About Unison Rituals
by Kyle Gann
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Tim Brady is, in part, a happy accident of geography. There he is up in
Montréal, looking down at New York. Why he’s not facing Paris like most
other Montréal composers, I can’t tell you, but there he is. He sort of
orbits the scene, making contact but keeping his distance. He’s a rare
Canadian member of a mostly-American movement some call totalism, which
basically means that when minimalism appeared in the 1970s he thought it was
a really good starting point but too simplistic. And so minimalism could be
called perhaps the canvas over which his music is painted. Tonality is
usually in the background, and a consistent texture, and repeated figures
that allow the music to cycle in place at times. But since he’s a
totalist, the rhythms are much more complex than in minimalism, the harmony
takes strange turns, and the form tends to dart off at right angles.
If Brady were only a distant adherent of a New York movement, the matter
would be simple. But there’s also something European and maybe even
French about his technique, a sensitivity to timbre, fluidity of line, and
intricacy of form missing from minimalist-influenced American music. Then
too, Brady plays a lot as a solo guitarist with electronics, which is a very
New York way to manage your career. But he’s also an excellent and
prolific composer of chamber music. His chamber music has the concern for
ensemble virtuosity (as opposed to soloistic) so beloved by the totalists
— both the title and technique of the saxophone quartet Unison Rituals
attest to that. But at the same time, his music has a European-style range, a
kind of detailed expressiveness, not found in the music of Downtown
Manhattan.
Unlike a lot of recent American music, no Brady piece ever remains what it
seems to be in its opening measures. Unison Rituals itself starts out with
the kind of fast unison playing inspired in younger composers by minimalist
ensemble technique, but its initial energy unexpectedly gives way to
something much more thoughtful, culminating in rhytmicized textures that are
entirely Brady’s own. Double Helix opens with a deluge of classically
postminimalist melody, jazzily syncopated with split-second hocketing effects
among the instruments; who would dream that it would lead to an expressive
saxophone solo over a series of threatening timpani rolls? Two Chords Less
than a Blues (a blues only contains three chords) goes the opposite
direction: from hesitant textures and even noise into a rollicking chorus
requiring superb ensemble coordination. Escapement makes rare use of
Brady’s own mercurial guitar technique in an ensemble context,
eventually blending it into a lovely and intricate ensemble fusion. Finally,
Sound Off starts from unison brass, ends up dramatically in major-triad
triumph, but in between makes a dissonantly deep-set curve that no American
piece would have ever attempted.
Which may all be a way of saying that while geography may have made a Tim
Brady possible, it can’t entirely account for him. Beyond the
influences he shares with his generation, Brady has a tremendous musical
energy that pours out in a diversity of forms. His music is complex, but
focused; there may be a lot going on, but you’re never left wondering
where the main line is, nor in doubt about how the music is evolving. Whether
he’s using electronic boxes to turn his hundreds of plucked notes into
thousands, or spinning through unison rhythms with a top-notch ensemble, his
music surges ahead in a convincingly organic manner, now pausing thoughtfully
in a minimalist stasis, then breaking out into the diversity of timbres and
textures that serialism made possible. Amid the stylistic pressures and
possibilities of the late 20th century, between America and Europe, Tim Brady
has not just picked and chosen, but found his own musical center.
Kyle Gann, New York City (NY, USA)
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