Multiphonics are a beloved extended technique on the clarinet, used to create effects ranging from violent and brash to gentle and fleeting. On his new album, clarinetist and composer Zachary Good asks, “What happens if 60 of them are put together?” Lake Heritage showcases his fascination with clarinet multiphonics in an hour long work that honors his late grandfather Paco, who retired to Lake Heritage, PA later in his life. The 10 movements meditate on ideas of nostalgia, grief, and cultivating presence through the fluid sustain and motion between notes.
One of the many beauties of the album is Good’s approach to blurring already watery-sounding multiphonics. “A brook is a body” opens the album by inviting us to imagine how many clarinets are playing at once. We are taken away from the idea of the clarinet being a single voice instrument; Good’s multitracking shows us that the instrument can be layered, duplicated, and pulsating with itself. These beatings lead into a gentle bobbing of a single pitch, which adds an unexpectedly thrilling groove that moves from rhythmically dense to pure sustain and forces us to confront the sea of notes in front of us.
“Everything in moderation” introduces a warming lilt to the multiphonics, painting an image of friends skipping down the road. The listener can carefully trace the contour of the line through the pointed shakes of each multiphonic trill, resulting in a peaceful yet frothy clarinet sound. These burbling waves are interspersed with different harmonic textures and more clipped endings before later erupting into a joyous, pure tone.
The two sweetly sounding voices that converge at the end usher in the chorale-like texture of “When the old are young.” An air of timelessness soars over the top as Good allows each multiphonic to effortlessly ring undisturbed. The chorale occasionally dips into the ambiance of a song as more fragile harmonics around the clarinet’s high register creep in, a testament to Good’s control and detailed understanding of the instrument.
On the ghostly track “Remember snow,” two groups of notes zoom in and out of the texture. The familiar trills from “Everything in moderation” come back to bubble our listening experience, with new pitches arriving in our ears during repetition of the sequences. There is something interesting to be found in the unexpected twists and turns of each listen.
“Still here / decapitating reflections”sits between extremely close-dyad multiphonics, and “deep roots” similarly swirls around a small cluster of notes to deliver patient and measured phrases. Good’s control in producing and gorgeously decorating these multiphonics is astonishing, something I could and will listen to for hours.
“There were once clearwaters” takes a different approach to the hazy sense of motion surrounding the whole of Lake Heritage, creating the feeling of looking at your reflection in the water. Delicate ripples carefully emerge from two multiphonic tones, accentuating their reservedness. From this serenity, “These clear lines” offers an element of suspense as we buoyantly cascade downward, with soft beating trickling into the repeated phrases. The notes have a haunting fragility to them, leaving us wondering what will come in the moments after they fade away.
Building a personal relationship with the musical ideas of Lake Heritage feels imperative to the listening process, with “Paco’s one hundred years” echoing a similar wavy pattern that we’ve heard from the start. A familiar air of pitches takes shape, and yet feels totally new with the added focus on the lower register of the clarinet. The entire album wades between nostalgia and newness in this way, with Good using the precarity and beauty of multiphonics to reflect on the life of his grandfather. The lower melody of “Paco’s one hundred years” lightly dusts the surface, leading into the final track; “By the lake” is a wonderful surprise of murmuring clarinet figures that relaxes us to the end of the piece.
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
You can support the work of ICIYL with a tax-deductible gift to ACF. For more on ACF, visit composersforum.org.
