Roberta Michel - Hush (2024) Hi-Res

The five pieces on flutist Roberta Michel’s Hush create a dialogue between the different aesthetic forces at play, each expanding the sonic footprint of the instrument in their own way. Jane Rigler and Jen Baker’s solo works celebrate the challenges of conquering limitations on one’s instrument, in this case, through the intricate integration of an extended vocabulary of sounds into an already virtuosic texture. Victoria Cheah and Angélica Negrón’s pieces use the electronic element to create an environment of charged stillness, an opportunity to absorb the vulnerable intricacies of sound and highlight the flute’s innate capacity to shape micro-inflections of pitch, timbre, and shape. Mert Moralı’s electroacoustic work acts as the bridge between those impulses in a way, using the electronic element to create a new sonic world, but one that is dialogic and teleological over its large scale form. Michel tackles the diverse demands of this repertoire with command and sensitivity, matching her curatorial ingenuity with powerful performances.

Jane Rigler’s Red for piccolo is a tour-de-force of activated trills, virtuosic swirling figures, and vocal extended techniques that create a Coltrane-esque wall of sound. Opening with delicate key clicks, Red accumulates steadily, expanding its register through implied, and eventually, timbral counterpoint. The dramatic finale features the voice accompanying a charged high register trill, almost as if the performer is screaming to be released from the confines of the instrument.

Victoria Cheah’s music often explores the rarefied nuances of slow moving textures, mining their subtleties of pitch and timbre for poignant meaning. In And for you, castles for flute and fixed media, we hear the live performer pushing and pulling up against the pitch material in the playback with microtonal variations, fragile multiphonics, and swelled gestures. Cheah examines the elusive nature of sonic stability, establishing a quasi-drone in the electronic part, but resisting resolution through the flute’s elusive figuration.

Jen Baker’s The Great Bridge and a Lion’s Gate captures a state of transition as well as enhanced power and energy. Opening with a driving figure of repeated notes punctuated by vocal sounds and accented flutter tongue sustains, the work transitions to a secondary lyrical section, marked by haunting multiphonics that frame the melodic line like a halo of sound. The texture diffuses into airy breath sounds and delicate syllabic utterances before a heroic melody enters, harmonized by multiphonics in a striking chorale. Baker recalls the perpetual motion of the opening for a dramatic coda, further integrating extended technique vocabulary into the rhythmic fabric, before the work ends with a sotto voce whisper.