Customer Reviews

"Daugherty: Fire & Blood - Motorcity Triptych; Raise the Roof"

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I knew Michael Daugherty's music from his 2007 piece Deus ex Machina for Piano & Orchestra (on a 2009 Naxos CD). I like to keep in touch with musical depictions of trains, and this piece really impressed me. I thought it was worthy to stand beside the Little Train movement of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras #2, as well as Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231. Daugherty paints vivid pictures and communicates exciting ideas of movement that are layered with additional insights into a surprising range of ideas from futurism to ghosts to nostalgia for a by-gone era.

The same dynamic takes place in this new disc of three works by Daugherty that were commissioned during his period as Composer-in-Residence with the Detroit Symphony. Fire and Blood (2003) is a full-blown violin concerto that begins with a depiction of Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals, as well as scenes from his life, and that of his remarkable wife Frida Kahlo. A highlight is the third movement "Assembly Line", where Daugherty says (in his revealing liner notes) the violin soloist "is like the worker, surrounded by a mechanical orchestra." This is a work that deserves to be taken up by other orchestras; perhaps the excellent soloist on this CD, Ida Kavafian, will take it on the road, or it will be picked up by one or more of the next generation of violinists.

The MotorCity Triptych (2000) is another fun piece by Daugherty which also has a more serious side. This is especially true of the third movement "Rosa Parks Boulevard", with its evocation of African-American preaching through the use of percussion and two trombones. Daugherty calls Raise the Roof (2003) "a grand acoustic construction". I'm sure every timpanist in the world is itching to play this piece. But only a few will have as impressive an orchestra to play in front of as timpanist Brian Jones has in the Detroit Symphony under Neeme Jarvi.

So buy the CD for the fun and fireworks, but stick around and listen three or four times, for some real and profound ideas.

Recently, I was reading an article in the Finnish Music Quarterly about composer Kalevi Aho. In the article Aho mentions a criticism that was made of his music by an Austrian journalist who accused Aho's music of being "not dehumanized enough." My complaint about much contemporary music is the opposite, it's too dehumanized. I shun the over-intellectualization of music, loathe works that sound like they were composed with an abacus and notated in battery acid. Thankfully the three works on this fantastic recording of music by Michael Daugherty are filled with passion, wit and drama to spare.

Fire and Blood is a full-blooded, knock your socks off violin concerto that makes pressing technical demands of the soloist but never descends to the level of an empty-headed violin showpiece. The work draws its inspiration from the Detroit Industry murals by the great Mexican artist Diego Rivera and the color and energy that Rivera brought to his art is reflected in the music. Violinist Ida Kavafian plays this music with muscle aplenty and the Detroit Symphony under conductor Neeme Järvi is nothing short of spectacular.

The other works on the recording, Motor City Triptych and Raise the Roof, are also superb. Motor City Triptych is a brilliantly jaunty evocative piece which pays tribute to the Motown sound, Michigan Avenue in Detroit and Rosa Parks. This seems like something of an odd mix but Daugherty's vivid orchestration and rhythmic skill make each movement a memorable tone poem. Brass lovers take note, there's plenty of interesting work for trumpet and trombone throughout. Raise the Roof is a concerto for timpani and orchestra and was inspired by such grand architectural wonders as Notre Dame Cathedral and the Empire State Building. The work offers the timpanist an opportunity to play some melody and even stretch out with a showpiece cadenza. Once again Daugherty pushes hard and the effect is thrilling. This is an essential recording for anybody who cares about the current state of American music - it's very encouraging indeed.

Michael Daughertys' " Fire and Blood " evokes a crescendo of praise! Superb, imaginative, and incurably intertaining with considerable skill of orchestration and arrangement and with my highest recommendation.

