Ju-Ping Song - Ju-Ping Song: Monad (2024)

Ju-Ping Song, one of today’s leading champions of contemporary music, presents four powerful two-piano works in this "thoroughly engaging" (Jed Distler) debut solo CD.

This "Monad" album opens with Lois V Vierk’s "Spin 2," featuring the premiere recording of Vierk’s 2018 arrangement. The composition, originally commissioned and premiered by Ursula Oppens and Frederic Rzewski, is "a masterpiece of canny construction and unfettered emotion that deserves a central place in the international canon of works for two pianos" (Jed Distler).

Molly Joyce’s "Rave" weaves a tapestry of acoustic and electronic materials. She explains that the work "incorporates an inverse relationship between live piano and pre-recorded electronics, exploring the sonic possibilities of this complex relationship as it evolves over the course of the piece. As the piece progresses, these separate and unusual inverse roles of the live piano and electronics gradually cross to ultimately supplant each other by assuming their more anticipated roles."

In Kate Moore’s intense "Bestiary," she explores "endlessly repeating and changing chords, activating the hammers against vibrating strings, pushing the playing to seemingly impossible speeds. The struggle to maintain constant acceleration, deceleration, and rhythmic morphing without pause for fifteen minutes creates an accumulation of tension and expectation in both pianist and listener that heightens the emotional power of her music" (Song).

The CD concludes with the premiere recording of Rahilia Hasanova’s angry "Monad," a composition that reflects the horrors Hasanova witnessed during the 1990 January Massacre of the civilian population in her native Baku, Azerbaijan, by the Russian army, during which she saw one of her neighbors killed. "A work of seriousness and substance" (Distler). Song, who gave the New York premiere, comments:

"It is caustic, emotional, wild, and full of the faded songs and harmonies of Azerbaijani culture. Written in Western notation, the music keeps wanting to burst out of its constraining note heads, rhythms, structures, run far and fast, and scream. It takes the pianist with it, willingly or not. It is music with a passion that cannot be contained; it is wild; it is raw; it is powerful and devastating."

Ju-Ping Song has inspired the creation of new works by both emerging under-40 composers as well as more established names. She has been a guest artist at the Darmstadt Contemporary Music Workshop, Tanglewood Music Center, Omaha Under the Radar, New Music Gathering, Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project, and the Center for New Music (San Francisco). Song is the founder and artistic director of NakedEye Ensemble, a flexible new music group based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, dedicated to promoting works by living composers.