Moving Parts: Album Artwork for Lakeshore Rush
On May 9th chamber music ensemble Lakeshore Rush released their debut recording titled Moving Parts. My drawing Higgs Boson Study was selected for the album’s cover. The image references the Higgs boson, an invisible energy field present throughout the universe that imbues other particles with mass. In 2012 the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland proved the existence of the Higgs particle. It was discovered by smashing photons and lead ions together to discover smaller particles. Since 1964 it has been a theoretical class of subatomic particles in the Standard Model of physics. It represents centuries of human thought and an exploratory path that leads us towards new horizons. It’s a fitting image for this ensemble’s exploration of new music.
The album includes performances from the group’s live concerts as well as several studio recordings. Focusing on new music, they present an array of styles within the contemporary chamber music genre. Eight of the composers are American, seven are living, and the works by Jonathan Hannau and Pierre Jalbert were commissioned by Lakeshore Rush. The works by Philip Glass and Bill Ryan are the ensemble's creative reinterpretations of pieces that have entered the contemporary cannon, and the Radiohead is an arrangement commissioned and performed exclusively by Lakeshore Rush.
Here are a couple of my favorite videos of the ensemble:
You can find their music on YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Amazon, and at Albany Records.
Higgs Boson Study, charcoal and graphite on paper, 5 x 7 in, 2021.
Moving Parts: Album Notes
This recording marks the debut full-length audio publication by Lakeshore Rush, a chamber music ensemble based in Chicago. Moving Parts consists of live recordings from our previous concert seasons, as well as a collection of studio recordings. The composers represented on the album include a vast array of musicians, whose pieces span several styles within the contemporary chamber music genre. Eight of the composers are American with two representing Brazil and Germany, and seven are living composers. Jalbert and Hannau’s compositions were both commissioned by Lakeshore Rush, who gave the Chicago and world premieres respectively. Composed in 1993, the release of two movements from Vivian Fine’s Canticles from the Other Side of the River will be the first studio recording made available to the public.
The Glass and Ryan are the ensemble’s creative reinterpretations of pieces that have entered the contemporary cannon, and the Radiohead is an arrangement commissioned and performed exclusively by the group. By providing listeners with a diverse array of works, we seek to bring classical contemporary music to new audiences.
A flexible ensemble, Lakeshore Rush consists of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion. We frequently perform together as a sextet, but also provide timbre and style variation with smaller groups gleaned from our instrumentation. Since our studio recording, we have added saxophonist Amos Gillespie as our seventh ensemble member, who also serves as the ensemble’s Composer-in-Residence. Half of the pieces on the album include the full ensemble, while the others are duos, trios, and quartets.
American composer and pianist Philip Glass (b. 1937) composed Glassworks in 1981 as a commission for CBS Records. The six movement work totals forty minutes, however, individual movements were also intended to be performed separately. A nod to many of our ensemble musicians’ humorous and playful sides, Lakeshore Rush has programmed the No. 6 Closing movement on several concerts, often preferring to begin a program with it. Originally scored for flute, clarinet, French horn, viola, cello, and piano, we adapted it for our instrumentation by swapping in violin, saxophone, and percussion.
Grammy award-winning American composer Mason Bates (b. 1977) composed Life of Birds in 2008 for the Seattle Chamber Players. This piece is a charming collection of miniatures that explores different aspects of an aviary. We programmed this piece several times during our first season as an ensemble, and chose to use the first movement of this work, Moving Parts, as our album title, as the sentiment captures the excitement and challenges of performing as an ensemble without a conductor.
Vivian Fine (1913-2000) composed Canticles for Jerusalem, a song cycle for soprano and piano, in 1983. She later changed the movement order and instrumentation to create her second to last composition titled Canticles from the Other Side of the River (1993). Her daughter, Peggy Karp, poses the piece as a sound portrait of quite literally “the other side of the river” or the afterlife. The work is written for Pierrot plus percussion ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion) and was premiered by the New York Music Ensemble in 1994.
