Greg Stuart - Subtractions (2022) Hi-Res

On Subtractions, percussionist Greg Stuart presents an album that documents a current arrival point along his journey of examination into the nature of solo percussion repertoire. Stuart has long cultivated an anti-virtuosic stance that was shaped by his unease with how virtuosity is defined and who gets to define it. His struggles with focal dystonia limited his motor function in one hand but also forced him to forge an alternative path as a solo percussionist. As he has evolved along that path, he has developed meaningful collaborations with several composers including the two featured on this recording, Sarah Hennies and Michael Pisaro-Liu. Subtractions reflects Stuart’s forays into a new, personalized virtuosity borne out of close work with these two artists and his own qualities of seeking and exploration.

Hennies’ work Border Loss is organized into ten “states,” each mining a different sonic profile from various combinations of percussion instruments. Border Loss favors tactile, granular sounds over sharp, angular, and discrete sounds, and ends up moving in swarms of sound, gradually migrating from one timbral area to another. Hennies describes her notational approach as “totally free rhythm through instructions that still cause rhythm.” Subtle political undertones spin out from the title of the work — the diffuse crossing of boundaries from one section to the next is akin to how borders often actually function. Despite the formalized official border, one often sees influences of adjacent cultures influencing the social climate on either side of the line, sometimes creating a hybrid paradigm.

Border Loss opens with dry, irregular sounds, reminiscent of kindling crackling in a fire. While there aren’t discernible repeating rhythmic patterns, Hennies facilitates a realm of rhythmic activity, an ecosystem for these sounds to evoke and eventually shift. High pitched chimes enter near the five minute mark, adding a pitch element to the texture, albeit one that is irregular. The piece increases in density and intensity near the nine minute mark, with clangoring gestures across several contrasting instruments. The remaining eight minutes of the piece return to more finely granulated textures and draw the listener into waves of activity that occur inside of sonic continuity.

The process of composing and creating side by side was decidedly democratic, with Pisaro-Liu and Stuart consulting closely on the content every step of the way. Once again, the virtuosity at play in this piece is defined by what the performer does as opposed to what they should be able to do. side by side is divided into two parts: Part I is scored for bass drum and cymbals, and Part II for vibraphone and glockenspiel. Static textures are punctuated by tolling hits on the skin of the bass drum in Part I, as register becomes a structural stand-in for more discrete pitch. Friction and scraping sounds exist in conjunction with more articulated struck sounds. A slow building crescendo on a rolled cymbal frames the dramatic final minutes of the movement. Pitch becomes a more salient parameter in Part II, as Pisaro-Liu weaves melodic fragments and over-ringing verticalities into a meditation. Silence also plays a major role in the piece, dividing up the prayer-like phrases with contemplative consideration.

Subtractions then is Greg Stuart’s virtuosic anti-virtuoso statement — the assertion that the path to arriving at a meaningful level of instrumental and musical demands in a new collaborative work runs through the individual performer’s unique personality on the instrument. Sarah Hennies and Michael Pisaro-Liu prove to be the perfect partners in Stuart’s journey, open to a liberated vision of the commissioning process and hungry to nevertheless find their way to a substantial and compelling final product.

- Dan Lippel