Boyce / Trio Cavatina - Some Consequences of Four Incapacities - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Composer Douglas Boyce, composer in residence of acclaimed new music ensemble counter)induction, releases his debut portraig album, featuring three of his kinetic chamber works in riveting performances by counter)induction, Aeolus Quartet, and Trio Cavatina. Boyce's music reflects a wide array of interests, from Renaissance traditions to modernist aesthetics, embedding these influences in works that oscillate between tightly organized ensemble mechanisms and carefully curated moments of independent instrumental freedom. Boyce opens the program in a haze with the murky intersection of '102nd & Amsterdam.' His Piano Quartet No. 1 begins with Bartokian off-kilter accents, alternating with hocketed passages between viola and piano. Finally 'Fortuitous Variations' opens with similarly angular music, pillars of repeated octaves in the piano alternating with swooping gestures in the strings. Douglas Boyce is a composer with a powerful focus and impetus in his music, but also a fantastic capacity for expressive range and an uncanny ability to sustain complex rhetorical arguments within his sophisticated structures.