Comprised of four movements, Karp refers to this work as “melancholy” and “a remarkable piece in the greater context of her life.” Fine was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1986, but continued doing well for several years and kept composing as long as she was able. The movement tempi of this work perhaps references nearing the end of her life, and the slowing down of her creative output: Lento malinconico, Lento, Joyous, and Lento. An intriguing piece totaling about sixteen minutes, it represents a rewardingly complex chamber work for our full instrumentation.
Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano (1996) by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007) was written for the Verdehr Trio, an ensemble in residence at Michigan State University for forty-three years. Menotti studied at the Curtis Institute and is most well-known for his operas, of which he wrote twenty-five. This work is an example of a piece written for a seemingly non-traditional chamber trio that through many commissions has created a new mainstream classical genre. Romanza is a forlorn, lyrical second movement, and was the first movement Menotti wrote, premiered along with the first movement, at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.
Pierre Jalbert (b. 1967) was commissioned by the Flute Clarinet Duos Consortium to compose Triple Set in 2015. Lakeshore Rush was a member of the seventeen-member consortium, and happily gave the Chicago premiere in December 2016 at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago. Flutist Leone Buyse and clarinetist Michael Webster, Jalbert’s colleagues at Rice University, convinced him to write the piece. Driving is a thrilling first movement that features the flute and clarinet beginning in rhythmic unison, then taking turns with solos that are juxtaposed by syncopated accompaniment by the other instruments. The second movement, Still, has the marking “Timeless” and very slowly reveals its musical ideas. The last movement, Relentless, acts as a quick 6/8 scherzo that drives persistently to the end of the piece, being only interrupted briefly by cadenza-like passages between the flute and clarinet duo.
German Romantic composer Max Bruch (1838-1920) wrote over 200 works and his Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola (Violoncello), and Piano (1910) was written for his son Max Felix, a theory instructor and clarinetist at the toy piano, and glockenspiel. Hannau was up to the challenge and produced this set of intriguing miniatures. Before the world premiere at the New Music School in downtown Chicago, he wrote, “To keep to the idea of miniatures I will keep these program notes at a small scale as well (harhar). To put it simply, Isolated Houses is inspired by images of tiny little homes alone in vast landscapes taken over by nature. There was something beautiful and tranquil but also slightly unsettling about these small cottages and I set out to portray them accordingly. Each movement utilizes certain sounds that attempt to evoke these images, and although much of it is calm throughout, there is always an underlying strain in the music...” He provided us with the images that inspired this work, which we projected during our live performances.
Chicago composer Beth Bradfish (b. 1948) wrote Curved Silence for our ensemble to premiere as part of our collaboration with the Chicago Composers’ Consortium. We performed the work at Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall in 2018, and Bradfish later contacted us to studio record her piece. Curved Silence was inspired by painter Anna Kunz’s watercolor Scores, and is Bradfish’s synesthetic response to the work. Our recording was then used as part of an art installation at Chicago’s Cultural Center where a visitor could sit in an electrified chair and feel the vibrations of the sound waves while listening to her composition. During the summer of 2021, we commissioned videographers to create a music video using this work, which will be released on digital platforms in 2022.
Composer, conductor, producer, and educator Bill Ryan (b. 1968) is a professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Ryan composed Blurred in 2003, and the ensemble has adapted this work for our flexible and changing instrumentation. We have performed it both with a standard Pierrot plus percussion ensemble, and also with the addition of saxophone. All musicians read off of the piano score, and take turns improvising over the pianist’s incessant line. Minimalistic ostinato gestures pervade this exciting work that both washes over and draws the listener in.
Videotape was written in 2007 by Radiohead and arranged by our first percussionist Dane Crozier for our ensemble in 2015. The original work was released on the album In Rainbows as the last track, clocking in at ten minutes. Our abridged version preserves the intoxicating syncopated rhythms, plaintive clarinet melody as the “voice” of Thom Yorke, and supportive harmonic texture provided by the rest of the ensemble. Many of our ensemble members and fans have an appreciation of Radiohead’s music, and we have enjoyed adding this cover to our performances over the years.
We hope this recording provides listeners with a unique experience and introduces the public to new music in both accessible and joyful ways.
— Erin K. Murphy