Search - Gerard Pape, Paul Mefano, Ensemble 2E2M :: Pape: Electroacoustic Chamber Works

Gerard Pape's Electroacoustic Chamber Works take their cue from the theoretical works and music of three giants in the new music field: Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi, and Julio Estrada. Like Xenakis, Pape bases much of his composition on mathematical theories of chaos, and like Scelsi, he aims to focus on the smallest micro-harmonic elements as they slip between fixed points--never doing so in a rush. Pape's tapes and sound projections undergird the whole CD. With them, Janet Pape's soprano and Cecile Daroux's flute flow slowly from a microtonal launching pad on Two Electro-Acoustic Songs. The Arditti String Quartet scours the internal logic of tones on Le Fleuve du Desir, finding rhythmic propulsion in languid, hoarse swirls. Nicholas Isherwood puts on the most extended performance on Monologue, for bass voice and tapes. A haunting 30 minutes elapse as Isherwood growlingly ducks in and recedes amongst the dense electronic brush. Battle gives a glimpse of Pape's full, charged opera based on Clive Barker's novel Weaveworld, and Makbenach sputters and shakes in waves of metallic, brass, tape noise, and saxophone. --Andrew Bartlett