Gity Razaz: The Strange Highway
BIS Records

The Strange Highway offers an enticing gateway into composer Gity Razaz's world. Born in Tehran in 1986 and currently living in New York, she possesses an idiosyncratic artistic sensibility that the fifty-five-minute debut documents in five pieces. In addition to the impressive calibre of musicianship displayed by its performers, the project's effectiveness is bolstered by the dramatic contrast between solo and ensemble settings, plus track sequencing that sees intimate chamber works framed by larger-scaled orchestral treatments. To that end, Razaz's vision has been well-served by All-American Cello Band, violinist Francesca dePasquale, pianist Scott Cuellar, cellist Inbal Segev, violist Katharina Kang Litton, and Metropolis Ensemble. In featuring material composed over a fifteen-year span, the release also provides a compelling overview.

Razaz, who came to the United States in 2002 and attended The Juilliard School, benefited from the teachings of Samuel Adler, Robert Beaser, and John Corigliano. Under their tutelage, she developed the ability to translate into musical form personal experiences as an immigrant and as someone uprooting herself and forming a new identity in a new land. That one piece is called The Strange Highway and another explores metamorphosis is surely no coincidence, such titling alluding to the transformative quality in her writing.

Its title inspired by a poem from the late Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño, The Strange Highway inaugurates the album with a ten-minute setting scored for cello octet and performed by the aptly named All-American Cello Band. Razaz was struck by the aura of desolation and vulnerability suggested by the poem's imagery and aimed to distill those emotions into a contrapuntal arrangement featuring savagely aggressive and mournful, melismatic episodes. The cello, of course, offers the ideal vehicle for expressing vocal-like lamentation, and Razaz exploits that potential powerfully; as lyrical, haunting, and plaintive as such passages are, however, as much concentration is given to fury in this impassioned live performance captured at the third Amsterdam Cello Biennale, the site of the work's première. Cuellar and dePasquale then pair for Razaz's Duo for violin and piano, which probingly examines through two parts a single melody that after its initial dance-like voicing by violin is splintered, fragmented, and transformed. Even in this more intimate presentation, tension is abundant in the aggressiveness with which the material is attacked by the duo, though again such gestures are offset by gentler ones suggestive of nachtmusik.

Interestingly, the album's longest piece—nineteen minutes—features a single performer, cellist Segev, though Legend of Sigh, an audacious two-movement retelling of an Azerbaijani folktale having to do with birth, transformation, and death, is scored for standard cello, pre-recorded cello, and electronics. With such resources in play, Segev's playing at times begins to resemble that of the opening octet's. It's an incredible realization by the cellist, and calling it a tour-de-force isn't overstating it. In Razaz's adapted treatment of the tale, the protagonist is a widow who, though wealthy and admired, suffers from isolation and loneliness. Aided by a mysterious being, the woman transforms into the body of another to experience life anew, only to be disappointed again. The cycle repeats throughout the story, with the widow acquiring deeper understanding of the human spirit as she transforms. Sonically, the vibrato-heavy cry of the lead cello appears against an ever-mutating backdrop of electronic percussive textures, glimmering bell tones, and other cellos. Brief electronic flourishes could be taken to signify moments of transformation, but the piece needn't be broached programmatically for it be enjoyed and appreciated. That it was written for and commissioned by the cellist doesn't surprise when her connection to the material is so seamless and Segev's performance so gripping.

Scored for solo viola, Spellbound is also credited to a single musician, in this case Litton, who uses her formidable technique to convey the mournful sound of traditional Persian music. Presented in the form of a deeply focused meditation, the piece plays like an extended improvisation in Litton's hands, despite being formally notated. Shifting away from the intimacy of the solo performance, the album concludes with Metamorphosis of Narcissus, a piece scored for chamber orchestra and fixed electronics and performed by Metropolis Ensemble with Andrew Cyr conducting. Recorded live at (Le) Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village, Razaz's 2011 composition was inspired by the Dali painting of the same name and the well-known myth about Narcissus, the being so enraptured by his own reflection he turned into a flower. With electronic textures part of the electroacoustic mix, the material takes on a dreamlike, even woozy quality, though voicings by individual players stabilize the performance. Snatches of clarinet, violin, oboe, harp, and piano intermingle as the piece advances, with all of the elements forming an intricate web.

Such complex constellations as the five presented on the album are perhaps to be expected from someone who sees herself as both American and Iranian. As Corigliano has astutely noted of Razaz, “her Middle Eastern roots have merged with her Western sensibilities to produce music that is both original and startling.” On both counts, he's correct.

October 2022