Having reached its milestone 100th recording in July, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project has seemingly left no stone unturned in its 28-year journey to perform and record contemporary and 20th-century music, including fascinating works from off the beaten path. Where to go next? On Masks & Machines, released August 27 on the ensemble’s in-house label, BMOP/sound, conductor Gil Rose and BMOP turn to the music of Paul Dooley, whose high-octane wind ensemble pieces are celebrated in the concert band community. But his orchestral music has also made an impact through commissions over the last 20 years, which the album documents, in part.
Dooley’s approachable, unfussy music evinces a composer with clear ideas that are developed judiciously, blending influences from electronic music and the tension between nature and artificiality. Masks & Machines is his debut recording of music for full orchestra, compiling four contrasting works that are relatively short, though emphatically purposeful.
The brisk and zestful Point Blank (2011) is Dooley’s breakthrough work and a concise exposition of his reckoning with electronics and acoustic instruments. Influenced by Aphex Twin and EDM, the piece is what Dooley calls an “acoustic-fied” version of an experiment with electronic drum programming, later scored for chamber orchestra, before the expanded version recorded here. Dooley lays out vigorous rhythms that are established from the beginning and recur as signposts; the electronic drum patterns are translated most vividly in the complex part for drum kit, fueled by fidgety strings, muted brass, and excitable woodwinds — all of which is craftily deployed to simulate electronic timbres. Dooley doesn’t push the music into unexpected places, but rather allows the motives to follow a developmental course that feels natural, reaching a climactic point before gradually breaking down into slow, warped remnants of the composition’s building blocks.
Whereas Point Blank simulates electronic music, Circuits & Skins deftly combines electronics with solo percussion and full orchestra. Cast in three movements that flow uninterrupted, the elaborate 24-minute-long concerto for percussion and electronics takes inspiration from Dooley’s experience soaking in house and techno music amid the soaring redwoods of northwest California at the Northern Nights Music Festival. Percussionist Lisa Pegher is the undaunted soloist, playing vibraphone, wood blocks, bongos, congas, timbales, drum set, and two Roland percussion-sampling pads that are integrated in the percussion battery, triggering synthesized instruments and field recordings of nature.
Except for occasional buzzing synths, the electronics are blended smoothly into the fabric of the orchestra, creating dazzling new sonorities. In particular, the first movement, “Synths & Songbirds,” features a quietly foreboding solo vibraphone with field recordings of birdsong, rain, and thunder deployed in synchronicity with the acoustic instruments. This master stroke by Dooley is among the most persuasive instances of electronics within an orchestra that I’ve ever heard, brought to life in Pegher’s animated live performance.
The other two pieces on the album pay tribute to visual artists. Originally scored for wind band and revised for full orchestra in 2022, Mondrian’s Studio is a horn concerto in which the soloist represents the impetus of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), a pioneer of abstract art whose late work consists of plain geometric shapes and primary colors. “Wall Work,” the opening movement, depicts Mondrian’s experimental works in Paris during the 1920s with a gruff horn — performed by the terrific soloist Adam Unsworth — trading places in the spotlight with the robust brass section, heavy on trombones and tuba.
Paul Dooley — Photo by Subaram Raman
The differences in the orchestral arrangement are most readily noticeable in the melancholic second movement, “Self Portrait,” outlining Mondrian’s 1918 oil on canvas through a wailing low horn. In the new arrangement, slowly shimmering strings substitute for low reeds, though the original instrumentation benefits from a more streamlined sound and timbral variety from the use of four saxophones. In “Victory Boogie Woogie,” Dooley illustrates Mondrian’s work after his move to New York City in 1939. In the lower register of the solo part, Unsworth manages to project a mournful, yet clear sound that alternates between shades of sweet and sour.
Inspired by the Bauhaus-school artist Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), the three-movement Masks & Machines is a work of a completely different flavor. Dooley accomplishes a synthesis of Schlemmer’s abstract depictions of the human form and Stravinsky’s neoclassical period, particularly the ballet Pulcinella. The contrapuntal string writing is more prominent than in the other works, contrasting with sections of resplendent Renaissance brass, sneaky reeds, chirping winds, and pitter-patter mallet percussion. It’s the only piece in the album that doesn’t give away the composer’s wind-band background.
This is a great debut album for Paul Dooley and a substantial collection of contemporary orchestral music, vividly recorded by Rose and BMOP. The ensemble and the record label — whose commissions include two Grawemeyer Award-winning pieces — are vital for the creation, performance, and documentation of important music outside of the conservative programs of many American orchestras. For audiences that have grown jaded with the relatively small pool of standards constantly rotated in the usual programming, BMOP has become indispensable — an instigator for our attempt to buck that trend.
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