Alvin Singleton is one of the most interesting musical figures in contemporary American art music. This figure is also very little known in the general public. Singleton was born in 1940 in Brooklyn, and he studied with, among others, Charles Wuorinen, a pillar of the avant-garde in the United States. That said, long before it became the norm in the early 21st century, Singleton found his worth and creative interests in the intelligent fusion of fairly eclectic elements. A journalist once said of Singleton that his influences ranged “from Mahler to Monk, from Bird to Bernstein, from James Baldwin to Bach, from Santana to Prince.”
This superbly crafted compilation by Canadian pianist Jackie Leung offers us almost the entirety of the pianistic repertoire of the African-American composer. Singleton’s language is a kind of post-Webernism occasionally tinged with Reichian repetition. Certainly, the music of the (almost) 86-year-old man avoids dense complexity to favour great clarity of textures and harmonies (however stretched or abstract they may be), I would say a delicate economy of means with an intense expressive will.
Baked in the Cake, a miniature of less than three minutes, adequately illustrates the kind of effects Singleton achieves with his scores. A piece written for a birthday, its disjointed nature actually reveals a pervasive humour and a frank and spontaneous characterisation.
Argora I evokes the same kind of impact: an embraced modernity, both harmonic and rhythmic, but, in the background, a certain connection with worldliness thanks to a construction that allows an anchoring in the groove to shine through. Very effective.
Elsewhere, we discover the composer’s connections with the Minimalism of the Reich/Reilly school (Changing Faces and Cinque IV), spiced up in Singleton’s style. Or a nod to John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet with Greed Machine, for vibraphone (Ryan Scott) and piano. The fusion of the two instruments, disparate at first glance but surprisingly complementary in their very different timbres, works very well. Singleton’s meticulous writing certainly plays a part in this.
Mutations is another gem that confirms the expressive power of Singleton’s language, this blend of piquant harmonies and pulsating energy, here more affirmative than in Argora, for example.
In My Own Skin, a piece from 2010, thus one of the most recent in the album, demonstrates a marked evolution in the artist’s language. Bold, powerful chords, reminiscent of certain fiery gestures from the romantic repertoire, launch the work, without overwhelming it with grandiloquence. This initial robustness fragments after the first few measures, and the music returns to Singleton’s style, but in a more substantial, fleshy discursive fabric than in previous works. And then echoes of jazz, cleverly integrated into the construction, far from rhythmic and harmonic clichés but quite perceptible, seep into this exposition with combined resonances of improvisation and grand modern classical discourse. Impressive.
The program ends with the titular piece and also the most substantial, Inside Out. At 18 minutes, it is written for two pianos, and it emerges from silence very gradually, one note gently placed at a time during the first few minutes. A sudden chord, and repeated afterwards, disturbs the tranquillity that had settled in. The repetition of scattered notes, the silences that separate them, evoke the Feldman style. But Singleton departs from his compatriot’s way by gradually building a denser sound structure. The silent gaps are now filled with sharp repetitions, minimalist pseudo-arpeggios that reach an exciting climax towards the middle of the piece. I was blown away by the scope and expressive power of this score, played here with conviction and technical mastery by Jackie Leung and her colleague Erica Murase.
Created in 1983-84, Inside Out is a fascinating masterpiece that we would do well to know much better, and especially to hear more often in concert. Like the entire catalogue of Alvin Singleton, by the way.
