Michael Gordon (b. 1956)
Field of Vision (2022)
The University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble/Doug Perkins
rec. 4-6 March 2024, Hill Auditorium, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Cantaloupe CA21217 [57]
It’s been a while since I listened to and was impressed by Michael Gordon’s Clouded Yellow (review) but he is well represented through the Cantaloupe label and elsewhere, and his prolific output and the cultural significance of the Bang on a Can organisation both speak for themselves.
Field of Vision large-scale, outdoor work for 36 percussionists. The sales notes tell us that it was commissioned by the Caramoor Center for the Arts, and is performed on “specially-constructed tuned percussion instruments, industrial metals, and gongs, each of which produces a complex spectrum of overtones and resonances.” Michael Gordon explains that “this piece uses a lot of industrial metals… I use twenty-four brake drums in the piece—an automobile part that, when a car is junked, is usually discarded. People typically strike them. But I found with experiments that if you roll on them with yarn mallets, they produce a really beautiful sound—they have a lot of overtones that are very rich, it’s almost otherworldly.”
Percussion works are often visually as spectacular as they are to hear so this kind of piece on CD can sometimes be a task to sit through, but this is not the case with Field of Vision. The imagination is sparked by unusual sounds, and a glacial slowness forces you to pay attention to aspects of music you might not otherwise consider. Divided into four parts, Part I creates a thrumming bed of sound with an undulating pedal tone over which bell-like chimes and deep bass drums gather in a kind of ritualistic procession. Part 2 sets up an ostinato that rises and moves under layers both subtle and explosive, gathering in intensity and volume before dispersing into Part 3. This sounds like a huge collection of rainmakers, but there are sticks and whips and clacking objects in the mix that emerge and recede as part of the concerto-grosso nature of the piece’s changing textures and perspectives. Part 4 sees the return of bell-like sounds in an urgent clamour that has its own layered rhythms and ongoing changes of harmonic structure.
Composers and percussionists trawling through junkyards for new sounds is not a new phenomenon, but Michael Gordon’s Field of Vision goes a long way towards transforming a conventional orchestra into a new front-line of creative expression. Field of Vision is part of a series of his works for consort groups such as Timber and Rushes that use spatial arrangement to explore both the physical and perceptual experiences of music and sound, and his aims here are clearly to create “waves of moving sound and varying densities [that] are meant to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state, in the listener as well as the performer.”
If Field of Vision has that effect will be a matter for the individual. I’m a big fan of big fields and those bell-gong sounds but have probably become too jaded for too many clickety-clacks and colossal climaxes, so it’s a mixed bag for me. Stereo reproduction can only go so far towards recreating the live effect but the sound quality here is excellent, and either way this is a vast sonic experience and very much worth encountering.
Dominy Clements
Buying this recording via the link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free
