VA - Hazy Heart Pump (2019) [Hi-Res]

This album, featuring performances by a range of collaborators (renowned poet Saul Williams and the Mivos and Argus string quartets, as well as Miki-Sophia Cloud, Ashley Bathgate, Ron Wiltrout, Anne Lanzilotti, Diana Wade and Hearne himself on piano), mines the music of Charles Mingus and the American folk tradition, the poetry of Saul Williams, the NYPD’s fraught record on brutality, and his own insights into the nature of memory. Taken together, these departure points speak to each other in thought provoking ways that frame “Hazy Heart Pump” as a cohesive statement by a composer who has not given up on trying to come to terms with what it means to make art in a fractured era.

The album opens with Miki-Sophia Cloud’s multi-track recording of For the Love of Charles Mingus for six violins. Citing Mingus’ album “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” as a source of inspiration, Hearne builds a soundworld out of a scratchy, time-keeping ostinato, interlocking soulful melodic fragments, and a range of harmonics, glissandi, and other non-pitched techniques. He writes, "The title comes from the name of a particular string playing technique heard on the first and last tracks. It’s a faint gesture, pitches and contour barely heard over the white noise created by a bow playing on a string that’s almost fully (but not entirely) deadened. Violinist Miki-Sophia Cloud and I found this sound after months of searching for the perfect texture to communicate a soulful pulse in the distance. Miki coined it a hazy heart pump, a term which rings true for me in many contexts." Hearne shifts rhythmic figures around, toying with the listener’s perceived sense of pulse. As the work’s intensity grows, melodic fragments are layered in several high register parts. A lone violinist is the only voice left at the close of the piece, performing virtuosic music that hints at the restrained blues from earlier with a last burst of energy.

Saul Williams’ poem, “The Answer to the Question that Wings Ask” engages with existential issues about the ways we participate, interact and dream in a world with others, posing questions such as, “Is it self-actualization or self-image actualization?”, “What if nothing you are convinced of is actually the case?”, and “Is it about self-sacrifice or having to sacrifice nothing?” Hearne wrote his setting of the text with string quartet with Williams’ voice in mind, dividing the work into sections that explore different relationships between speaker and ensemble, supporting Williams’ litany with lush chords, playing in unison with the rhythm of Williams' speech, responding to the words with ecstatic, urgent responses. In response to Williams’ only directive in the poem, “Dance”, Hearne finishes the piece with a haunting passage for quartet alone.

"I’m obsessed with what happens when known quantities are placed in unfamiliar settings. When our comfort is confronted with a whole new range of disquieting associations. When sounds you recognize are used in a different way, when your viewpoint changes, when the boundaries that defined your thinking are exposed. Hazy Heart Pump is music about context and origin, familiarity and displacement. It’s about the thing that made the thing that’s in front of you, the bones that you don’t see." (Ted Hearne)

Miki-Sophia Cloud, violin
Saul Williams & Mivos Quartet
Ashley Bathgate, cello
Ron Wiltrout, drums, percussion
Diana Wade, viola
Ted Hearne, piano
Argus Quartet

Produced by Nick Tipp and Ted Hearne