Customer Reviews

Evan Ziporyn: Typical Music

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Evan Ziporyn is one of the most remarkable composers working in America today. Ziporyn, perhaps best known as the clarinetist in the Bang on a Can All-Stars, is one of those rare composers who is fluent in both contemporary American music, in all its diverse idioms, but also fluent in the music of Bali (he directs the gamelan at MIT). In many works, these fusions of American music (contemporary classic, jazz, pop, etc.) with Balinese music result in music of unique rhythmic vitality, melodic warmth, and structural integrity. The selections on this CD are good examples, or do I say typical? Pondok, the piano work written for the talented Sarah Cahill, is a wonderful example: it draws on the rhythms of ketchak (the Monkey chant), several styles of Balinese gamelan, and also evokes a jazzy sensibility that's almost (dare I say it?) like Keith Jarrett. I also find Ziporyn's elegy for those killed in the bombing in Kuta to be remarkbly fine: tender and compassionate but never maudlin.

I've been familiar with Ziporyn's work, first as a clarinettist and second as a composer of gamelan-influenced music. When I recently heard this orchestral work, Ngaben, on the radio I didn't recognize the composer at first. One could sense the Indonesian atmosphere, but there seemed to be a level of beauty and emotion I had not found in his music before. It was really quite moving. It's great to hear a composer grow.