Sid Richardson: Borne by a Wind
New Focus Recordings

Borne by a Wind, the debut recording by Sid Richardson (b. 1987), provides an engaging account of the Boston-born composer's interests. Dominating the release is a five-movement collaboration with poet Nathaniel Mackey, but the three others, chamber works respectively performed by pianist Conrad Tao, violinist Lilit Hartunian, and the Da Capo Chamber Players, are no less deserving of attention. Like many a contemporary composer, Richardson isn't averse to letting elements of popular and non-classical genres seep into his writing. Eschewing membership in any one prescriptive ‘school,' he's instead someone more inclined to use whatever's needed to bring expression to a particular idea.

Though Richardson is a faculty member with the New England Conservatory of Music in North Carolina, the fifty-five-minute release was recorded at Baldwin Auditorium at Duke University, where he completed his doctoral degree. A strong literary dimension permeates his writing, with inspiration drawn from figures such as Beckett, Chaucer, Longfellow, Keats, and Rimbaud. That interest literally arises in Red Wind, which incorporates the sound of Mackey reciting excerpts from his poetry collection Blue Fasa. The work's title, incidentally, derives from one of the poems in the collection, “Hofriyati Head Opening,” the Hofriyati being villagers in the north of Sudan who harbour a belief in a red wind that afflicts possessed persons and that can be alleviated through a series of rituals.

The narrator's accompanied by seven others for the 2017 work, with soprano Mellissa Hughes and five instrumentalists conducted by Brad Balliett. It's a stylistically sprawling creation that's never less than stimulating, especially when Hughes' at times rhapsodic delivery forms a dramatic contrast to Mackey's measured elocution. While the instrumental resources—percussion, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and bass—are modest, the musical tapestry is abundant in texture and timbre. Hughes' singing ensures the work retains a classical tie, but the material otherwise leans in the direction of explorative jazz, its tone reminiscent of a small group backing a spoken word poet in a dimly lit nightclub.

The opening “A Night in Jaipur” is compelling for a number of reasons, among them Hughes' whooping and the dazed, incantatory tone. Mackey's wordplay captivates during the spoken word passages, which gain force from the instrumental backdrop. Whereas a strong jazz influence pervades “Head Opening” when the musicians adopt a loose style far removed from classical writing per se, things take a noticeably bluesier turn for “Anabatic Jukebox” with trumpeter Tim Leopold blowing against a slow shuffle and bass clarinetist Bill Kalinkos and trombonist Mike Lormand joining him for a sensual Bossa Nova episode.

Vastly unlike Red Wind in presentation are the three pieces that follow, the first, 2016's There is no sleep so deep, performed by pianist Tao. Written as a musical eulogy for Richardson's grandmother and inspired by Samuel Beckett's play Footfalls, the five-minute setting alternates between episodes of near-stasis and rapid tumult—a work both peaceful and turbulent. The Astrolabe (2014), recorded by the Da Capo Chamber Players and incorporating shouted fragments taken from Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe and Walt Whitman's “Kosmos” (from Leaves of Grass), concludes the recording on a chamber music note, the character of Richardson's ritualistic writing as starry-eyed and mystical as the astrolabe itself, an ancient astronomical device intended as a handheld model of the universe.

March 2021