Dan Trueman: Songs That Are Hard to Sing
New Amsterdam Records

Representative of Dan Trueman's modus operandi, Songs That Are Hard to Sing straddles early and contemporary traditions to arresting effect. On the one hand, his music's informed by the unusual timbres of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, on the other by its incorporation of digital instruments designed and constructed by him. Trueman's a composer, fiddler, and electronic musician in equal measure, with each facet critical to the work he produces. He's also a music professor at Princeton, Director of the Princeton Sound Kitchen, and co-founder of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra.

Songs That Are Hard to Sing is a particularly compelling instantiation of his music. A double-quartet piece featuring So Percussion and the JACK Quartet, the five-part work joins the many others he's composed for individual artists (singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, Irish fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, guitarist Monica Mugan) and ensembles (eighth blackbird, So Percussion). Central to the recording's ethereal soundworld are the notes produced by the bitKlavier, a prepared digital piano invented by him that makes available all possible pitches between the piano's keys, and the blend of his Hardanger fiddle with the JACK Quartet's strings. Another distinguishing aspect is the untrained voice of So Percussion member Josh Quillen, who sings during the album's fifth part. (The self-referentiality of singing about how hard songs are to sing recalls Carla Bley's hilarious “I Hate to Sing” from her 1984 album of the same name).

At the start, “Sinking Song” convincingly conveys the woozy, slow-motion impression of a boat gradually vanishing from view, the peculiar soundworld instantly capturing the ear with its microtonal merging of strings and bitKlavier; So Percussion's arsenal enhances considerably the presentation, with musical saws, steel drums, metal pipes, crotales, and blocks a sampling of the instruments utilized. While the lively “Sister Song” and “Seizing Song” are animated by rhythmic urgency and polyphonic intricacy, it's the quieter, meditative sections that are most affecting. The subdued pitch of “Summoning Song” enables the percussion instruments and quartet's strings to be heard with the utmost clarity and appreciated all the more for being so. It's “Sad Song,” however, that's most stirring. With the arrangement reduced to a skeletal core and the music unfolding at a dirge-like pace, each element resonates powerfully, from the plinking piano and percussion accents to the keening strings and aching fiddle expressions. Even better, Quillen's plainspoken delivery lends the material a humanity and charm that helps make this magnificent concluding movement so memorable.

January 2020