Christopher Cerrone: The Arching Path
In a Circle Records

Young composers contend with myriad challenges, among them developing a distinctive voice and securing a foothold within the professional ranks. A current sampling of American composers who've established themselves might include Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, David T. Little, Robert Honstein, Caroline Shaw, and Christopher Cerrone. I've not heard everything the latter's created (his opera treatment of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, for example), but what I have has been without exception superb. His Grammy-nominated The Pieces That Fall to Earth was a 2019 standout, and High Windows (2013) helped distinguish The String Orchestra of Brooklyn's recent afterimage. NPR christened the Brooklyn-based Cerrone, born in 1984, “one of our most versatile composers under 40,” to which I would add one of the most gifted.

A wonderful arc is formed by the sequencing of The Arching Path. Following the three-part solo piano title work, the sound world expands for Double Happiness, a five-movement electro-acoustic setting featuring piano, percussion, and field recordings. The recording's most stirring piece, I Will Learn to Love a Person, features a magnificent performance by soprano Lindsay Kesselman (who also appears on The Pieces that Fall to Earth), after which Hoyt-Schermerhorn, an ambient piano work, brings a satisfying resolution. Grounding the album is Timo Andres' piano, but the pieces are enriched also by the contributions of Kesselman, clarinetist Mingzhe Wang, and percussionist Ian Rosenbaum, plus electronic textures by the composer himself. The intimacy of the material is well-matched by the chamber-styled presentation, and one comes away from the project appreciative of his sensitivity to timbre, melodic gifts, and command of compositional form.

Rather than being the product of a concentrated creative spurt, the album material was written between 2010 and 2016. Yet though the pieces might have originated at different times, they hold together splendidly as a cohesive group on account of the composer's sensibility and the foundational role of the piano. Cerrone drew for inspiration from travels to Italy and recorded the album with producer Mike Tierney at a Brooklyn studio in late 2018 and early 2019. As violinist Jennifer Gersten notes in text accompanying the release, the works compose a travelogue of sorts, but not so much with the aim to preserve experiences exactly as they happened but to consider how they reverberate in memory.

Illustrative of the concept, the opening work was inspired by Cerrone's exposure to the Musmeci Bridge in the southern Italian city of Potenza. Reminiscent of classical minimalism, “Musmeci's Concrete” begins with an insistently ringing note soon augmented by other single-note patterns offset by a variety of polyrhythms. The chiming effect that develops is elaborated upon by accents that punctuate the kinetic mass. After that senses-dazzling intro, “Sul Basento” eases the intensity for passages of tremulous calm before grand arpeggios evoke the impression of a towering structure and the untitled third movement ends the work with a ponderous bass ostinato, high-pitched figures, and plaintive musings.

The sound design shifts when Double Happiness begins with the soft shimmer of field recordings Cerrone collected during his time in Umbria, Italy and the hush of electronic textures. The resonant gleam of vibes adds to the dream-like splendour nurtured in a work titled after a short story collection by Mary-Beth Hughes. Melancholy and wistfulness permeate the writing in places, the effect once again consistent with feelings engendered by reflection on trips once taken. The soundworld in Double Happiness swells beyond piano to include percussion, electronics, and field recordings, which work in tandem to induce entrancement. Breathless excitement alternates with serenity in an exquisite presentation.

More enchanting still is I Will Learn to Love a Person, a set of love songs adapted from poetry by Tao Lin. Ostensibly, the texts deal with the difficulties of establishing relationships in the digital era and how inhabiting that realm brings with it feelings of loneliness, anxiety, confusion, and vulnerability. Gersten astutely observes how seamlessly the text and music combine in the opening movement “that night with the green sky,” specifically in the way the repetition of “that hurts” (from the line “why did you want me gone / that hurts”) is executed using a minor second, the effect akin to “the sonic equivalent of picking at a wound.” If it's initially jarring to hear Kesselman singing lines such as “I feel this as an extremely distinct sensation of feeling like shit,” ultimately one is swept away when the music is so graceful, the melodic lines so haunting, and the soprano's fragility so stirring. It's well nigh impossible to be unmoved by the ache in her expression when she sings “and it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough; when I cried in your room” during the third movement.

May 2021