Sarah Ruth and Monte Espina's "Cuatro Estaciones"

The Covid-19 pandemic changed us all, in one way or another: through the dance of denial and death, enforced isolation and introspection, longing for community, or a level of attention to our immediate environment that we'd previously never paid while forging ahead, lost in our thoughts, oblivious to what was around us. All art that has appeared in its wake is somehow marked by the experience, although the response may be indirect or tacit.

These days I'm not writing regularly, but this release is special, not just because it exemplifies pandemic-referential art, but because its creators are, I think, the inheritors of my friend, the musician/visual artist/poet/educator/broadcaster Dennis Gonzalez's project of nurturing a homegrown experimental underground in North Texas, using a variety of media. Cuatro Estaciones is a collaboration between Sarah Ruth Alexander and Monte Espina, the duo of Miguel Espinel and Ernesto Montiel. 

Alexander grew up on a farm in the Texas Panhandle, surrounded by silence and space. Her education included studies with Meredith Monk, and she now teaches voice, piano, and improvisation (a class in Deep Listening is scheduled for April 8 at Oil & Cotton in Dallas). She contributed a chapter on "Community Building Through Collaboration" to the academic text Art As Social Practice: Technologies for Change (Routledge). She performs solo and in various ensembles, including the feminist improv trio Bitches Set Traps.

Alexander and Montiel are both radio presenters on KUZU 92.9 FM (he: Sonido Tumbarrancho, second/fourth/fifth Thursdays from 10PM-midnight; she: Tiger D, Tuesdays 8-10PM, they: In Praise of Covers, third Sunday 8-10PM). They've curated performances at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios in Denton, culminating in December 2022's two-day Molten Plains Fest, which presented world-class performers Rob Mazurek, Susan Alcorn, Luke Stewart, Henna Chou, and Weasel Walter, among others. On his own, Montiel has brought innovative talent including Peter Brotzmann, Heather Leigh, Damon Smith, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Jaap Blonk, Wendy Eisenberg, and Atomic to Oak Cliff venues The Wild Detectives (a bookstore with a big backyard) and Texas Theatre (where Lee Oswald was arrested).

Montiel's father passed away in Venezuela two days before the pandemic quarantine began in Denton, and Monte Espina recorded their album Pa the following day, awash in an ocean of loss and uncertainty. That autumn, they came together with Alexander to improvise and record in the woods at Joe Snow's Aquatic Plants in Argyle, near Denton, amid ponds, trails, and creeks, performing for a small, invited audience, with Alexander's partner Stephen Lucas providing audio and video documentation. Each succeeding season, they recorded in a different location within the property, their quiet electroacoustic improvisation blending with sounds of nature (and human activity -- the occasional overflying airplane). The recordings were edited and mastered by Andrew Weathers for his Full Spectrum label.

In meditation, we sometimes listen for the moment when a sound enters our consciousness, or the one when it fades away. At other times, we listen to the space around sounds. Cuatro Estaciones is ideally suited to such focused listening. The musicians attend closely and respond to each other and the sounds in their environment. Espinel's percussion array, Alexander's small instruments and voice, and Montiel's electronics blend with the rustling of leaves, the crackling of a fire (in "Winter"), bird songs, and even the sounds of Alexander's dog Joan as she explores the objects.

In her book This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, Susan Rogers -- once Prince's recording engineer, now a neuroscientist -- notes that with today's technology, every person carries their own individually curated soundtrack, which they consume passively. Cuatro Estaciones makes the argument that musical sounds -- indeed, all the sounds of our world -- reward more active engagement, if we will only be present and attentive. A lesson of the pandemic we can perhaps carry forward.