Either/Or - The Atlas (2025) Hi-Res

Composer and pianist Richard Carrick’s third release on New Focus, The Atlas, maps new territory onto the familiar landscape of the piano quintet. Carrick explores a series of techniques that create an extended keyboard vocabulary, utilizing percussive effects and preparations. In recent years, Carrick has turned his focus towards graphic notation and improvisation, and The Atlas mixes these alternative approaches with conventional notation, creating a multi-practice performance. His omnivorous artistic spirit is ever present, as aspects of The Atlas are influenced by such wide ranging sources as Algerian folkloric music, Tom Waits, John Cage, Henry Cowell, Iancu Dumitrescu, and Morton Feldman.

Carrick’s title, The Atlas, references Peter Turchi's book Maps of the Imagination, specifically a passage that examines the link between maps and narratives: "Maps suggest explanations, and while explanations reassure us, they also inspire us to ask more questions, consider other possibilities. To ask for a map is to say, ‘Tell me a story.’” Carrick extrapolates this paradigm to his work with inside-the-piano techniques, exploring the territory on his own before notating his discoveries and inviting others to enter into the world with him.

With the first prepared keyboard tones of “Compass,” Carrick is already mapping out unexpected territory for the listener. The steady, gong-like attacks of the piano establish a regular pulse whose divisions are gradually inhabited by the other instruments as they enter. First, the strings imitate the dry attack of the piano with pizzicati, slowly bringing in swells and taut ponticello twangs and animating the rhythmic grid with triplets. Carrick varies ostinato material subtly, exploring the coloristic shadings of changing one or two notes within a modal context.

“SeaGliss” is written in graphic notation, leaving room for the performers to interpret the realization of gestures. Punctuations, skittering figures, and tactile bursts inside the keyboard splash the texture with brilliance while the strings play long, ethereal glissandi. After expressive, energetic string solos, the entire ensemble arrives at a static halo of overtone sound (including e-bows in the piano) before the movement closes with a series of swooping gestures in the strings and a cacophonous flourish in the piano.

“Penumbra” has two sources of inspiration — a Frank Browning painting depicting the outer shadow of an object, and Algerian Chaabi music as celebrated in the movie El Gusto. A driving 6/4 groove comprised of a rumbling bass line, high pitched percussion, and a skittering rhythm in the strings underpins the movement. The violin and cello take turns flying over the top of this ostinato with earthy solo lines. A contrasting middle section features modal figuration in unison between violin and piano and then violin and cello.

“Expanse” opens with a muted, spinning keyboard arpeggio that produces a contrapuntal melodic line through the manipulation of the strings inside the keyboard with preparations. The strings enter with sighing swelled figures as a contrast to the percussive attacks in the piano. This interdependent textural relationship allows Carrick to explore and cycle through a long form harmonic progression and revel in the resonance of the ensemble.

The short “Interlude” is catalyzed by a repetitive gesture in the piano of a luminous chord, three repeated high pitches, and a sustained low register pedal. Around these towering verticalities, the strings play elastic, rhapsodic material. “la terre” is a transcription of a work for piano and pre-recorded tracks, mapped here onto the piano quartet. Its quirky, angular character owes much to the panoply of timbres and effects Carrick is able to elicit from the piano, while the strings play furious, insistent passages and strident, charged interjections.

The next two paired movements include some of the work’s most freely improvised music. A short “Solo” luxuriates in more conventional pianistic timbres; with the pedal depressed throughout, Carrick spins a halo of accumulated sound. That pad provides the launching point for the string entrance in “Cartographers,” a movement of luminosity for strings only that progresses from shimmering harmonics through shrouded muted plucks, and oblique virtuosity to tapped non-pitched fluttering.

“Journey through the Spheres” closes the album with a reprise of the spinning, muted motive heard in “Expanse.” Carrick uses this texture here to explore spectral possibilities, assigning the strings to highlight high partials emerging from the piano’s repeated figure. A powerful driving motive in the low register activates further spectral bloom, which Carrick alternates with sweeping keyboard arpeggios. It is a grand sonic close to a piece that is ultimately about mapping a new sound onto the time honored piano quartet instrumentation. Within that frame, Carrick explores many of the avenues that have recently piqued his interest, including improvisation, alternative notation, and non-Western music cultures. Working with his longtime collaborators of Either/Or, Jennifer Choi, Pala Garcia, Kal Sugatski and John Popham, they have refined an expressive and fluid performance practice that is beautifully on display in these recordings. The result is a compelling and fully formed statement from an artist who is constantly opening his ears to new sources of inspiration.

– Dan Lippel