A Major Kyle Gann Moment Afoot?

Alex Ross has posted an intriguing list of the best albums of 2005. Good to see Nude Rolling Down An Escalator on there.  This CD has made excited rounds amongst TBP and our circle. I liked it so much that I reviewed for DownBeat, and it just came out in the December issue.

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Kyle Gann is best known as a critic who has supported the Downtown school of young, post-minimalist composers in the pages of the Village Voice for the past twenty years.  Just about anyone involved in contemporary classical music in New York City has crossed either paths or swords with Gann, since his opinions are impassioned and occasionally a little scandalous.  The surprising truth is that Gann is even more important as a composer than as a critic.

This jaw-dropping CD documents music written for the Disklavier, which is like a 21st century player piano that uses MIDI instead of a roll.  (More about the Disklavier and some of the scores are at kylegann.com.) As in Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano music, the instrument has a metallic, brittle timbre.  This sonority may become tiring in long stretches, but in small doses this CD is exhilarating, blowing apart preconceptions with such good-natured devilishness that the only response is a kind of horrified awe.

The compositions are all studies in rhythm, counterpoint and style.  Jazz musicians simply must hear “Texarkana” and “Bud Ran Back Out.” The former is a rag gone haywire, churning with supreme nonchalance under the disquieting tyranny of a 29 to 13 polyrhythm.  The latter is an astounding tribute to Bud Powell.  (It’s troubling how a classical composer glosses the Powell style so well, but Gann did study with an excellent jazz pianist, John Esposito.)   “Cosmic Boogie-Woogie” is an exotic scale layering exercise that makes Lennie Tristano’s “Turkish Mambo” seem naïve, and the long, lovely “Unquiet Night” features sophisticated harmony waxing and waning in polyrhythmic splendor. There are also maniacal Beethoven and Chopin tributes that made me laugh out loud.

Although it would be absurd to say any of this music swings or grooves in a normal human sense, the endless manipulation of time gives the computer some remarkable depth of feeling (try “Tango Da Chiesa”). The future beckons.

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Gann is also a dedicated blogger.