American composer Jason Eckardt was recently named Distinguished Professor at City University of New York, the highest faculty distinction given by the institution. Two substantial chamber pieces from the 2010s are included in Passage, his first portrait CD for Kairos.
Eckardt's music addresses political and social concerns in intricately abstract ways. His works are distinct, energetic and often bracing, combining new complexity's extended techniques and hypervirtuosic ethos with the harmonic underpinnings and formal considerations of late modernism. His rhythmic language is considerably intricate, rife with metric modulations and rapid shifts of demeanor. JACK Quartet (Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violins; John Richards, viola; Jay Campbell, cello) is one of a small handful of active groups that might possibly be able to play Passages. The last time I saw them live, shortly before the pandemic, JACK played a concert of all five of Elliott Carter's string quartets in a single afternoon at the Morgan Library that was of extraordinary quality. Their recordings of Helmut Lachenmann (mode267) and Ligeti, Pintscher, Cage and Xenakis (Wigmore Hall Live) are additional bona fides.
Passage is a signature work with a long gestation. The sense of narrative implied recalls the aforementioned Carter quartets. Cast in three movements, it is inspired by the CIA's sensory deprivation of detainees, the prisoners’ subsequent release to transition to the outer world, and testimony against their torturers. Each of these experiences is supplied its own movement: Subject (2011), Ascension (2014) and Testimony (2018). Subject depicts the brutal treatment of detainees, with ricocheting attacks, bow pressure and an arpeggiated chord that repeats at structurally significant points, sounding like a cell door slamming. Occasionally, the prevailingly forte dynamic recedes to high, hushed harmonics, suggesting the woozy state of mind of the tormented momentarily left alone, only to have the quartet re-enter with vicious, slashing gestures. Subject is a vivid depiction of the horrors inflicted on detainees by the CIA and its minions in various countries for decades.
Ascension addresses the return of detainees to an everyday life that will never again be everyday, filled with anxiety, PTSD and flashes of disturbing memories. Percussive clicks, altissimo sustained notes and fragments of the first movement's gestures lurk in a digressive and ominous framework. The music of the interrogators is played in a duet between viola and cello, until the violins move to the fore, enacting a nightmarish fortissimo fever dream. Eventually it is dispelled and the ominous music returns in the low strings, this time with soft violins in a duet of harmonics.
Long held high notes are distressed with microtonal glissandi at the opening of Testify, creating another unnerving texture. After these are finally cut off, the cello, which appears to depict those testifying about their crimes, provides a brief solo. This is once again interrupted by the violins. A colloquy ensues, and the cello's solos gradually grow longer, louder and more resolute. In an angular unravelling, the violins make one last attempt to win the day but are silenced. A coda filled with bow pressure ensues, concluding with enigmatic soft harmonies: justice, however provisional, has banished the secret police and their tactics. JACK performs Passage assuredly, with each detailed nuance rendered vividly.
The quartet is joined by pianist Jason Hardink for the quintet Pulse-Echo (2013). Hardink's playing accords well with that of JACK, adopting a rhythmically potent approach that blends with the percussive nature of many of the strings’ gestures. A title that one could imagine for a Harrison Birtwistle score, Pulse-Echo itself has some aspects that recall late British modernism. Actually, the title is taken from a quote by Arnold Schoenberg: ‘Art is the cry of distress of those who personally experience the fate of mankind. Within themselves they carry the pulse of the world and only an echo reaches the outside. And that echo is the work of art.’
Pizzicati and staccato piano notes are haloed with harmonics and distressed with brief percussive gestures inside the piano and below the bridge of the strings. Low notes and secundal harmonies are added into the piano's kit bag while repeated notes and sharp cornered gestures enhance the repertoire of the strings. Partway through, the introductory material abruptly stops, like a compact car on a speed bump. The piano returns to the lower register, this time having a scalar passage interrupted by its own inside-the-piano playing and brusque declamations, which are particularly potent in a subsequent duel with the cello. Percussive attacks from all the players create a spacious yet spiky interlude.
In the second third, the ghost of Schoenberg seems to be playing tennis with Birtwistle's shade, with material that obliquely recalls early atonal music interpolated between scratched piano strings, pizzicati, repeated notes and frequent rests. This dialogue between touchstones from the early twentieth and early twenty-first centuries does not persist, as the opening material returns, but is reordered and fragmentary in its deployment. The title's echo makes its presence more fully known with resonant slaps of the piano strings, greater use of pedal, and reverberating string verticals. Cello crescendi are harried by interruptions from the piano and viola. A filigreed motive is presented in multiple transformations in the piano's upper register – another nod to Schoenberg. The coda is a grab bag of miniature versions of the material from throughout, ending with a reshuffling of the piano's treble-register tune accompanied by string harmonics in an affecting dénouement.
Eckardt is a talented composer, uncompromising in the challenges he poses to performers and listeners. His works deftly evoke extramusical associations that suggest political engagement and an awareness of tradition. However, Eckardt's work also presents pathways forwards for postmillennial modernists. Passage is highly recommended.
