A New York debut among the dead

From our roving reviewer, Susan Hall:

Death of Classical, a cutting edge music producer in New York, gave a launch party for Colors, the debut solo album of former rock musician Daniel Temkin (Orchid Classics). Cocktails on the baptismal font at the entrance to the nave of The Church of the Intercession in Harlem preceded a live performance of the new recording, Colors.

After warming up with wine and hors d’oeuvres, we descended to the church’s Crypt. Yamaha had hauled a gleaming grand piano down forty stairs. A golden harp sat beside it. Harps are etched in stained glass and portrayed in wall art in the church. This one came to life when Ashley Jackson unpoised her fingers and addressed the strings. Lovely musical lines chime out in Awakenings, other-worldly invitation. You almost forget the harp is a percussive instrument. Then there’s a rush of plucked notes pulsing a bass line and sometimes rattling at the top.

Time Capsule for two violins made clear the combination of sweet and sour. The drag of the bows stirs up the underlying rhythm.Temkin’s music creates a sense of time and place. Here the composer creates a memory and also the physicality of a box of paper treasures. Without reference to a particular key and often shifting rhythms, he grips the listener with beauty and rich feeling.

Piano, cello and violin followed with Flow. Together, combining flute and harp for an unusual auditory effect. Each instrument spoke to the other in daring strokes more often associated with the other: the harp sounds flute-like; the flute surprisingly plucked with air. A viola solo by En-Chi Cheng beamed colors. The program concluded with Barret Ham on clarinet and Daniel Anastasio, playing and plucking the piano.

The evening was a coloring book of song set in stone. The hard surface of the vaulted Crypt reflects and reverberates the often percussive colors lofted by a flute sounding like the thudding of a drum and a violin, a tinkling cymbal. The composer has a gift for making all instruments sound percussive. Primal, sophisticated, sometimes raw and at others refined, vibrations ignite and launch a cornucopia of emotions and unrelenting momentum. Only in New York.

Susan Hall