OUTLIERS | AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
Sybarite5 is a string quintet that here displays a new chapter in American string chamber music. Listeners who loved Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer’s “Goat Rodeo Sessions” album will eagerly devour this one, exquisitely executed. Leaning close to American fiddle music and taking hints from modern minimalism, this collection is a spectacular one.
Jessica Meyer’s ‘Getting Home (I must be)’ has interested textures that lose momentum harmonically. Shawn Conley’s ‘Yann’s Flight’ is a lovely display of improvisatory lines over Philip-Glass-like textured chord changes. Eric Byer’s ‘Pop Rocks’ is flirty and fickle, with generous cascades of sound. Dan Visconti’s three-movement Hitchhiker’s Tales is calculatingly improvisational and includes moments of ecstatic 12-bar-blues and exciting tutti rhythms. It ends witha . terrific finish that you can almost see coming, but not quite. Andy Akiho’s ‘Revolve’ ties the listener’s head in spinning knots with its exciting, multi-textured opening and cross-rhythms. The technique of knocking on instruments (with one’s fist) feels so germane here that it doesn’t distract. This piece is musical collage without visible seams and one of the coolest new music pieces I’ve ever had the pleasure of reviewing. Mohammad Fairouz’s ‘Muqqadamah’ is a sentimental, halting lullaby with sinister undertones and melodic fragments that will sound familiar at first and then traipse into something new. Kenji Bunch’s ‘Allemande pour Tout le Monde’ is jolly, mischievous, with pitch bends that will delight and viola lines that bring to mind cinematic images captured in the Deep South. The piece ends much too soon. ‘Kompa for Toussaint’ by Daniel Bernard Roumain feels rampant and swash-buckling but ends softly. Eric Byers’ ‘Sarabande’ is slow and deliberate, a elegy in harmonics and the occasional pizzicato. Michi Wiancko’s ‘Blue Bouree’ contains satisfying counterpoint, and Ljova’s ‘Gigue-ly’ is built on drips of pizzicato that gradually become loud and intense, all over a subtly-shifting landscape of mixed modality. Sybarite5 is doing something new and necessary here.