Preludes, Op. 8
Release: March 1, 2018
Described as “brilliant and searching… beautiful and impassioned… lustrous at the keyboard” by The New York Times and crowned “New York’s queen of avant-garde piano” and “visionary” by The New Yorker, the celebrated pianist Lisa Moore releases a her album De La Chica: Preludes, Op. 8 on March 1st 2018. The album - produced and published by independent record label Irreverence Group Music - is the Premiere Recording of the New York based Colombian composer Julián De La Chica's Preludes Op. 8 for piano and synthesizer.
Listening to Prelude, Op. 8, No. 5
Track list:
De La Chica: 14 Preludes, Op. 8
01. No. 1
02. No. 2
03. No. 3
04. No. 4
05. No. 5
06. No. 6 (For four hands)
07. No. 7
08. No. 8
09. No. 9
10. No. 10
11. No. 11
12. No. 12
13. No. 13
14. No. 14
Bonus Track
15. Duet No. 1 (For four hands)
Album NOTES
Lisa Moore and the "Post-Minimalisms"
by Susan Campos—Fonseca
This is an album of post-minimalist Ambient music. Terms are always double-edged swords; however, they are sometimes useful to express an ethical stance in composition. The term "post-minimalism" is often used by critics in relation to the music of John Adams, and the post-1980 production of Steve Reich or Philip Glass. Also, as composer and critic Kyle Gann notes (The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music, 2013), the term is often used to describe "the later music of previously minimalist composers separated the term into post-minimal, emphasizing the connotation of post as after; those who referred to a new style by younger composers applied to it the sleeker, more unified postminimal."
However, Kyle Gann finds common characteristics among these post-minimalisms and earlier generations, stating: "I might add parenthetically that there is another repertoire of music, consisting of the 1940s music of John Cage and the later music of Lou Harrison, Alan Hovhaness, and others, so similar to 1980s postminimalism that I have sometimes jocularly referred to it as 'protopostminimalist.'" (Kyle, 2013).
Lisa Moore
Photo by Hassan Malik
The analysis that Kyle Gann applies to the "proto," "post," minimalists seems especially relevant, as it exposes how the term does not refer to a homogeneous community but rather to a diversity of technical and sonic explorations within this aesthetic. Even without necessarily understanding themselves as "minimalists," significant examples are found in Ambient and electronic music, in the work of Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, King Tubby, among others.
Lisa Moore has dedicated a significant part of her discography to the technical and sonic exploration offered by composers whose work could be understood as experimental music, sharing the exploration of compositional techniques identified with minimalism, post-minimalism, Ambient, and electronic music. Examples of this include her albums "Doble Sextet / Radio ReWrite," "Music for 18 Musicians," and "City Live" by Steve Reich (with Ensemble Signal); "The Stone People" with music by John Adams, Martin Bresnick, Julia Wolfe, Missy Mazzoli, and Kate Moore; Philip Glass's "Mad Rush," Lisa Moore Solo Piano; Brian Eno's "Music for Airports"; Annie Gosfield's "Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers"; David Lang's "Untitled" and "Elevated"; Julia Wolfe's "Dark Full Ride"; Philip Glass's "Music In Fifths / Two Pages"; Terry Riley's "In C"; and the list continues to grow by adding this album dedicated to the Op. 8 Preludes for piano and synthesizer by Colombian composer Julián De La Chica (1982).
These 14 preludes are an example of the "sensory minimalism" practiced by the composer, whose roots can be found in two previous albums: Nocturnal & Circular Images Op. 5 for piano (performed by the composer himself) and Experimentelle und unbestimmte Lieder Op. 9 for soprano, piano, and synthesizer (recorded by American soprano Rachel Hippert). From these productions, the organic work of the composer can be understood, from post-minimalism towards Ambient.
Lisa Moore and Piano Research
Lisa Moore's repertoire includes a wide range of piano literature, in which experimental music, minimalism, and post-minimalism play a significant role, as demonstrated by her discography. However, it is not my intention to reduce her pianistic contribution to this repertoire. Lisa Moore represents a new pianistic school that challenges itself, considering virtuosity as a technical investigation guided by sonic exploration. The repertoire, ultimately, is a path to shape the body and listening of the pianist, evolving alongside the sonic creation of its time. It can be argued that each era generates new bodies, and music is a reflection of that.