" Volcano " frolics with violin successions of blazing interludes, captivating attention through the inferno furnaces of the imagination.
In " River Rouge " Frida Kahlo's struggle to overcome rivers of pain expresses a tantalizing larger movement of forceful emotions with her desire for the fullness of life. The violinist lends form and grace with colored calmative tones. The music forces its way into the listeners soul.
" Assembly Line " dramatizes the exhausting pace of a worker mechanically driven like the panels in Riveras' mural. Metal instruments echo a factory environment, while the violin strings converge to evoke a riveting motion toward the end.

MotorCity Triptych
In " Motown Mondays " we feel the soul in rhythm with manifestations of mellow climes of feeling and musical intruments orchestrating harmonies of emotion.
" Pedal to the Metal " is an electric, pulsating succession of trumpet and strings traveling through gradations of light, like the neon signs along an assembly line.
" Rosa Parks Blvd " encumbers movements of defiant strength and soul, reflecting her refusal to move to the back of the bus, subversively heartfelt and rhythmically played by the trombone, spiked by the beating of the bass drum.
" Raise the Roof " In this piece, the composer used many unusual instruments to resonate with historical monuments. Vividly played, the tuba, flutes and finally variations of the timpani acoustically rise to the majestic architecture with gothic undertones celebrating the renowned giants of construction.

K Jordan USA

Any classical work that tributes Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera, Motown Records, and Rosa Parks has my complete attention!

With these three pieces, iconoclastic composer Michael Daugherty once again expands the musical and cultural palette with excellent results.

"Fire and Blood" is a triptych framing the auto industrial years of Detroit through the perspectives of activist artists Rivera and Kahlo. "I: Volcano" refers to Rivera's sociopolitical passion and the molten furnaces of the Ford factories he exalted in his 30's murals. Daugherty excels at landscape music, whether evoking a period, a movement, or an individual spirit. Driving and dynamic momentum themes alternate here with more personal and introspective moments, a roiling current of the machines and the painter's ideas about them. In "II: River Rouge", this approach really comes to fruition. Dissonant themes evoke Frida's physical and emotional pain in this era, while poignant melodies suggest the rich life of her memories and works. The use of marimbas, delicate folk melodies on strings, and elegant Mexican trumpets in the middle passages is especially beautiful and haunting. "III: Assembly Line" is man and machine in concert at a breathless, breadthless pace. The worker -conveyed by violinest Ida Kavafian with virtuostic gusto- is the crest of a wave of pizzicato drive and industrial percussion.

The second work, "Motorcity Triptych", explores more of the Detroit historical landscape. The legendary Motown Records often used Detroit Symphony players in its string arrangements; in "Motown Mondays" Daugherty repays this in generous kind with a complex, upbeat, and rousing Classical tribute. Rather than simply mimic their Pop string arrangements, he instead uses strings to evoke the vocal timbres, anthemic dynamics, and romantic spirit of the Motown singers and players. It's like an epic suite of the feeling of Marvin singing more than the song he sang, and more akin to producer Norman Whitfield's textured extravaganzas of later years. (You can hear hints of The Temptations' "Runaway Child, Running Wild" if you're careful. One wonders how brilliantly Daugherty would interpret Marvin Gaye's majestic "What's going On?" album someday.) "II: Pedal-to-the-Medal" is a travelogue of the new car hitting the town. The use of declarative trumpet and hard-driving strings is particularly powerful in a piece as bracing as it is complex. In "III: Rosa Parks," our progressive hero gets her due in a stunning tribute. Rosa, who lived for many years in Detroit, had told Daugherty that her favorite music was the spiritual, "Oh Freedom". He works its essence around trombone leads that emulate the emotional crescendos of impassioned preachers. Its counter-mix of cacophonic irritation and elegant hope perfectly sums the conflict of blind repression versus spiritual freedom. Splendid.

Finally, "Raise the Roof" does just that. Daugherty conjures up the raising of grand buildings with an intricate architecture of tympani and strings. Industrial percussion girds the colossus, while a dizzying array of string motifs catapult its ascent. When the live audience hits their feet with cheers at the end, you're right there with them.

