for Violin and Cello, Sonata for Solo Cello – Darvarova, Starker (UAV 5983)
— Elmira Darvarova
This recording is coupled with a new remastering of Starker’s landmark 1950 recording of Kodály’s Sonata for Solo Cello, restored especially for this release.
The digital edition of this release is available for download exclusively through July from Toblach Ausgabe.
“As Louis Armstrong said, all music is folk music”
– Textura
Available for streaming, for download, and on CD!
Praise for Parnassus’ Reissue of Haendel and Hassid
Urlicht AudioVisual’s remastering for Parnassus Records of recordings by Josef Hassid (his entire recorded legacy) and Ida Haendel (in some of her first recordings) receives strong praise in the June issue of Gramophone:
“Finally, a disc of encores recorded by then-young Polish-Jewish violinists Josef Hassid and Ida Haendel, in 1940 and 1948-53, sympathetically accompanied by Gerald Moore. Hassid, described by Moore as ‘the greatest instrumental genius I’ve ever partnered‘, plays with a sure technique and gleaming tone a range of pieces including by Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Kreisler and Achron. Sadly his career abruptly collapsed the following year, as he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Handel, almost as impressive a player, offers a more adventurous mix, including a : piece by Tartini and contemporary works by Bartók and Copland.
“The transfers are smooth and one quickly adjusts to the mono sound.”
Parnassus PACL 95011 ****
– Daniel Jaffé, Gramophone
Click here to stream, download, or order in CD format!
Remastering Toscha
“It is simply amazing that someone with Tosha Seidel’s enormous talent should have died at the age of sixty-three in complete obscurity after a career that took him all over the world starting at the age of sixteen. Fortunately, this Parnassus release begins to address the neglect the Ukrainian Jewish virtuoso has endured for such a long time.” — Rafael de Acha, All About the Arts
“The lack of [Toscha Seidel’s] recordings in the catalogue is simply baffling and that’s where this succinct 79-minute selection comes in handy. The recordings date from 1918 to 1929 with the exception of the 1945 Chausson. They reveal his vibrant tone and sensual aura as well as his communicative slides (in Achron’s Hebrew Melody). His Kreisler is manly, irreproachably self-confident and oozes tonal lustre and allure, elastically phrased (Schön Rosmarin), vibrantly vibrated and fulsome, with gorgeous double stops (Ave Maria). These are electrically recorded and amongst the best sounding Seidel recordings, revealing the full panoply of his variegated tonal resources. Thereafter there is a long series of predominantly acoustic discs. … If you need a standout piece, amongst many standouts, try Mischa Elman’s arrangement of Ständchen where Seidel’s lustrous, singing tone is under perfect control and beautifully equalized throughout the scale; one of the great violin records. But so many Seidel records are like that; memorable, beautiful and unique in depth of tonal beauty. … This disc fulfils a necessary gap admirably, restoring Seidel’s recordings – but by no means all his recordings – in fine style.” – Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb
Leslie Gerber’s enterprising Parnassus Records already was among my favorite historic reissue labels well before Leslie teamed up with my friends at Alto Distribution to make his recordings more easily obtainable. When they approached us about the possibility of doing some audio restoration work involving recording of the great Toscha Seidel, we immediately agreed to undertake the work.
We were fortunate to collaborate with veteran collector Raymond Glaspole, who transferred a number of Seidel 78s (from his own collection, in excellent condition) to digital format; the remaining sources were transferred at Urlicht AudioVisual, on loan from other collectors. The electrical studio recordings needed little work, but some of the acoustic 78s presented challenges, yet yielded better results than we had anticipated, with a much lower noise level that sacrifices none of Seidel’s signature tone. Though Chausson’s Poème derives from a broadcast transcription with somewhat limited frequency response and distant orchestral miking, the result of restoration reveals a passionate performance with two artists at their expressive finest.
“Toscha Seidel – Rare and Newly Remastered” is available now. You can find links for streaming and CD purchase here.