RING OUT | SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Jessica Meyer is the violist in the new-music collective counter)induction, a New York group that includes a core ensemble for performances, non-playing composers who are on the roster and write for the ensemble, and musicians like Meyer, who both play and compose. Her collection, Ring Out (Bright Shiny Things) is a superb introductory sampler that touches on a variety of Meyer’s compositional concerns.

Elements of her distinctive compositional voice come through immediately on the disc’s opening track. But Not Until (2014) is a viola and cello duet that Meyer plays with Andrew Yee, cellist of the Attacca Quartet. On one hand, it’s not surprising that a violist writes so vividly for strings, but though it’s tempting to call her writing idiomatic, simply because the lines move so easily and naturally, there is something more here: Meyer seems intent on providing something beyond the lush tone and arching lines that string fanciers love.

Her music is assertive, and constantly in flux. Unison figures quickly grow into independent lines, and dynamic shifts are as likely to be sudden as gradual. At times, an uncentered intonation hints at an Asian folk style. But most striking is the smoothly flowing stream of passages in which the contrasts between the viola and cello lines are stark – tremolando against pizzicato, sustained tones against bending pitches, short, sharp pitches against long notes — but always tightly interlocking.