SLENDER TREES features the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) in a string quartet formation, with the composer on piano and live electronics using Max/MSP. Rooted in the tradition of score-based composition, the album develops as a contemporary electronic soundscape – meditative, melancholic, and ambient in tone. As the title suggests, the music reflects the vertical elegance and quiet strength of slender trees.
Inspired by a drawing of the same title by Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, the work premiered at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Scent of Trees – the first movement – is enveloped in a contemporary electronic soundscape, with the composer on piano at both the beginning and end. Built on a meditative cello ostinato, the melody rises through the viola to the violin’s highest register, echoing the towering grace of slender trees.
Horizontally Hatching. A rhythmically complex movement driven by minimalist electronics. The horizontal harmonic structures evolve into a vibrant contrapuntal texture, with two- and three-note groupings within a dynamic pulse.
Fragile Ambiance brings the mellow voice of the viola gently supported by the piano, carrying a melancholic and intimate melody above a calm foundation of sustained cello lines.
Horizontal Hatching introduces a sudden shock – characterized by a violent, distorted sound – revealing a darker, more abrasive character.
Sensuous Geometry is an introspective, sighing movement that mirrors the elegance of slender trees. The music evokes a tranquil, melancholic embrace within a delicate spectral cloud.
Absence, the final movement, dissolves into abstraction. A non-tonal texture fades into silence through layers of multi-channel sampled noise derived from the muted strings.
American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME):
Ben Russel, violinLaura Lutzke, violinCaleb Burhans, violaClarice Jensen, cello (artistic director)
SLENDER TREESwas commissioned by ACME, on the initiative of AFSMK – American Friends of SMK / The National Gallery of Denmark, on the occasion of the exhibition Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art, organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark.
Supported by: Koda Culture, the Danish Arts Foundation, Augustinus Fonden, and Knud Højgaards Fond.
