Writing for string octet plus soloists Nate Wooley and Brian Chase, the New York composer’s work is rooted in the ways that sound absorbed by the body can both reflect and influence emotional states.
Scattered throughout the score for Jessica Pavone’s Lull are instructions to “choose independent tempo,” and “alternate freely” between set pitches. Time stamps guide each player between sections of spontaneously interpreted notes or drones; at other times, players are instructed to listen to a specific performer for a given tempo or tonal center. The violist’s work is difficult to categorize; recently she has composed primarily for orchestral instruments, especially chamber ensembles, but these types of directions in her scores allude to her background in jazz and free improvisation. Pavone has made numerous albums with guitarist Mary Halvorson and recorded extensively with avant-garde jazz icon Anthony Braxton, which just begins to scratch the surface of her involvement in New York’s creative music scene over the past decade and a half. Yet Pavone’s music, often consisting of slowly undulating tones sustained and modulated over long durations, hits the ear much differently than the chaotic ecstasy of free jazz. Instead, her compositions are wholly absorbing, sinking the listener into a nebulous pool of sound.
Lull expands upon many of the ideas Pavone has been developing on recent quartet releases Brick and Mortar and Lost and Found. The ensemble has grown to an octet—two players each on violin, viola, cello, and bass—and swells further to include soloists Nate Wooley on trumpet and percussionist Brian Chase (of Yeah Yeah Yeahs fame). In an interview with Halvorson published as she was writing the pieces that would become Lull, Pavone mentions an interest in cymatics—the study of physical shapes manifested by sound and vibration—and how sound absorbed by the body can influence and reflect emotional states. These methodological tangents encouraged her to give her collaborators more latitude to play notes and sounds that felt good to them, that literally hit their body in pleasing ways and were comfortable to play, going so far as asking both Chase and Wooley what their favorite notes were so she could compose pieces for the octet around those tones. This music is generous in the way it prioritizes the physical and emotional capacities of its performers; it is by turns gorgeous, knotty, and expressive.
Of the four pieces on Lull, “Ingot,” which features Wooley, most elegantly embodies these ideas. The trumpeter sustains a G for the nearly the entire duration of the piece, subtly adjusting its timbre using an assemblage of mutes, a sheet of aluminum, and his own voice, while the octet drones ominously beneath. Exploring the possibilities inherent in a single note has been a cornerstone of classical minimalism for over half a century, but Wooley’s masterful command of texture, coupled with the heaving waves produced by each string player’s independent tempi, produces a unique effect and intensity that grows as the piece unfolds. What begins as a tentative tremble gradually dilates and bursts into a panoply of overtones as horsehair scrapes the steel strings right where they meet the bridge.
Dissonance and chaos lurk at the edges of each piece. This might be expected of music that offers numerous freedoms to a group of eight musicians, but Pavone directly builds many of these moments into the score. “Indolent” begins with violin and viola gently overtaking one another like placid waves lapping at a shoreline, but four minutes in, each pulse becomes more biting and claustrophobic as the tonal center dissolves and pitches start to veer wildly. “Holt,” which centers on Chase’s pitched snare drum and amplified cymbal, is turbulent from the outset, the spastic snare hits augmented by violins and violas tapping the wooden side of their bows fitfully against the strings. The piece climaxes with rushes of noise as Chase bears down on the electrified cymbal.
The beauty of musical expression is the way it can harness emotions of all types and intensities, and what feels “good” to the performer can be experienced in an infinite number of ways by the listener. Pavone studied with a sound healer prior to writing the music on Lull, and although the bowls and gongs used by those practitioners are not always consonant to ears acclimated to Western scales and harmonies, they are nonetheless deeply affecting, just as this music is. The power of these pieces comes from the inherent subjectivity of sound: the vast number of ways that any given tone can be interpreted and experienced by the composer, performer, and listener. By centering the pleasure of the performer, we learn more about their personalities, preferences, and pleasures. And that knowledge, in turn, allows us to drift closer to a space of shared understanding and bliss.
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