Mutable Music's
Spectrum is a short, LP-length disc featuring two masters of the middle ground between classical composition and jazz improvisation --
Muhal Richard Abrams and
Roscoe Mitchell -- in a combined effort as improvisers, Romu, followed by two composed orchestral works performed by the
Janácek Philharmonic under
Petr Kotik; Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City -- by
Mitchell, with a text of
Joseph Jarman delivered by baritone
Thomas Buckner -- and Mergertone by
Abrams. Romu is a soulful duet between
Abrams' piano and
Mitchell's alto saxophone that represents both individual streams of searching and a spontaneous confluence of ideas; figures are effortlessly cast back and forth between the two players, are modified, these gestures lead to other things along the way and the whole journey ends very calmly and naturally at 12 minutes.
Mitchell's Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City is both a narrated orchestral work (like
Copland's Lincoln Portrait) and an orchestral lied, as vocalist
Buckner is required both to speak and sing. The piece has a beautiful, Ivesian orchestration and
Buckner does seem to be performing from the perspective of the "vox populi" similar to
Ives' application of unison choral lines in works like Lincoln, the Great Commoner.
Abrams' Mergertone, which also uses electronic keyboards at least at its start and later, a concertante solo piano part, is more impressionistic, declamatory, and spectral than the
Mitchell, which has its text to provide continuity and direction. However, it could hold its own at a Darmstadt Festival without much trouble, but is not overtly Western stylistically or particularly "third stream," either.