Mark Zaki: The Turning Frame
Composers Concordance Records

The curiously titled The Turning Frame turns out not to be so curiously titled after all, as the concept articulated for the forty-nine-minute release by violinist Mark Zaki simply has to do with the way reception of an artwork is transformed when a different vantage point's adopted. Concretely illustrating the idea is the eight-track collection he crafted in the way it straddles styles and resists associating itself too greatly with one over another. Genre lines criss-cross throughout the recording, such that at one moment it's gravitating towards chamber classical and hinting at minimalism while elsewhere it's flirting with electronic and electroacoustic forms and even perhaps prog, folk, and jazz. The album's an exposing portrait of the music Zaki's absorbed, and the music that's crystallized inside and now been externalized into physical form.

It's an adventurous and texturally expansive collection but also one that's accessible and easy to warm to, and in a smart move by the violinist a vocal setting appears midway through to break up the otherwise all-instrumental flow. Gracing “Hands Full of Air” is mezzo-soprano Mara Zaki, Mark's oldest daughter and a recent Bard College graduate whose school credits include roles in productions of Così fan tutte, Hänsel und Gretel, and others. Mark himself is no new kid in town. This Fulbright Scholar and Mellon Fellow has scored more than fifty film and media projects and seen his music presented on many a concert stage and appear on New Focus Recordings, SEAMUS Records, his own ZAKI Intermedia label, and, the label on which The Turning Frame appears, Composers Concordance. He's a multi-instrumentalist too, who in addition to violin plays viola, guitars, bass, and piano on the release.

While the melodic dimension and multi-layered arrangements engage at the surface level, there's also much going on underneath. As characterized by Mark, The Turning Frame is a probing meditation on memory and imagination that explores contrasts between extroversion and introspection, strength and fragility, and nostalgia for the past and anticipation for the future; in his own words, he aimed to create a sound world that “feels at once familiar and surprising, rooted and yet untethered”—contrasts once again. Such differences are effectively reconciled within the music, however; eschewing extreme fluctuations in tone, Zaki instead opts for smooth transitions that still touch on differences but subtly.

Emerging out of a foreboding dronescape is “Moving Parts,” which finds Zaki simulating a small string ensemble and building on the acoustic timbres with a restrained undercurrent of electronic pulsation and chiming keyboards. As the piece transitions into its second half, a rather prog-like pattern appears over which he drapes solo violin (a mirror version of sorts appears at album's end, this time titled “Parting Moves”). Perpetuating that marriage, “Nocturne Oblique” juxtaposes burbling electronic textures and the time-stretching cry of the violin, their contrast in tempi arresting and the difference in timbres ear-catching too. Hushed choral intonations form an ethereal base for strings to emote alongside during the sombre “Vespera,” with faint echoes of minimalism creeping in during the piano-centric section.

The titular piece gradually swells in intensity from its becalmed guitar-and-piano intro to something more aggressive before ceding its place to the stately “Hands Full of Air,” whose lyrics about vulnerability and the desire for acceptance are delivered affectingly by Mara and empathetically supported by piano and strings. Whereas a lilting pulse of percussion lends animation to strings and piano in "Window Without a Wall,” “Curves in Blue” achieves an even more lighthearted tone in coupling a gently shuffling groove with guitar and bass and venturing into a trippy stylistic zone bridging folk, country, and jazz. Electronic manipulations work hand-in-hand with acoustic sonorities to build soundscapes that entrance for four or five minutes at a time before bowing out and making room for the next. Violin is naturally the lead instrument, but Zaki fleshes out his arrangements with a generous array of instrument sonorities.

January 2026