Music Review: Susan Botti – ‘River Spirits’

The website of composer Susan Botti describes her River Spirits as a “theatrical motet” and a “futuristic abstract fable.” Those two phrases nicely encapsulate the fusion of past and future one can discern in both the instrumental parts and the vocals in this four-movement work. It calls for three voices plus an ensemble of contemporary and early music instruments, including one I’d never encountered before: an electric viola da gamba. Botti, Mary Bonhag, and Katherine Lerner Lee, accomplished vocalists all, handle the vocals, which employ extended techniques.

River Spirits

The long “Prologue” begins with a period of dark, nervous instrumental posturing. Then the voices enter, piling on top of one another, singing and vocalizing together and in opposition. We’re thrust into multiple worlds at once: figurative depictions, abstract 20th-century modernism, caution-to-the-winds elocution, all in a distinct experimental “voice.”

The quiet opening music returns. The voices harmonize on the abstract lyrics, timbres oscillating between operatic and nasal, flat and with vibrato. Harmonized passages alternate with collages of words and tones. Voices and instruments trade falling-away phrases, which, punctuated by a stab of vocal sounds resembling double-tongued reeds or brass, further the feeling of anxiety. As the movement heads to a conclusion, a wordless flurry of smooth harmonies asserts itself, then breaks up into stichomythic gestures before fading in favor of a lone “voice” whistling.

Senses

Flowing on, the suite slides into a shorter movement called “Scent,” defined by vocal growls, grimaces, howls, yowls, yodels, and sighs. The music peaks with high chimp-like squeaks that vie with the violin for upper-range dominance. But interestingly, this movement concludes with a peaceful resolution.

The bracing “Taste” opens with pleasant harmonizing but soon explodes in frantic animal sounds and hard-to-describe vocalizing that wordlessly expresses a crooked rainbow of emotions. A clamorous bed of orchestration surges underneath. With all the interesting vocalizing, there is original, carefully conceived and calibrated instrumental accompaniment throughout this suite, made all the more interesting by the collision of old and new sonic technology.

“Taste” progresses into a more lighthearted mood, still using far-extended vocal techniques. But in opposition to the first two movements, this one rises into a burst of distressed cacophony at the end.

Lyrics, again abstract, return in the final movement, “Cool to the Touch.” The instrumentalists softly dominate its early minutes. When the vocals enter it’s in a songlike manner, with a slow common-time rhythm and a repeated chord progression shuffling along beneath long-held vocal tones.

Halfway through, that steadiness falls away and an aggressive stop-and-start journey begins. A low growl recalls the previous movement. But softness returns and continues to dominate the movement’s 11 minutes as the voices play with the mostly one-syllable words – “so cool, so sweet…” We feel, as we haven’t through most of the suite, that we’re hearing a song of sorts, something with more concrete meaning. Finally, a quietly dissonant chord brings the proceedings to a close.

Words and a Waltz

In the first of two additional tracks, Botti, accompanied only by the jostling sound of water, intones the curious lyrics of the “Prologue” with meaning-laden expressivity, giving it a fever-dream quality. “Awake / Am I here? / Reaching for / Is this real?”

The album concludes with the spirited “Eau de Waltz.” This amusing little piece dates, like River Spirits, from 2023, but in contrast it offers a homey Strauss-like waltz feel. Botti vocalizes in rhythm but uses stretched techniques and wavering melodies that suggest improvisation. With accompaniment by bass clarinet and double bass only, and ending with a wee whistling tag, it’s a nice way to end a thought-provoking, consistently interesting and often briskly challenging set of music.

River Spirits is out now on New Focus Recordings.