Listening Room

11 Cello UnlockedCello Unlocked
Bryan Hayslett
Neuma 132 (bryanhayslett.bandcamp.com/album/cello-unlocked)

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Mary Kouyoumdjian: and there was - Listen on Bandcamp

Joan La Barbara: with the years - Listen on Bandcamp

Judith Weir – Unlocked: Make Me a Garment - Listen on Bandcamp

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Feeling almost carved from the ground up, this album is full of interesting and innovative dialogues. Not only is it beautifully played, the pieces come to you as transcriptions of voices and stories through the cello and voice of Hayslett without affect or personal interference. 

There is a genuineness throughout the album which is refreshing. Vocals are raw and focus on the works, the poetry and the stories they tell. Haylsett’s performances are deeply interpretive, which is not necessarily the same as improvised, and he draws on fascinating academic research for his book The Theory of Prominence, where he discusses rhythm of music in relation to language. Throughout the album he illustrates this theory with his connection of the cello to the human voice. Beginning with Caroline Shaw’s in manus tuas, based on Christ’s final words on the cross it begins with a deep grittiness on the cello, where we first hear the voice intoning notes. Mary Kouyoumdjian’s and there was is an absolutely stunning working of a text rich with grief and loss, a full dialogue between cello and voice. Joan La Barbara’s with the years is a commanding work with text from a poem by Dorothea Tanning seen on the NYC subway. It is beautifully interpreted, from the delicate harmonic opening to the double-stopped vocal lines.  

The middle anchor of the album is Unlocked by Judith Weir, a work in five movements based on the John and Alan Lomax 1930s recordings of folk songs collected from Black prisoners in the American south. These are a range of direct transcriptions of whispers to blues, giving voice to prisoners otherwise unheard. Tonadas, Germán Marano’s gentle arrangement of two milking songs, is followed by recovering (speech rhythm study 1), a transcription from an original poem virtually matched on the cello. The album closes with Brent Michael David’s Cello Chili, a recipe for a pot of chili stirred with cello parts, a fun but also fascinating blend of speech and music.

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