Geographies & Geometries

Chamber Works By Matthew Malsky

Matthew Malsky composer

Worcester Chamber Music Society
C-Squared
Radius Ensemble

Release Date: July 8, 2014
Catalog #: RR7891
Format: Digital & Physical
21st Century
Chamber
Cello
Piano
Violin

An individual’s experiences might well be laid out like a map: some moments connected to others, some isolated, and still some yet to be explored. Composer Matthew Malsky creates an aural map of emotions on his debut Ravello release, GEOGRAPHIES & GEOMETRIES. The composer remarks, “More specifically, in composing I’m trying to adapt the sensations and the emotional responses evoked by particular places and incidents (real or imagined) into sonic form.”

In Archipelago of Regrets, each variation of the theme illustrates a part of the experience of disenchantment, ending in quiet resolution. -42.489° 108.756° (elegy), an elegy for two violas, is in the form of a palindrome in which after the climax, the piece runs backwards, undoing what came before as if prematurely ending. Escaping the Delta, inspired by blues legend Robert Johnson, who often synthesized different musical styles, reimagines a blues form blended with traditions of concert music. By using “reduced thematic material” in same river twice, Malsky intends “to capture the experience of encountering something new in a familiar experience.”

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Artist Information

Matthew Malsky

Composer

Matthew Malsky's (b. 1961) compositional style is characterized by its rhythmic vitality, dramatically crafted gestures, melodic angularity, and irony. His music has been described as economical and elegant in both its technical and intellectual rigor, and in the way cutting-edge electronics are fully integrated with live performance. Malsky's compositions speak with intensity, seriousness, and an underlying inquisitiveness about the boundaries between a complex world and a searching interior voice.