Every new school exists because it engages with a tradition. The Italian pianist and musicologist Luca Chiantore reminds us, for example, that "The modernity of Beethoven's research must be sought in what the score does not say: it is a reflection that speaks to us of the physiological components of performance, of the balances of forces that the performer establishes with the keyboard, something that can also occur on pages of great simplicity." (Beethoven at the Piano, 2010). Without historical hesitation, I dare say that, like Beethoven, Lisa Moore is an example of a pianist who investigates and creates.
Colombian anthropologist Ana María Arango calls this "sonorous-corporeal thinking" (Practices and sonorous-corporeal knowledge of early childhood in the Afro-Chocoan population, 2014), referring to the music (songs, dances) with which our mothers build our bodies from early childhood. This approach opens up the possibility of thinking about diversity from different bodies and cultures, something that music conservatories seek to reduce, perpetuating disciplined bodies based on homogeneous models constructed by specific repertoires. Lisa Moore's piano research and her continuous exploration beyond the margins imposed by these models offer the opportunity to consider, as Luca Chiantore suggests, to what extent the modernity of research must be sought in what the score does not say, and how the physiological components of performance determine that modernity.
Julián De La Chica
Photo by Hassan Malik
Decolonizing Post—Minimalism, Why?
Julián De La Chica's Op. 8 Preludes for piano and synthesizer were composed in New York City between 2015 and 2017. Regarding these works, the composer comments, "The Cycle Op. 8 is a process that improvises the image that is not there. The hidden image that creates emotion, truth, and reality. 'The preludes' explore the other virtue ... the virtue of sound. What lays behind, what we do not see." The composer proposes a dialogue with the piano research that Lisa Moore's sonorous-corporeal thinking represents.
However, when it comes to post-minimalism, the presence of Latin American composers is minimal, and those working in this aesthetic in Latin America are considered unrepresentative, as their music is not deemed "sufficiently ethnic." Nevertheless, minimalists, post-minimalists, and Ambient composers have not denied that their own technical and sonic exploration owes much to their study of non-Western sonic traditions. This has sparked a debate about innovation processes based on taking ideas from other traditions not linked to Western musical thought models, applying them to these models with the aim of renewing them. Uruguayan composer Coriún Aharonián (1940-2017) was particularly critical of these procedures, arguing that they perpetuated the colonialism of Western music.
Lisa Moore & Julián De La Chica
Photo by Hassan Malik
Is it possible to decolonize minimalism? I mean, is it possible to decolonize "avant-garde music"? I ask this because if Lisa Moore constructs new paradigms with her performances, what implications can it have that she records an album with works that could be considered post-minimalist and Ambient by a Colombian composer like Julián De La Chica? Are the power axes determining the inheritances and traditions of Western music questioned here?
You may wonder, what does that mean? The answer is simple. The second half of the 20th century, with the post-war period, shattered the axes that sustained the historiographical myth that the tradition and avant-garde of Western music were constructed in a single direction: from Europe to the rest of the world. Revolutions and struggles for civil rights exposed and confronted the repressive system and violence that sustained this myth.
Latin American philosophy also stood up to this demand; decolonial thinking is an example of this, critically analyzing the colonial power matrix that, in global capitalism, persists under forms of totalizing knowledge that reaffirm the dominator-dominated binary. Music is not exempt from these processes; it can even be asserted that the concept of "Music" is a colonizing tool, from which non-Western sonic traditions were dominated, imposing a unique writing and listening as universal.
Lisa Moore demonstrates with this album that decolonizing minimalism is possible, considering it as an ethic and an aesthetics that surpasses geopolitical boundaries. In summary, what the score does not say materializes in Lisa Moore's sonorous-corporeal thinking as a pianist, inviting us to listen to the post-national times in which we live.
Susan Campos-Fonseca, PhD
Composer and Musicologist
About the author
Campos-Fonseca holds a Ph.D. in music from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Spain. Master in Spanish and Latin American Philosophy from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), and graduated in Conducting by the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR). She is a composer and musicologist whose research focuses on philosophy of culture and technology, feminism, decolonial studies, electronic art and sound studies.