- piano music
- Horowitz
- Stephanie Fleischmann
- Alfvén: Swedish Rhapsody No 2
- Vaughan Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem
- Cláudio Santoro: Symphony No 7 'Brasília'
- Eric Whitacre: The Seal Lullaby
- Scheherezade
The Composer as Social Researcher
JOHN DANTE PREVEDINI listens to music by the Daniel Pelton Collective
'... a successful investigation into the perennial question of classical music's broader accessibility ...'
The Establishment Sessions is the recent self-released digital album by the Daniel Pelton Collective of chamber music composed and arranged by the group's leader, Calgary-based composer and saxophonist Daniel Pelton. Pelton has been recognized for his initiative in helping revitalize the city's community music life during the height of the COVID crisis from 2020 to 2021, a task he undertook as that year's Composer in Residence of the Calgary Public Library. That project resulted in the Collective's first album, The Gold Coin Sessions, which was released in January 2022.
This year's follow-up release is the result of a concert which took place in February 2022, in partnership with the Kensington Sinfonia, at The Establishment Brewing Company. Pelton's goal as stated in the album's supplemental materials, to 'bridge the gap between the world of Classical music and bar crowds', resulted in a novel classical-crossover concert program that eventually earned the support of the Canada Council of the Arts to be recorded as this studio release.
The half-hour album consists of five single-movement works, for string quintet plus percussion and alto saxophone, which showcase the breadth of Pelton's crossover approach. The first piece, Moving On, opens at a medium tempo with a highly ostinato sax solo and proceeds in a blend of quadruple and asymmetric meters. Allusions to various popular and folk styles are apparent, though the music maintains a consistent precision and deliberateness of orchestration that is essentially classical in its architecture. This balance between stylistic influences is something which audibly underpins the structure of the remaining music on the album as well.
Listen — Daniel Pelton: Moving On
(198026643445 track 1, 0:00-0:29) ℗ 2024 Daniel Pelton :
The second track, I Don't Have to Go to School Tomorrow, is effectively an extended chaconne on the bass line of I Don't Wanna Go to School Tomorrow, a composition co-written several years ago by Pelton for his fusion jazz band Long Time No Time. Despite the similarities in title and harmonic structure, however, the two pieces remain highly distinct in texture, tempo and overall aesthetic.
Listen — Daniel Pelton: I Don't Have to Go to School Tomorrow
(198026643445 track 2, 0:22-0:49) ℗ 2024 Daniel Pelton :
The third piece, TBD, is a fast-tempo composition featuring a staccato theme on sax alternating with call-and-response exchanges between sax and individual string players among several quotations from the third Bach Brandenburg Concerto.
Listen — Daniel Pelton: TBD
(198026643445 track 3, 0:00-0:29) ℗ 2024 Daniel Pelton :
The final two pieces are arrangements by Pelton of preexisting work, specifically the traditional sea shanty Drunken Sailor and Frank Zappa's Watermelon in Easter Hay. For the former, Pelton adds intricate string and percussion accompaniment to the original tune, which he sings himself in the album's only track to feature vocals. He also includes an elaborate sax descant melody over the main tune, incorporates recorded sound effects relating to the sea and alternates sung verses with instrumental interludes showcasing variations on the main melody.
For the Zappa arrangement, Pelton keeps the tempo and dynamics faithful to the original while adding slow jazz percussion and orchestrating the string section with a pandiatonicism that might strike some listeners as Copland-esque. Here, the material from Zappa's guitar solo is distributed among the various instruments, reflecting a use of timbral diversity that is similar to the original while still separate from it. It is perhaps appropriate that Pelton makes a conscious effort to pay tribute to Zappa on the closing track of this album, as both composers share a kinship in their surprisingly rare goal of seamlessly uniting classical and popular idioms on such a regular basis in their work.
In summary, The Establishment Sessions is a demonstration of the composer as a social researcher. It is a document illustrating a successful investigation into the perennial question of classical music's broader accessibility, executed through product development and testing with support at both the local and national level. From the stated objective of the original February 2022 concert and its repertoire development to its ultimate reception and the subsequent studio album funding, the entire project shows a concrete action taken by a living composer to address this common source of anxiety in our field. While Pelton's particular approach for a Calgary brewery obviously might differ from what is called for by other specific audiences worldwide, I maintain that his methodology nonetheless bears study by composers, ensembles and venues sharing his goal of understanding and reaching new listeners.
Copyright © 16 September 2024
John Dante Prevedini,
Connecticut, USA
