TALLA ROUGE | BANDCAMP BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL - REVIEW

The Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp, September 2024

by: Peter Margasak | September 2024

The viola is the maligned member of the string quartet, an instrument that too often lacks the respect afforded the violin and cello. So perhaps Aria Cheregosha and Lauren Spaulding formed the duo Tallā Rouge to have each other’s back. But the music on the pair’s impressive debut album Shapes in Collective Space is no joke, and they deserve to have the last laugh. Enlisting a wide array of composers, the music is both richly varied and deeply accessible without watering down their own vision, or the visions of those they commissioned. The stunning four-movement “Navazi” by Iranian composer Kian Ravaei—each section spread out across the album—was inspired by the sound of the kemenche, a Persian spike fiddle, with the musicians delivering structured improvisations on Dastgah-e Nava, a dominant mode in music from Iran. In “Breathing Sunlight,” Akshaya Avril Tucker seeks to express the simple pleasures of spending time with those whose time on Earth is fleeting, the tangle of buoyant rhythms and meditative swells reflecting collective emotions with impressive clarity. The title composition written by inti figgis-vizueta deliberately braids shifting moods, melodies, and gestures as representation of the composer’s belief that ability to hold multiple realities at once is a crucial quality in experimental music practices. There are also works by Gemma Peacocke, Karl Mitze, and Gala Flagello, but my favorite work is the closer from Leilehua Lanzilotti: “silhouette, mirror,” an adaptation of the piece of the same name written for a string orchestra, that ripples with exquisite tension and striated textures.