For the past several years, Naxos has arguably brought to market the largest and strongest collection of recordings of music by American composers through its continuing American Classics catalog. Among the several hundred discs, featuring well-known to almost unknown composers, you will find two CD's featuring music by the internationally renowned American composer Michael Daugherty.

Michael Daugherty has the rare distinction of being one of the most commissioned, performed, and recorded American composers on the American concert scene today, achieving strong success alongside contemporaries such as Jennifer Higdon and Michael Torke. Included on Daugherty's new, second disc, are three well-crafted works that were commissioned, premiered, and recorded by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra between 2000-2003, under the baton of Neeme Järvi, with one featuring violin soloist Ida Kavafian.

At the forefront of the CD is Fire and Blood (2003) for violin and orchestra, a three-part concerto that is sure to become a modern classical violin sensation. Inspired by Diego Rivera's extraordinary Detroit Industry murals, Fire and Blood draws on inspiration from Rivera's Mexican heritage (Volcano), the life and work of his famous artist wife, Frida Kahlo (River Rouge), and the melding of art-and-industry drawn from Diego's murals (Assembly Line). To describe it briefly, the piece is very artfully composed with virtuosic fireworks and colorful orchestrations, featuring twisted and pulsating rhythms, passionate and emotional quotes from folk material, all vividly painted for the ears from start to finish. The solo part is obviously, fiendishly difficult for the soloist, and Ms. Kavafian performs the work with all the potential flame and plasma a violinist could possibly pull from its score.

The second piece is MotorCity Triptych (2000), a suite of three tone poems inspired by the history and heritage of Detroit, including Motown Mondays, Pedal-to-the-Metal, and Rosa Parks Boulevard. All three are deliciously fun pieces, well interpreted and performed throughout by Maestro Järvi and the DSO, although the final Parks-inspired work drags a bit too long. Even with its strong showcase for trombones, the last of this trio might have benefitted from slight additional editing.

The final work is Raise The Roof (2003), a fascinating tour-de-force for timpani and orchestra. The piece was written for the grand opening of Detroit's Max M. Fisher Music Center, at the close of Daugherty's three-year residency with the DSO. Like the grand architectural wonders that inspired the piece, it offers extensive, unusual sounds from the timpani throughout its sophisticated theme-and-variations structure, that the listener cannot help but marvel at its rollicking and surefire crowd-pleasing construction.

In his time, Michael Daugherty has proven that contemporary classical music need not be a struggle for audiences to understand; after all, even works by composers that we take for granted, from Mozart to Beethoven to our country's own Aaron Copland, were once deemed "contemporary." Daugherty, like any solid composer of our time, realizes that one can be innovative and still retain the basic tenets of the classical genre--a trait so aptly displayed in this recording, where three of his pieces pay tribute to the Motor City.

"Fire And Blood" is, for all intents and purposes, a violin concerto inspired by the legendary Mexican painter Diego Rivera's murals representing Detroit's automobile industry, with Ida Kavafian as the soloist. It is in three movements, and combines both the motoric drive that is Motown itself and the influences of the native Mexico that Rivera and his wife, the equally legendary artist Frida Kahlo, came from (marimbas, maracas, and distant mariachi brass are especially prominent in the work's second movement, "River Rouge"). "MotorCity Triptych" is a three-movement suite which is steeped in the city's popular music idiom, notably jazz and the classic sound of Berry Gordy's Motown label of the 1960s. And finally, there's the explosive one-movement piece "Raise The Roof", a pulse-pounding, jazz-influenced work inspired by the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and New York City's famed Empire State Building. It is practically a neo-concerto for timpani and orchestra, with Brian Jones serving as the soloist. The composer himself served as the producer of these recordings, which were made during live performances in January 2001 ("MotorCity Triptych"), May 2003 ("Fire And Blood"), and October 2003 ("Raise The Roof").

