Macomber, Gosling - Moe: Strange Exclaiming Music (2009)

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Macomber, Gosling - Moe: Strange Exclaiming Music (2009)

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Eric Moe is an alchemist of expressive extremes, from what he calls ‘beautiful quiet music’ to ‘the rough, raucous stuff’. His exquisitely controlled music distils rare eloquence, grace, force and beauty from the incongruous elements of pop, rock, jazz, African drumming and classical sources as diverse as Mozart and Stravinsky. Edgy and lyrical, gritty and elegiac, the works on this disc synthesise the harmonies of Debussy, the drum licks of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Bud Powell’s extraordinary pianism and much more besides into an exuberant musical fusion.

Composer: Eric Moe
Performer: Curtis Macomber, Stephen Gosling, Michael Lipsey, Bruce Weinberger, …
Orchestra/Ensemble: DoublePlay Percussion Duo, Columbus State University Percussion Ensemble, New York Saxophone Quartet

Reviews: Here is a challenge, indeed. How to describe this wonderfully inventive, often joyful, occasionally melancholy, highly rhythmic, frequently irreverent, absolutely eclectic, and always high-octane music? Read the titles. Check the instrumentation. No tuxes and evening dresses here, folks. This is “classical” music for those who revel in the ingenious and the uncommon. Eric Moe is professor of composition and theory at the University of Pittsburgh. He codirects a new-music series called Music on the Edge. Another CD of his works is called “Kicking and Screaming.” Indeed. There is something almost graphic novel about these works: serious aims with pop means, and a quirky sense of humor. I bet his composition classes are a hoot—unless perhaps one is incompetent. That steely gaze and shaved head in the booklet photo suggest a no-nonsense drill sergeant more than a long-suffering professor. Or maybe not. He is smiling winningly on the Web site.


Speaking of which, here is what he says there about his music: “Eric Moe’s music has been variously described as ‘maximal minimalism,’ ‘Rachmaninoff in hell,’ and ‘music of winning exuberance.’ The New York Times says [sic ] recently that Moe ‘subversively inscribe[s] classical music into pop culture.’” Although the surfaces and genres are varied, his works share a concern for rhythmic propulsion and a disregard for stylistic orthodoxies. Sometimes tonal, sometimes not, harmony (generally crunchy) and melody (often angular) play privileged roles in his work.” That gives one some idea.


This is music without boundaries. Strange Exclaiming Music starts out sounding like a Bach unaccompanied violin sonata, but before long it has become demented swing, wistfully romantic, edgily Bartókian; it takes off like a Nancarrow piano roll, adds a touch of Stravinsky, slips into a elegiac reverie, and fades away without ever really resolving. And that is just the first movement. This sounds patchwork, but it is not. The work is completely organic. Transitions are entirely unforced, the moods and styles somehow complementary. The last movement, “Sorbet of Regret,” is as lovely a movement for violin and piano as one can imagine, with decidedly modern harmonic wanderings, but an unabashedly nostalgic essence.


The other works are as varied as the composer’s many influences. Teeth of the Sea (the translation of the Italian title for the movie Jaws ) is a three-and-one-half minute tone poem for congas. Rough Winds Do Shake the Darling Buds revels in the wide expressive abilities of the saxophone, the gale and the endangered blossoms both deftly characterized. And down the stream, merrily bubbles exuberantly on two marimbas. I Have Only One Itching Desire starts with a drum lick from a Jimi Hendix song and freely develops in the style of African drumming, with a little jazz and rock thrown in. Flex Time is an imaginative set of transformations for solo violin on an unlikely theme. Market Forces uses traditional musical structures, like the sonata form, in decidedly non-traditional ways. It is all unpredictable, all very engaging. The performers are splendid, the sound uniformly fine. All I can say is that when the CD was over, it left me wanting Moe.