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Figments Vol. 2
Yuan-Chen Li composer
Peter Dayton composer
Hans Bakker composer
Navid Bargrizan composer
Charles Corey composer
FIGMENTS 2, which follows the success of 2016’s FIGMENTS, is a compendium of chamber music that sparks the imagination. The album features the works of Yuan-Chen Li, Peter Dayton, Hans Bakker, Navid Bargrizan, and Charles Corey—innovative composers whose works draw inspiration from the world around them, be it the tribal dances of indigenous peoples, art history, 16th-century keyboard music, the science of acoustics, or the idiosyncrasies of language.
The album opens with Tell by Yuan-Chen Li, a work commissioned and performed by saxophonist Jessica Maxfield, that joins the woodwind instrument in a holy dance with the leaping yips, gasps, and cries of the human voice. This is followed by Mar de Lurín, after paintings by Fernando de Szyszlo, in which composer Peter Dayton harnesses the creamy resonance of nylon guitar strings to paint vibrant studies in light and shadow. Hans Bakker’s Tiento I for guitar solo and Tiento II for guitar solo are contemporary imaginings of a 16th-century Spanish form that are all at once aggressive, romantic and, at times, contrapuntal. Next comes Navid Bargrizan’s 10 Aphorisms, a series of concise musical statements colored by contrasting timbres and scales that push the boundaries of music theory into the realm of psychoacoustics. A second piece by Bargrizan, Se-Chahar-Gah, is inspired by Persian classical music and performed on a custom-built microtonal guitar. The album concludes with Charles Corey’s Syzygy, a four-movement work for string quartet, each one exploring relationships between tonality and dissonance; the last movement dramatically ends the album by slowly gliding to the extreme registers of the ensemble.
FIGMENTS 2 invites listeners on a journey that is sure to both delight their minds and challenge their assumptions. The sundry pieces, each infused with the unique voice of their composer, come together to form a distinctive and cohesive album. FIGMENTS 2 offers listeners a brief taste of the breadth of sounds that Navona Records has to offer and is sure to leave them hungry for more.
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Artist Information
Yuan-Chen Li
Yuan-Chen Li (b.1980, Taiwan) first arrived on the contemporary music scene in Taiwan with her very personal use of instrumentation and style in her chamber music piece Zang (the funeral) in 2000. In 2003, the expression and orchestration of her orchestral work Awakening won the prize at the Asian Music Festival 2003 in Tokyo from the Asian Composers’ League, and was subsequently premiered by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Peter Dayton
Described by American Record Guide as “...a composer whose heart and care are palpable... who has a voice that deserves to be heard often” and by the Baltimore Sun as having “a refined sense of melodic arcs and harmonic motion,” Peter Dayton’s compositions have been performed across North America and in Europe.
Hans Bakker
After he finished his studies piano, church organ, and choral conducting at the Dutch Institute for Church Music in Utrecht, Hans Bakker (b. 1945) worked as a teacher at two music schools in the Netherlands. He also conducted two choirs and was active in the improvisational music scene. His career in music was followed by the study of Sanskrit. After obtaining his master's degree at the University of Amsterdam, he returned to music, becoming completely occupied by teaching at Globe Center for Art and Culture in the city of Hilversum.
Navid Bargrizan
Nearly all of Navid Bargrizan's compositions explore intonational and tuning concepts, ranging from just intonation and extended equal temperaments (e.g. 24-tone or 36-tone equal temperament) to various microtonal concepts taken from diverse musical cultures. Since 2014, his experiments with microtonality have resulted in 13 premieres and more than 40 performances of his works in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Austria, including at New York City Electroacoustic Festival, Toronto Electroacoustic Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Florida Contemporary Festival, and conferences of the Society of Composers, Inc.
Charles Corey
Charles Corey is an American composer holding a Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory from the University of Pittsburgh. His approach to composition exploits and subverts the relationships that exist between different tuning systems. Corey's compositions, known for their unexpected, evocative harmonies and their strong dramatic arcs, have been played across Europe and the Americas by performers including Cikada Ensemble, Iktus Percussion, Kjell Tore Innervik, Ere Lievonen, Inverted Space, and Entelechron, and recognized by the Young Virtuosos Foundation, the Foundation for Modern Music, and the Sociedade Pró-Sinfônica de Limeira.
