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Celesta

by Michael Jon Fink

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1.
Call 01:30
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2.
Cold Pastoral 02:31
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3.
Bells 01:37
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4.
The Singing River 02:11
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5.
First Star, Last Star 02:53
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6.
Post-Impression 02:18
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7.
Ruins 04:44
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8.
Sunless 01:39
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9.
Nocturne for the Three Times 04:01
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10.
Softly Yellowed Moon 01:41
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11.
Triptych 06:01
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12.
After the End 01:52
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about

Celesta is a suite of a dozen quietly transcendent, gem-like celesta solos—a slowly unfolding ribbon of short pensive pieces composed over the past year and performed by the composer. The individual pieces, ranging in length from under two minutes to just over six minutes, are notable for the beautifully simple ways in which they reveal themselves through repetition and elegantly fashioned variation. The composer notes that these works “project a lyrical world of quiet intensity, bathed in the glow of delicately ringing metal.”

Taken as a whole, this collection of solos creates its own graceful musical arc, and it is certainly among the largest statements ever composed specifically for the celesta alone. (For this recording, one of Los Angeles’s finest five-octave Schiedmayer celestas was used.)

A longtime proponent of expressive solo celesta music, Fink contributed Celesta Solo (1981) to the first Cold Blue anthology in the mid-1980s (which was reissued as a CD in the early 2000s), and his solo work For Celesta, performed by Bryan Pezzone, appeared on the 2001 Cold Blue CD titled I Hear It in the Rain (CB0004).

REVIEWS:

“Fink’s hardly the first composer to have featured the celesta’s ethereal sound. It’s heard in Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, and Holst’s The Planets, for starters, but two of the better known cases show how amenable it is to contrasting moods: while it adds enchantment to ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ in Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, it intensifies the macabre tone of Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Few have embraced the instrument as passionately as Fink, however, with his Celesta Solo included on the first Cold Blue anthology in the mid-‘80s and his solo work For Celesta on the 2001 Cold Blue release I Hear It in the Rain. Celesta, however, is the first time an entire release by the LA-based composer and CalArts teacher has been devoted to solo performances using the instrument. The dozen lustrous settings, many in the one- to two-minute range, and the longest six, form a delicate, shimmering suite of sorts. Composed over the past year, Fink’s quietly lyrical material exudes a gentle, even magical quality, especially when the sustain emanating from the keys creates the impression of a glow and when the celesta’s twinkle at times resembles a toy piano. Many a piece is pensive and delivered at a slow tempo, which tends to deepen the music’s dreamlike allure. Track titles such as ‘From the Singing River,’ ‘Ruins,’ and ‘Softly Yellowed Moon’ enhance the material’s evocative potential, even if that dimension wouldn’t suffer terribly in the absence of titles. Without other instruments accompanying the celesta, the music possesses a simplicity that doesn’t lessen its appeal; on the contrary, the austere presentation allows Fink’s artistry to be all the more perceptible. So charming is the result, one wonders why recordings featuring the instrument in a solo capacity are so rare.” —Ron Schepper, Textura

“In the hands of Michael Jon Fink, the celesta is a medium for extended meditations on the nature of repetition and development; the composition that he named after the instrument consists of twelve brief, quiet, and very beautiful pieces linked by their exploration of those themes.” —CD Hotlist

“If you thought it wasn’t possible to have a wholesome, well-balanced album of music for solo celeste, you were wrong! Michael Jon Fink, playing his own work, specializes in the beauty achieved when isolating one set of timbres; the entire work is an entrancing piece of minimalism—a slow walk through deliberate, almost improvisatory pages that feels like a memory trying to be remembered. Piece titles like ‘Cold Pastoral’, ‘Softly Yellowed Moon’, and ‘Nocturne for the Three Times’ add just the right hint of imagery for these wandering, melancholy pieces. An overall sense of dreamy quarantine is taken further by the album art: a photo of a dust devil on Mars by NASA.” —American Record Guide

"Each piece feels like a small and crystalline world of its own.” —Second Inversion

credits

released February 8, 2019

All music composed and performed by Michael Jon Fink

Produced by Michael Jon Fink and Jim Fox
Recorded, edited, and mastered by Scott Fraser, Architecture, Los Angeles, September 28–29, 2018.
Schiedmayer five-octave Concert Celesta provided by Kasimoff-Blüthner Piano Co., Hollywood, CA.

Design by Jim Fox
Cover photo: Rick Cox. Interior photo: NASA (dust devil on Mars).

Compositions © 2018 Michael Jon Fink, Deathless Moon Music (BMI)
CD p & © 2019 Cold Blue Music
www.coldbluemusic.com

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Michael Jon Fink Los Angeles, California

Composer-performer Michael Jon Fink’s characteristically reductive but expressive music has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “lustrous,” “metaphysically tinged,” and “unapologetically tranquil.” LA Weekly has written that his music is “of ethereal simplicity . . . he has shaped and refined his spare style . . . it is distinctly his own.” ... more

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