Modney's "Ascending Primes"

New York City really has it all, as someone once sang (now including earthquakes). The timeless appeal of the ultimate terminal city pulls creatives from all over. While the city's center of gravity might have shifted from uptown to Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn (and whither thence?), the Apple remains the epicenter of creative music in America. As a New York expat living in Texas, I would be remiss not to mention the vibrant local scenes in Houston, Austin, Dallas/Denton, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, etc. But for creatives per square mile, Gotham stands predominate. And such density raises the bar for innovation, and accelerates the interchange of ideas.

In this century, the city's most forward thinking musicians have blurred the lines between classical and jazz, composition and improvisation, clearing the way for all manner of productive cross-pollination. Ascending Primes, the new double CD from Modney -- a violinist (formerly known as Josh Modney), member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, and executive director of Wet Ink Ensemble -- is a stellar example of such a synthesis. It's due for a May 3 release on Pyroclastic.

The six Modney compositions included here utilize Just Intonation, a tuning system based on whole number ratios, as opposed to the divisions of the octave used in the more familiar Equal Temperament. (NB: I've wrestled with Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music, but only know enough about Just Intonation to get myself in trouble.) Modney says that the prime numbers in the system's whole number ratios have distinct sonic characteristics, which elicit different primal emotions. By juxtaposing Just Intonation with Equal Temperament and the timbres of voices and instruments, Modney seeks to widen the gap between consonance and dissonance, and explore "the potential for beauty and terror" within that spectrum. Each of the pieces on Ascending Primes is meant to embody the qualities of a different prime number. They are performed by groups of corresponding numbers of musicians, with the string players' instruments tuned to whole number ratios, rather than the customary fifths. 

Modney is a highly distinctive instrumentalist who employs a ferocious attack (showcased in the opening solo "Ascender") and enjoys quick-cutting between achingly gorgeous melody and harsh noise to create an effect like glimpsing a parallel reality (as depicted in the Ellsworth Kelly postcard collages that adorn the album's packaging). He uses a distortion pedal, controlled by a volume pedal, to accentuate the difference tones that occur when two notes are played at the same time. On the trio piece "Lynx," he and electronic musician Sam Pluta (whom I first heard on Ingrid Laubrock's Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt) respond to Mariel Roberts' cello lines. The string-quartet-plus-piano "Everything Around It Moves" contrasts dissonance (the tearing sounds and slashing strings early in the piece) with consonance (the solos from Kyle Armbrust's viola and Cory Smythe's piano), culminating in an ensemble section that builds to an uplifting resolution.

While the first disc is composition-focused, the two long, multi-part pieces on the second disc bring the players' improvisational abilities to the fore. For the 26-minute, four-part "Fragmentation and the Single Form," the ensemble expands to a septet, adding Charmaine Lee's voice and electronics, Ben LaMar Gay's cornet and synth, Dan Peck's tuba, and Kate Gentile's drums to the piano and two violins. As the piece begins, the strings repeatedly build tension to near the breaking point before Gentile's cathartic drumming releases it, and Modney's distorted violin drowns everything in white noise. An impressionistic interval from Lee and Gay leads to a section in metronomic rhythm, interrupted by percussion explosions and frenetic tuba solos. A succeeding series of solos establishes a theme, driven by Gentile's crisp propulsion, before it's once more overcome by noise. Then the theme returns minus the driving beat, rendered by Gay and Lee with string backing and tuba counterpoint. Modney takes up the theme before Gentile kicks things into gear, and you might be surprised to hear the entire ensemble rocking out (with solos from Gay, Smythe, and Modney) before the droning denouement.

The 33-minute, three-part "Event Horizon" features an undectet (that's eleven pieces, y'all), including improvising adepts Anna Webber (tenor sax), Nate Wooley (trumpet), David Byrd-Marrow (horn), Eddy Kwon (violin), Joanna Mattrey (viola) and Lester St. Louis (cello). The first part opens with an explosion of dissonance from Modney, overlaid with cascading notes from Smythe, giving way to an ensemble drone on all the prime intervals of D. Wooley takes a meditative solo, interrupted by percussion-led eruptions and undergirded by strings and horns playing a descending progression. The second part begins with violin and tuba playing a sparse backing for Byrd-Marrow's horn solo before the ensemble joins in. Then Modney and Smythe provide a dissonant background for Kwon's spiky improv. Webber and Wooley join with more pyrotechnics before all is subsumed in a drone, and the brass play an arrangement of a violin fragment from the first part. The third part begins with a fierce viola improv from Mattrey. More rocking out ensues, with solos from Webber, Wooley, Smythe, and Modney. Mariel Roberts and St. Louis improvise a cello duet, replete with extended techniques, then the piece (and album) ends on a 60 Hz drone -- familiar as heartbeat to players of guitars with single-coil pickups.

Reading this back, I realize that mere description sells this music short. Modney's music might be scientific and mathematical in its design, but it's meant to be experienced emotively and viscerally. It gives the lie to the belief that contemporary classical music is merely an academic exercise. Ascending Primes is the state of the art in creative music in 2024 -- highly recommended to lovers of all sorts of improvised music and even progressive rock, as well as new music aficionados. Also, this album, along with Ches Smith's Laugh Ash (produced, like Ascending Primes, by David Breskin) is proof positive, if any is needed, that Pyroclastic is more than just "a jazz label." (And to hell with genre Balkanization.) So there.