The works on this release by composer
Sid Richardson all involve external stimuli: literary texts, a natural scene, or an ancient scientific device, the astrolabe, that serves as a symbol of the universe. All are immediately attractive, even for listeners not particularly oriented toward contemporary music, for their musical imagery is vivid and even visceral. Consider
Lune, for violin and electronics, which represents not only the moon but some loons that the composer heard on a lake in Vermont; it's very hard to resist. However, the most distinctive work is the opening
Red Wind (2017), which sets five poems by experimental poet
Nathaniel Mackey. The texts are spoken by
Mackey, ranging in inspiration from the titular phenomenon of the Nile river shore to the city of Jaipur, India, and the music is played by the
Deviant Septet chamber group. The big news here is that what used to be called Third Stream music makes a major new appearance.
Richardson's piece is apparently all notated rather than improvised, but it draws on an extraordinarily wide range of influences from bass-driven 1960s modern jazz to contemporary French tonalities to modernist vocal lines of the
George Crumb sort (the texts are both spoken and manipulated in melodic vocal settings of various kinds). It all coheres rather uncannily in its relationship to the distinctively African American yet ethnically ecumenical qualities of the texts, and at this point, it's pretty much unlike anything else out there.
Richardson is also notable in the way he numbers electronics among his resources, yet is not an "electronic composer," and in the variety of sounds of which he is capable. An excellent chance to sample the music of this rising composer. ~ James Manheim
![Mary Lou Williams Presents Black Christ of the Andes [Bonus Tracks]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0093074081624_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Mary Lou Williams Presents Black Christ of the Andes [Bonus Tracks]")
