AMERICAN COUNTERPOINTS | I CARE IF YOU LISTEN - TOP ALBUMS OF 2024

I CARE IF YOU LISTEN’s Favorite Albums of 2024

by: Esteban Meneses | December, 2024

American Counterpoints (Bright Shiny Things) provides a fascinating alternative look at mid-20th-century American classical music, with violinist Curtis Stewart, conductor James Blachly, and the Experiential Orchestra giving Julia Perry and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson their due. The selections highlight different sides of each composer; take the first movement of Perkinson’s neo-Baroque Sinfonietta No. 1 for strings, in which contrapuntal melodic curlicues twirl around each other. It’s a far cry from his Louisiana Blues Strut, a barn-burning, down-home fiddle showpiece.

Two charming arrangements of music by Perry likewise stand in stark opposition to her modernist, supremely crafted Violin Concerto. Over six continuous movements, including two mesmerizing cadenzas, Perry constructs a cohesive blend of restrained lyricism and calculated dissonance. The concerto is an unsung gem that deserves performances everywhere; here, Stewart and Blachly give it their all. To end, Stewart raps to his own We Who Seek, a 21st-century response to Perry and Perkinson that samples and remixes music heard before into a spoken-word mashup with electronics.