COLLECTIVE WIDSOM | NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, FOR THE RECORD - REVIEW

For the Record: Oct. 27, 2023

by: Jackson Greenberg

Collective Wisdom, by Sybarite5

Collective Wisdom is the first album by eclectic string quintet Sybarite5 in five years, and the debut of the band’s new line-up. It’s chock full of strong sounds, from new pieces by composer-performers Jessica Mayer and Curtis Stewart to arrangements of selections by Komitas and Punch Brothers. Lend an ear now, and mark your calendar for the group’s Death of Classical “Crypt Lab Series” residency Nov. 28–30.

Bonus Tracks

I enjoyed every selection on Collective Wisdom, the new sybarite5 album cited above, but one piece stopped me dead in my tracks. Apartments opens with the sound of rain and a radio newscast, placed at disparate points in the stereo field. The string players enter at staggered intervals, ragged but essentially consonant, and proceed to play together, separately, somehow.

“Apartments explores the intersection between everyday sounds (rain, electrical wires, coffee machines), human communication (via string instruments) and current events (via AM news radio),” composer Jackson Greenberg says of the piece, explaining the sensation of simultaneity in isolation. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but a specific detail of the 1010 WINS radio broadcast, reporting that then-president Donald Trump and his wife had tested positive for COVID-19, put me in mind of pandemic shutdown, too.”