Nonesuch
The title of this six song cycle, “The Cusp of Magic”, refers to the summer solstice –the longest day of the year- and the transition from the sign of Gemini to Cancer. During the night it is a time of revelry and ritual. The composers own birthday is on June 24th and this work was commissioned in honor of him turning seventy. The album begins with the slow and steady pulse of a shamanic drum accompanied by a lush synth chord. The beat keeps my attention focused and centered, grounded to the earth. A peyote rattle soon joins in and it shakes from my head all the useless debris accumulated over the course of a day, the necessary cleansing that must occur when approaching the sacred. Then strings come in, lifting me up, holding me in their rich harmonic interplay, bouncing off each other, causing a rushing spurt of kundalini to run up my spine. Among the strings is a Chinese instrument known as the pipa, often compared to a lute. The flavor of it colors the whole album with its playful joviality, as it moves effortlessly across the oceans, melting the boundaries between East and West.
On “Buddha’s Bedroom” Wu Man also adds her soft voice, singing a lullaby as the cello is bowed and sticks hit together in the background. In English the words are “Mama’s back home/my sweet baby/please go to sleep.” I don’t know if the quartet will let the baby sleep; I wouldn’t be able to. The softness is replaced by a somber mood as the strings carve out a space where I toss and turn during a restless night, as racing thoughts flit around my head.
Toys abound in “the Nursery” joining detuned bells and an electronic murmur that buzzes like cicadas outside the window. Riley’s distinctive voice, trained for raga, drifts from below the subliminal surface of the mix with his own lullaby, “rest your head/and don’t you fret/the best times for you are coming yet” and then a jack-in-the-box pops out laughing.
“Royal Wedding” is just that: the sound of celebration as two people join together at a soul level, marrying not only themselves but also their families, having kids, and their kids having the grandchildren whom I visit on the next track. “Emily and Alice” is a song that continues to haunt me. Elisabeth Commandy sings the voice of the Russian Cheburashka doll and cartoon character in a way both innocent and possessive of an anxious awareness. A snippet from the nutcracker as played on a music box pops in for a moment, but afterwards the child like voice is even more distant; warped as if processed through a looking glass, bending and distorting it.
All is not lost. Souls can be recalled to their home and “Prayer Circle” does the trick. It stirs the fire inside the shamanic lodge, recalling to me a sense of purpose I had somehow lost along the way. Like anyone else I have been scarred on the road to adulthood, but these marks carved out in the lineaments of my spirit are part and parcel for the journey. The shaman breathes life back into the body. The sun comes up over the hills, and like a red tailed hawk perching on an obelisk, when the music is over, the soul resumes its flight; all making for another solid collaboration between Terry Riley and Kronos Quartet.
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