Each of these works is given a first-rate recording by the engineers at the budget label Naxos, and performed splendidly by the orchestra to which the works are dedicated and received their world premieres here, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under their now-Conductor Emeritus Neeme Jarvi. Jarvi, though Estonian by birth, has shown a tremendous appreciation and feel for 20th and 21st century American music during his decade-and-a-half tenure as the Detroit Symphony's music director, continuing the tradition of quality music making that was part-and-parcel of illustrious predecessors like Paul Paray and Antal Dorati, and which is continuing under the current music director, the great Leonard Slatkin.

Such is the explosiveness of these performances that I would rate this as not only the #1 Classical recording of 2009, but one of the best recordings of 2009 in any genre, period.

Other reviewers have gone to into great detail about both the quality of Daugherty's music and the playing of the Detroit Symphony. Neither composer or orchestra can be praised highly enough. "Fire and Blood", alone is worth the modest cost of this CD. This is a record I would have expected Leonard Slatkin, as musical director of Detroit Symphony, to make, not Neeme Jarvi (a rather sleepy conductor, I think), but boy-oh-boy, he rocks the house on this CD. Treat yourself to some great music and some great performances from the city on the verge...

Michael Daugherty; he of the Metropolis Symphony, UFO, Philadelphia Stories, and myriad other works inspired by modern American life and pop culture; is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan School of Music. Here are three works commissioned and premiered by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra during Daugherty's four years as Composer-in-Residence from 1999 to 2003 -- recorded in live performance with nary a hint of audience noise till each work's concluding applause. Inspirations range from Detroit's magnificent Diego Rivera murals and the artist's heritage, politics, and illness-stricken wife Frida Kahlo to Rosa Parks and the Motown sound. The composer writes at length of his Motor City muses, but I'd like to leave the allusions to the movement titles and merely describe the music and its imparted emotional impressions.

Volcano, the first movement of Fire and Blood for violin and orchestra, displays the scissoring, angular violin attacks heard elsewhere in Daugherty's oeuvre, here brought to us by committed soloist Ida Kavafian, punctuated by colorful orchestral explosions redolent of Mexico with perhaps an incidental tinge of Appalachia. Featured is an interlude of violent violin underlain by marimba, xylophone, and a plethora of percussion. In River Rouge, the second movement, Kavafian moves from abject screaming to somber contemplation. Mexican trumpets are taken up by the solo violin in a mournful and purposely nostalgic expression. In the finale titled Assembly Line, Kavafian digs into her strings while the orchestra bangs, slaps, soars, and sizzles in what's probably the work's closest approximation to the listener's initial expectations; i.e., the kind of relentless rhythmic raucousness of industry on parade painted notoriously by Prokofiev in his Symphony No. 2, but here hewing much closer to the personal amidst the collective rather than the collective per se.

MotorCity Triptych (triptych a la the Auto Club rather than any Renaissance art form) begins with Motown Mondays. Here is that marvelous R&B that smacks of orchestral Smokey Robinson - that's until things turn dramatic. We're suddenly thrust into a combination of a Midwest morning followed by explosive swashes of Brando and Bernstein's waterfront -- stirring stuff! A direct quote of Copland's opening tympani of Fanfare for the Common Man introduces Pedal-to-the-Metal with that trumpet again interceding from south of the border. Violent orchestral eruptions are interrupted by a screaming siren. The trumpet displays angst and anger before being assuaged by a seemingly reluctant acceptance...the city moves on! Rosa Parks Boulevard, the finale, is a soulful tour de force for the DSO trombones -- alternatingly mournful, tensely dramatic, delicately drunken, but always powerfully expressive. The unforgettable trombone theme pervades a colorful and varied orchestral workout.

Raise the Roof is for tympani and orchestra. While it gives those kettles a chance to shine, it's otherwise stylistically similar to what we've heard up to this point replete with prominent brass, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and even a piano. As they've done on previous forays into this pseudo-classical cum jazz idiom, Järvi and the DSO eat it up! By the way, were you one of those who enjoyed drum solos?

A terrific disc in every way only ruined by the inclusion of the audience applause at the end of each composition. I personally prefer to savor the conclusion of each piece on this disc(or any disc for that matter) with silence allowing me to make my own judgement.