This album presents four West Coast composers—three from Southern California and one from Fairbanks, Alaska—writing haunting, generally quiet, sometimes lyric, occasionally pensive music for clarinet and bass clarinet accompanied by either string quartet or percussion and piano. All the pieces feature the playing of clarinetist/bass clarinetist Marty Walker.

Adams’s Dark Wind was written for Marty Walker and this album in 2001. Although it is a process-driven piece involving polyrhythms and ever-widening intervals, its rolled percussion and piano parts and quietly expressive clarinet lines lend it the feeling of a freely composed work.

The Fink, Cox, and Fox quintets were written for Marty Walker in 1990, and given their premieres by him that same year at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (L.A.C.E.) gallery. These pieces were released in 1992 in a limited pressing on the short-lived Raptoria Caam label, a company run by composer/performer Maria Newman.

Fink’s Thread of Summer is a continuous melody filtered through the various timbres of the quintet’s instrumental combinations. Cox’s When April May floats a lyric line over a repeating harmonic structure. Fox’s Between the Wheels is a series of quiet bass clarinet statements, accompanied by violin harmonics, set against a cycling tapestry of string tremolos. Among the four ensemble pieces, clarinetist Walker has nested two Interludes—very short improvisations that delicately hover at the threshold of audibility.

REVIEWS:

“In turns beautiful, expressive, contemplative and haunting, this is music that slows the listener’s world to a crawl; he is thus free to explore all its wonders, both its lights, shimmering and bright, and its shadows, creeping intently over the surfaces of things. Recommended.” —Incursion Music Review

“Warm dronic music that shimmers in sensuality…just plain old beautiful music…delicate music.” —21st Century Music magazine

“To say there’s little variety on CB009—most of the music is slow and quiet—would be a victory for lazy listening, but a readjustment of listener priorities and expectations is in order. The performances are about as ego-free as one can find, and they seem indivisible from the compositions themselves. The disc’s playing time is short, but this is just the right amount of a good thing.” —Fanfare magazine

“Musical constructions that suggest, and invite, quiet, focused reflection.” —International Record Review

“A rarefied atmosphere and great subtlety in the interweaving of the structure.” —Il Manifesto (Italy)

“Reed player Marty Walker leads us deep into a seamless collection of quiet, ruminative chamber pieces by West Coast composers. As different as they are, the works presented here are of a piece. The entire disc is perfectly sequenced; the individual works flow together like a journey, with Walker’s warm and very human tone taking the part of guide and companion. In the best Cold Blue tradition there is plenty of room for the listener here; just enough space to walk a satisfying path between meditative silence and fully sense-engaging sound.” —Dusted Magazine

“This is a beautiful collection of six compositions for small ensembles [clarinet, vibraphone & marimba, piano, violin, viola and cello] which repay careful and close listening. They are quietly experimental and new, yet tuneful enough for even the most conservative of classical music listeners.” —Rupert Loydell, Tangents (UK)

“Fink’s Thread of Summer is an articulate, contemplative work that puts forth a rich autumnal half-light.… Fox’s gentle Between the Wheels shows that strings can create a hovering, birdlike atmosphere.… A success.” —Richard Grooms, The Improvisor

“Quiet and unashamedly tonal writing…out of time, in a way.” —Signal to Noise magazine

“Four enchanting pieces of chamber music… linked by an enveloping mood of quietness, a pensive and subdued lyricism.” —Blow Up (Italy)

“Four slices of chamber music…punctuated by two short, quiet clarinet interludes by Marty Walker. Adams’s Dark Wind lives up to its title with gorgeous acoustic instrument atmospherics that flow and darkly brood with the best of ’em—very minimal, pleasurable and impressive. In Fink’s Thread of Summer, a forlorn melody is bandied about between Marty and the rest of the ensemble. Cox’s When April May ‘floats a lyric line over a repeating harmonics structure,’ while Fox’s Between the Wheels boasts a ‘series of quiet bass clarinet statements, accompanied by violin harmonics, heard against a cycling tapestry of string tremolos.’ All in all, this CD gives the impression of being one long, flowing work of a single composer, rather than four, and stands as a fine presentation of austere understatement.” —Arcane Candy

“Pieces that glide along some quiet harbors…. This is chamber music that could as easily give meaning to the long lanes of palms lining the streets of Los Angeles, swaying in the hot breeze of the Southern California nights. Aglow with the lights of the city, this music could accompany us anywhere.”—I Heard a Noise webzine (Romania)

“The overall rhetoric across the entire album is one of quietude. Listening to these tracks will be served best by a setting with as little interference as possible…. Dark Wind requires the listener to be keenly aware of the work’s subtle textures…. One might almost say that the Adams composition orients the attentive listener in preparation for the pieces by Fink, Cox, and Fox that follow it on the album.”—Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio