Tessa Brinckman
Take Wing, Roll Back
USA NEW FOCUS RECORDINGS FCR396 CD (2024)
Accomplished work by this modernist flute player, on which she performs eight compositions by diverse composers, some of them very recent – Norio Fukushi, Andile Khumalo, Todd Barton, Cara Stacey, and Shirish Korde are represented, along with her own works, and she’s accompanied by Caroline Delume, Kathleen Supove, Horomona Horo and Todd Barton.
She writes to me that she has a “southern hemisphere take on new music”, referring I suppose to her origins in New Zealand although she now lives in New York City, and hopes I enjoy the “diverse instrumentation”. Tessa Brinckman tends towards compositions that feature “synesthesia, dialect, and innate meter”, and also favours any work with a geopolitical subtext. This last theme is evident on several pieces here: her own ‘Taniwha’ composition, which refers directly to Maori myths of spiritual protectors and the afterlife; ‘Wade Through Water’ and ‘Zeuze’, which are critical of colonialist attitudes towards African culture; and ‘A Cracticus Fancie’, which manages to layer in references to Irish folk music and the 1930s American depression alongside a story drawn from Australian First Nations culture. Of these, ‘Taniwha’ succeeds in conveying a vague sense of eeriness in its wind-like utterances and halting rhythms.
There’s also ‘Tenderness of Cranes’, composed by Korde in 1990 and apparently something of a favourite in the repertoire of modern flautists, which cleverly manages to incorporate Japanese musical culture in a Western framework, doing much to evoke our sympathy towards these beautiful birds. (12/02/2024)