VA - Christopher Bailey: Rain Infinity (2021)

Christopher Bailey’s music mines eclectic sources of inspiration, channeling those influences through a focused set of compositional tools. Rain Infinity includes works for standard acoustic instrumentations, unconventional instruments, and virtual electronic instruments. Bailey’s approach to the material across these contexts emphasizes his exploration of microtonality, fragmentary treatment of motivic and rhythmic ideas, and an interest in establishing composite timbral colors.

The six movement work, Duo for violin and cello, performed here by Miranda Cuckson and Mariel Roberts, is spread out through the recording in interstitial interludes. In each of the movements, Bailey establishes a vocabulary of gestures that are shuffled and reordered between the two instruments, creating a glitchy dialogue. The opening track, “Fast,” contains a series of repetitive mechanisms, composed of strident double stops, accented pizzicati, and nervous tremolandi. “Mercurial” is restless and emphatic, as lines lean into closely spaced intervals before darting momentarily in the other direction. “Dance” establishes a more regular groove and playful spirit than the previous two movements. “Amalgam” is the longest and most melodramatic duo in the set, with shards of impetuous material bursting out from both instruments. “Slow” opens with pads of harmonic color swelling from one instrument to the other. As the movement evolves, punctuated events dot a spare, charged texture. The final duo, and final track on the recording, “TumbleJig,” is animated by a similar rhythmic energy to “Dance,” but is more vigorous and jagged.