From a Folio is a darkly sublime suite of six short pieces for cello and piano and one central piece for six cellos, a set of songs without words, performed by composer Michael Jon Fink and noted new-music cellist Derek Stein. As the music unfolds, the listener is drawn into a highly nuanced, lyrical sound world. Fink’s characteristically reductive but expressive style is evident throughout, as the set’s quiet intensity builds to a muted ecstasy and then returns to its more serene state. Fink’s music has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “lustrous” and “metaphysically tinged.” “[Fink’s music is] music that comes from the classical tradition, but that feels like it belongs somewhere other than the concert hall . . . texturally rich, meticulously crafted and delicately beautiful.” (Dusted magazine) “There’s something of Gavin Bryars’ evanescent emotional skill to Fink’s music, something of the soft spatial blur of the Evanses (Bill and Gil) … what gets me every time is its sheer and honest beauty.” (Misfit City, UK)

Derek Stein is a Los Angeles–based cellist who regularly tours the United States and overseas, performing with several of LA’s new-music groups, including the acclaimed wild Up (founded and led by Christopher Rountree), gnarwhallaby (with Brian Walsh, Matt Barbier, and Richard Valitutto), and Trio Terroir (with Mark Menzies and Dzovig Markarian, a group dedicated to music written after 1990).

REVIEWS:

“From a Folio is the perfect title for this CD. Each piece is one of a series of brilliant jewels as if cut from the same stone.”—Paul Muller, Sequenza21

“it’s beautiful, it’s sad, yet it’s full of hope. It’s music like this the world needs.”—Vital Weekly (Netherlands)

“I have come to love this music…. Nothing is what it seems at first, and yet it does not change from listen to listen. You do…. Very recommended.”—Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

“It’s quite haunting.” —La Folia

“From a Folio is a work as typically Cold Blue as they come: misleadingly simple, and gorgeous like contemporary music has no business to be.”—François Couture, Monsieur Délire’s Listening Diary

“From a Folio… presents a suite of six exquisite miniatures for cello and piano…as well as an additional piece for six cellos. The opening Invocation sets the tone for the release with haunting melody lines voiced in unison by the duo, Fink’s evocative neo-classical music gracefully rising and falling and characterized by delicacy in its execution. Pensive and ethereal by comparison, Hieroglyph follows, after which Melos unfolds with a controlled lyricism that nevertheless packs a powerful emotional punch. Like all of the settings, Aftersong is brief yet still long enough for Stein’s multi-layered cellos to dramatically swell and leave a strong mark on the listener. There’s an emotional and expressive arc to the release that becomes discernible over the course of its seven pieces, with the music slowly building in intensity and then decompressing as it works through its closing pieces. As striking as Stein’s solo set-piece Aftersong is, it’s the piano-cello duets that satisfy the most on this elegant set.” —Textura

“Beautiful.”—Nova Express (France)

“The seven short cinematic pieces here together barely top the 18-minute mark but pack plenty of emotion and feelings of solitude and introspection…. The instrumentation employed on From a Folio is sparse but fits the scene perfectly, like a recipe for tranquility; Fink plays piano, and is accompanied by cellist Derek Stein, and with the exception of one piece with no piano where cellos are multi-tracked, the general approach is with piano leading in a slow and deliberative way, with a single cello augmenting the proceedings with additional coloration and melody, albeit dark and heavily shaded in introverted moods and mystery. All taken together, this is an exceptional collection of vignettes conveying a single serene experience.” — Peter Thelen, Exposé magazine

“It has been raining lightly all day here and the sky is grey. The music on this EP fits the mood perfectly: a bit dark, stark, moody, somewhat sad, graceful, rather soothing in its own way. There are a minimum of notes used, yet each one evokes a feeling or spirit. Elegant, somber, majestic at times. It sounds as if the cello is overdubbed at times with a few sympathetic layers. I love the way the starkness of the notes ring quietly in the silence and evoke so many feelings. Very dreamy.” —Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter

“Derek Stein´s cello certainly seems to beseech ‘woe is me’ in the opening Invocation of From a Folio, Michael Jon Fink´s short but pregnant suite. Consisting of six pieces for piano and cello and one for six cellos, it is another of Cold Blue Music´s CD singles for brief, essential new listens. Though leading with such a lament, the rest of the folio unfolds like cozy but serious conversation between a couple, perhaps old, perhaps young, on a rainy afternoon. Each of the duo´s notes is spare but eloquently interplayed. Kitchen talk, no earth-shattering issues, no bottled up emotions uncorked or repressed secrets aired. Just the profundity of lives spent in equanimity, with a teapot and a lot of warmth in between.”—Stephen Fruitman, Avant Music News