"Youth is wasted on the young," as legendary curmudgeon George Bernard Shaw once said. If one were able to canvass the inboxes of the various university-level composition professors across the land, then perhaps one would come to much the same conclusion. However, once out of school, and presumably with lessons learnt, the newly formed musician is often out of luck; the standard in regard to recording at least since the 1970s is that the young composer gets to wait some 15 to 30 years in order to interest record companies in their works, sometimes finally settling to pay for the privilege. The NOW Ensemble, based out of New York, is made up of a group of twenty-something composers and performers who have decided that waiting is for losers. New Amsterdam Records is the label begun by Judd Greenstein, whose stylish and alternatively diaphanous, tumultuous, and jazzy Folk Music leads off the program. Patrick Burke's Hypno-germ is a driving and dramatic little gem that contrasts Alex Sopp's impressive virtuosity on the flute with TV Action Jazz-type rhythms, and his All Together Now has nothing to do with the Beatles, but artfully emphasizes the sense of balance and discipline shared among the players in the NOW Ensemble. Mark Dancigers' Hanging There spotlights spicy staccato rhythms gradually building into a denser texture, and his Cloudbank is a spectral and childlike piece of whimsy made up mostly of widely scattered pitches of very short duration. Nico Muhly, a composer who is not a member of NOW Ensemble, but has become well established on his own account in ways not common to most composers his age, contributes How About Now. The overall form of the piece is assured, and the sound of it attractive, though in some passages it has a sort of spinning its wheels feeling and is the one thing in this program that seems a little out of place. Greenstein returns for the closer, Sing Along, a slow mood piece that provides a feeling of being lighter than air and revisits some of the harmonic business one might associate with Les Six.
One thing that will impress many listeners who feel that everything having to do with contemporary music involves cold, difficult harmony and/or endless repetition is that every work on this program deals with neither. All of this music is bright, engaging, witty, and, yes, youthful. When the composition professor puts out the inbox on his desk, he's running an agenda; the assignment, whatever it is, must be fulfilled. The NOW Ensemble isn't running any kind of agenda; the music is free and intuitive and it is not afraid to draw on modality, melody, jazz harmonies, or even rock rhythms, but the music remains unquestionably classical in terms of its focus and musicianship. New Amsterdam's NOW is a first-class debut for NOW Ensemble, and, pace George Bernard Shaw, isn't a waste of youth or anything else. More of this is demanded, not requested.
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