I first become acquainted with the music of Alvin Singleton during his composer residency with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1985-88. That time period produced what is still arguably his best works, and certainly most heard, that of Shadows, After the Fallen Crumbs, and A Yellow Rose Petal. This album of chamber music left a shallow taste in my mouth, for the substantial orchestral genre that he created 20 years ago seems abandoned to a rather vapid, timeless, timid, even content-less music that leaves me, for the most part, cold. We have brief flourishes of music that appear and are repeated later; some quasi-minimalist functional snippets of pseudo-melodies and rhythmic patterns, and a series of rather disconnected episodes that have little to do with one another.
To be sure, the early work Argoru III for flute (he is now up to VIII) is a lovely twist of flutist fantasy played well here, and holds attention at its almost perfect four-minute length. But Greed Machine (2003) for piano and vibraphone is static and rather pointless—any album by Chic Corea and Gary Burton will certainly satisfy your need for that particular coupling better than this. Sing to the Sun is a rather strange semi-dramatic presentation of Ashley Bryan’s very nice poetic settings, but the poet himself as narrator comes across more as something you might hear at a Saturday morning reading at a library—though that may actually be the idea.
Apple is a study of meditative clarinet sounds (a quartet), or so it eventually appears. Short note patterns appear and reappear in a call and response type of setting that easily wears out its 18 minute length, despite moments of jazziness and swing that add to the interest. Fifty Times Around the Sun for clarinet and piano works on two-note motives that this time actually do have a discernible transformational aspect to them. The clarinet has some poignant and almost soft wailing aspects to it, while the piano answers accordingly, not always responding to the direct appeal of the clarinet, but as if it has its own thoughts on the subject matter that must be addressed first. Repeated hearings repay the effort on this piece.
The performances are all expert (many by Atlanta Symphony musicians), and the sound is very good, but I just have to ask: Alvin, where have you gone?
— Steven Ritter