Jennifer Bellor: Catching Clouds
Lexicon Classics

Jennifer Bellor's latest release comprises nine thematically linked tracks that for all intents and purposes compose a cohesive suite. As per its title, cloud details plus personal reflections inform the work as it progresses through its multi-linked parts. It's also a work conceived with the stage in mind and easily adaptable to it in being scored for four acoustic instruments. No elaborate electronic set-ups are required for Catching Clouds to be presented, and adding to its appeal, Bellor varies the instrument combinations throughout: two parts feature her on solo piano, while the others feature her, vibraphonist James Doyle, clarinetist Bryan Conger, and alto saxophonist Shawna Pennock in duo, trio, and, in the finale, quartet formations. That makes for an ever-changing and stimulating presentation and an expansive conclusion.

An Assistant Professor of Music Composition at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, Bellor has strong personal ties to her collaborators. Pennock is a colleague at the university who appeared on Bellor's Reflections at Dusk (Innova, 2020) and issued her own Riparian in 2023. Conger holds the title of Assistant Professor of Clarinet at the same university, while Doyle earned his Doctor of Musical Arts there as well. While its roots are in contemporary classical, stylistically Bellor's music is hard to pin down (never a bad thing). It largely eschews atonality, and no one would ever mistake a piece by her for one by Schoenberg, Bartok, or Stravinsky. It's also not minimalism, as it sidesteps the melodic and rhythmic tropes composers of that ilk can sometimes lapse into (though the closing movement of Catching Clouds does, admittedly, build to a climax in a manner reminiscent of Reich's Counterpoint works). Bellor's music doesn't sound out of place when heard next to Michael Torke's, Michael Nyman's, and Graham Fitkin's, however. But even here her music stands apart from theirs for how strongly her personal signature declares itself.

Her creative process draws from a number of sources, and like any composer personal experiences play a significant part. Her first skydiving experience (in 2012) was, as it is for many, transformative, and that it exerted a lasting impact is shown in the suite's sixth part, “Cloudline,” her attempt to translate that profound moment into sound (in notes accompanying the release, Bellor shares that the “feeling of weightlessness, freedom, and literally jumping through clouds stayed with me … and became the heartbeat of this music”). Relating to that, other parts in the work developed that reference cloud formations of particular kinds. Crafted with finesse and thoughtfully arranged, the nine-part suite engages immediately for its sleek rhythmic pulses, melodic allure, and elegant design.

Tone painting is present in some parts, and consistent with the general subject matter the music is often ethereal, its textures vaporous. It generally locates itself in a realm high above the earth and exudes a diaphanous and airy feel. The opening “Cloudbreak” sparkles incandescently with an interweave of piano and vibraphone. As Bellor's lines generate a lilting dance, Doyle's buoyant vibraphone reinforces the bright, weightless feel of the music. The two are joined by Conger for “Serpentine Arroyo,” which flows fluidly out of the opening piece and perpetuates the intertwining design of “Cloudbreak” but more elaborately with the third voice included. With the piano rumbling in a lower register, clarinet and vibraphone engage in a serpentine pas de deux, the music during one passage hushed and the instruments gently coiling around one another as in some mystical dance.

The first of two solo piano settings addressing cloud types directly, “Cirrus” evokes the wispiness of high-altitude clouds composed of ice crystals. Single-note cascades convincingly conjure the image of falling snowflakes or ice particles until the music turns more introspective, the shift from geographical phenomena to human experience deftly effected. In the later “Volutus,” she evokes clouds rolling across the sky with insistently repeating patterns. The pianist sits out on “Effervescence,” which enables Conger and Doyle to interlocute for five breezy minutes. As an illustration of the extreme shift in tone that sometimes marks the transition from one part to another, “Querencia” finds Doyle, Conger, and Bellor emoting solemnly as they look probingly inward (the Spanish word "querencia" refers to a place "where one feels safe and secure; the place where you are your most authentic self”).

June 2026