Yotam Haber – Bloodsnow
Talea Ensemble; Taylor Ward; Don-Paul Kahl; American Wild Ensemble
Sideband Records 11 (sidebandrecords.com)
The music of Yotam Haber impresses and shows that he is an innovative composer who seems to inhabit a space where notation meets, then crosses over into, improvisation. The music of Bloodsnow indicates that Haber is not one to shy away from subject matter that can be rather visceral in nature, such as that which is contained in two poems – one by Tahel Frosh, the other by Dorit Weisman. That may be just as well as Haber’s supple philosophical distinction between music and noise enables him to superbly articulate the sentiments and emotions of both poems that he sets to music.
Frosh’s Oh My Bank is a polemical broadside against capitalism and Haber uses instrumentation cleverly to accentuate dramatic tensions: winds against strings with Taylor Ward’s baritone top delivering the broadside. Through it all Haber harvests mint-fresh timbres to convey the sense of the anger of Frosh’s fiery work.
Haber’s music can also be charming in the face of tragedy as is the case with his music for. Weisman’s poem, They Say You Are My Disaster. In describing the character’s descent into the horrors of cancer he uses a wide range of sonorities to create music – both to mirror her stoicism as well as the face of raw tragedy. Bloodsnow – the song – is a modernist masterpiece.
And while the album suggests Haber excels in music of adversity, he also shows that he is a master of songfulness.
