““[The title track is a] really cool vocal work.”
”[Alex Eddington is] trying to combine some dark tones, some silly tones, traditional art songs, synthetic textures. And he’s revisiting and recombining music from the last 18 years. He wants it to be a portrait [of] his close collaborative relationship with soprano Kristin Mueller-Heaslip, and she plays a bunch of different protagonists through the album.”
”A Present From a Small Distant World: that’s where we’re at, we are a small world joined together.””
“The album, Eddington’s debut, features an eclectic set of electroacoustic sounds and texts by authors ranging from Shakespeare to an anonymous spam bot. But one constant running throughout is the remarkable voice of soprano Kristin Mueller-Heaslip, which can communicate meaning even with the absurdities of Scintillator (2008/2020), a world salad derived from spam, as well as with the earnest sentiments, transmitted through the electronic chaff of overlaying and processing, expressed in the Voyager statement. Her unaccompanied performance of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII, which Eddington set with dramatic leaps of register and dynamics, finds in this well-known text the austere, metaphysical dark cloud lurking behind the lyric’s evocation of eternal summer.
The highlight of this engaging recording is Time Will Erase (2009/2019), a twenty-minute-long opera for soprano and saxophone, the latter played by Jennifer Tran. Time Will Erase is a moving work based on the eventful, sometimes harrowing life of poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), who experienced some of the best and some of the worst aspects of Russian, and later Soviet, life.”
“One of the album’s leitmotifs is interstellar communication. Its inspiration is revealed in the title track where Mueller-Heaslip sings part of Jimmy Carter’s 1977 speech that launched the Voyager spacecraft. Onboard was the Golden Record, a phonographic metal disc with a cross-section of the words, images and music of humanity. Explains Eddington, “… there is something wonderful about sending greetings hurtling outward,” even though chances they will be intercepted are slim.
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Nieuwe Noten
February 8, 2021
by Ben Taffijn (translated by Lawrence Koch)
Original review in Dutch: https://www.nieuwenoten.nl/?p=10998
‘A Present From a Small Distant World’, to be released later this month by Redshift Records, can easily serve as a kind of testimony to Toronto composer Alex Eddington’s nearly 20-year collaboration with soprano Kristin Mueller-Heaslip and the work that has resulted from it. Both have a theatre background, which is particularly evident in the mini-opera ‘Time Will Erase’, the slightly shorter ‘The Stolen Child’ and the ‘Dennis Lee Songs’. We also find a number of fairly short pieces, including four clocking in at around two minutes, for guitar and electronics, without vocals.
But let’s start with the heart of this album, ‘Time Will Erase’. A poem by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova served as the basis for the libretto, written by Mueller-Heaslip - something that makes it clear that the collaboration between these two artists goes beyond that of a composer and a performer. What’s remarkable about this piece - and in fact all pieces on this album - is its very modest orchestration. In this piece, we hear only the soprano, who speaks,whispers, lisps, laughs and sings, and an alto saxophone - an impressive contribution by Jennifer Tran - which could easily be described as the second person, given the dialogue they perform together. And as I already mentioned above: this is pure theatre and what I find most special about it is that this dynamic duo gives you more than enough.
Besides the quarter of short instrumental pieces, there are three shorter compositions, including the title track ‘A Present From a Distant World’, containing the words of former US president Jimmy Carter. It’s really a piece for a choir, but here it’s in a form where Mueller-Heaslip is sampled extensively. There’s also a remarkable and very theatrical version for solo soprano of William Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet and the fascinating ‘Scintillator’ for voice and electronics. …