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36’
for retuned cello and audio
commissioned by Anton Lukoszevieze
"The Trilogy Tapes’ first CD presents a studio recording of Jack Sheen’s Solo for Cello, a 35’ work written for Anton Lukoszevieze, the cellist, artist, and Director of the group Apartment House, renowned for their recent recordings of John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Jim O’Rourke, amongst many others.
"Throughout the piece, the cello is microtonally retuned and prepared with a heavy metal mute, thinning out it’s sound by dampening the instrument’s natural resonance. The majority of the piece is played on harmonics, a technique where the cellist only lightly touches the strings with their finger rather than with the full pressure required to normally produce the rich tones associated with the instrument. Instead, the resulting sound is hollow and unstable, but bright and glistening. Similarly, the bow is wielded with an extreme and abnormally delicate touch, shunning traditional cello playing technique to bring out the airy sounds of the bow’s hair whisping across the strings where it can balance as an equal with the pitches as they flicker in and out of focus.
"Although informed by slow moving and long-form music associated with practices ranging from deep-listening to ambient and drone, Solo for Cello fills these spacious moulds with hyperactive, virtuosic, and relentless music. Dominated by rapidly descending arpeggios and splintered, pointillistic isorhythms – an early form an algorithmic composition originating from the 14th century – the piece presents panels of knotted rhythmic patterns that constantly expand and contract on an almost imperceptible level. Mechanical repetition is shunned in favour of imperfect reoccurrence, punctuated at times by temperamental dirges stretched out to near breaking point.
"Rather than offering a gestural counterpoint to the cello’s material, the electronics provide a background wash to its intensely kinetic activity: different shades of noise and heavily processed field recordings combine in a variety of fragile sonic blocks that subtly shift our perception of the acoustic sound, like suddenly placing the instrument in a series of different environments.
"Solo for Cello is an intense but hypnotic listen, at once reaching out from the 17th century viol suites of Marin Marais, to the systematic rhythmic spasms of Mark Fell, and the radiant, unfurling journeys of Eliane Radique. Best listened to quietly on speakers placed as far away as possible."
Press
"Sheen’s work is strangely magical in its evocations, and toys mercilessly with perceptions of time and of noise versus music, but its twelve-part structure leads you on a deeply involving journey through instability and threat to eventual stillness. It’s a tough but rewarding listen from a composer who clearly has plenty to say that’s fresh and provocative; Lukoszevieze’s performance brilliantly reflects his very human struggles with this thorny material, in a close, authentic recording that captures every sonic nuance."
(The Strad)
"The fragility of Sheen’s composition is the source of its intensity. There is a constant awareness of the stakes of keeping the whirlwind at balance. It feels conversational; subtle shifts build a narrative of feeling that, once tapped into, become seductively immersive. Solo for Cello is something sharp, demanding alertness and engaging instinct.
"Playful and emotional, Solo for Cello offers a refreshing exercise for complacent listeners. In the right space, Sheen’s performance grips with precision that is never lost in the murk. A rare listen with an aftertaste of baroque."
(Cusp Magazine)
“Sheen’s Solo for Cello (and fixed audio) was the highlight, an extensive, ghostly work played by Apartment House’s indefatigable artistic director, Anton Lukoszevieze. Imagine a baroque dance suite – with the familiar figurations of arpeggios, quick finger work and string crossing – played muted and whispered a few galaxies away, and you get the idea.”
(The Observer, review of the Wigmore Hall performance by Fiona Maddocks)
“... an elegantly unassuming title for a piece that’s half an hour long and shifts your perception of the very fast and the very slow, and quite a lot of other dichotomies too... plunge into a beguiling and perception warping world [of] delirious energies so forensically but elementally produced.”
(Tom Service, BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show)