Lee Hyla

August 8 - 15, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

*** Lee Hyla

WE SPEAK ETRUSCAN

(New World)
Lee Hyla may be the best crossover composer ever. That isn't faint praise, since American composers have been trying to reconcile pop music with the classical tradition at least since Ives. The title piece here is a duet for bass clarinet and baritone sax, alternately raucous and strangely tender. It gets a take-no-prisoners performance by Tim Smith and Tim Berne. Pre-Pulsed Suspended, for chamber orchestra (played by new-music honchos Speculum Musicae conducted by Donald Palma), is like free-jazz improvisation made into a solidly constructed piece of music. It's full of honks and crashes, but fashioned so elegantly that every honk seems the best possible honk for that moment, and the sighs are heartbreaking. This piece has been something like a cult item among new-music fans for more than 10 years; it alone is worth the price of the disc.
Boston's Lydian String Quartet gives Hyla's second and third quartets performances of terrific emotional range and sonorous quality. Hyla's string-quartet writing is more personal than the sort associated with the Kronos; he finds a surprising and satisfying affinity between Slavic cantillation and blues licks out of Booker T. and the MG's. The result is either the most down-and-dirty music of any university-trained composer or the classiest punk jazz ever to come from a New York cellar. It may be both.
-- Scott Wheeler