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Returning to Heights Unseen
Lindsey Goodman flute
Flutist Lindsey Goodman presents her second album, RETURNING TO HEIGHTS UNSEEN, the follow up studio recording to 2016’s REACH THROUGH THE SKY. Goodman is a budding composer’s dream — interpreting new music with impeccable style and tenacity.
Goodman grasps the listener’s attention right away with Roger Dannenberg’s Separation Logic for flute and live computer processing (2013). In this futuristic work, it is the listener’s responsibility to determine what is real and what is imagined as their ears are fed short melodic phrases that have been electronically manipulated. Every sound is crucial–even the echoes of the instrument’s keys clicking against their pads.
It’s this sort of electronic genius that allows Goodman to play a duet with herself in the second track, David Stock’s A Wedding Prayer for 2 flutes (2004), stark and striking. In Tony Zilincik’s I Asked You for solo flute and mixed media, Goodman competes with samples of spoken text and percussion riffs in “Everything I Love”. “I Play Music” boasts a similar challenge, but without percussion and with the addition of the atmospheric pads of a modern synthesizer and the sound of ocean waves. The flute melody is a native chant of sorts, and its meditative nature immediately sends all other sounds to the background. Goodman demonstrates dexterous lip-trills that rival the wing speed of a hummingbird.
Elainie Lillios’s Sleep’s Undulating Tide for flute in C and live, interactive electroacoustics (2016) seems to be a continuation of the previous Zilincik track, until the entrance of a ghostly mezzo-soprano voice–the flutist’s herself. The listener is immediately transported into a dark tunnel or cave, and can hear, but not see, many unidentifiable creatures of the night.
Next is Linda Kernohan’s Demon/Daemon, a performance art piece in which the flutist is both musician and actor as she is seemingly possessed by an evil spirit. Randall Woolf’s The Line of Purples for flute and pre-recorded electronics (2015) is the least harmonically experimental of the works so far, but perhaps the most complex to categorize. It begins as a popular rock anthem but journeys into a classical chamber work and then back again. Roger Zahab’s suspicion of nakedness, brings the listener on a an emotional journey through the tentative phrases of the flute melody interspersed with unsure pauses and rhythmic anxiety and hurriedness. This work ends abruptly to give way for Judith Shatin’s For the Fallen for amplified flute and electronics (2017). The fallen, in this case, is the fallen of all wars. Here Goodman offers a moving tribute, with the entire spectrum of flute timbres matched by a colorful tapestry of electronics created by processing the original sounds of the Peace Bell in Rovereto, Italy.
This masterfully mixed album is a must-have for any new music or electronic music savant.
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Artist Information
Lindsey Goodman
Flutist Lindsey Goodman is a soloist, recording artist, chamber collaborator, orchestral musician, educator, and clinician whose “palette of tone colors includes cool silver, warm chocolate, the bright colors of a sunrise, and the deep blue of midnight.” (The Flutist Quarterly) Renowned for her “energy and artistry, conveying her exuberance and creativity” (Pittsburgh in the Round), Lindsey has performed solo and chamber concerts, taught masterclasses, and given presentations at countless series, festivals, and universities. Performances “played with conviction” (New York Times) have been heard across three continents, including at Carnegie Hall, Eastman School of Music, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Google headquarters, University of Cincinnati College’s Conservatory of Music, several National and Canadian Flute Association conventions, across China, and on the Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone podcast.
Judith Shatin
An explorer of sonic realms, Judith Shatin is equally known for her acoustic, electroacoustic, and digital music. Called “highly inventive on every level” by the Washington Post, her music has been commissioned by organizations including the Barlow Endowment, Fromm Foundation, Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Wintergreen Performing Arts, and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Arts Partners Program.
