"Target" Nominated for 2 Awards

Keeril Makan's "Target" CD on Starkland has been nominated for the 2012 Independent Music Awards both for Best Contemporary Classical Album and for Thomas Steenland for Best Album Art. Judges for the Final Winners will include Keith Richards, Tom Waits, Suzanne Vega, Joshua Redman, Tori Amos, and Ozzy Osbourne. Winners will be announced in April.

The rising-star Makan has been described as “an arrestingly gifted young American composer” by The New Yorker. The Pulitzer-winning composer David Lang has remarked that when he first heard Makan’s music he was “blown away” by works that were “so strong and so smart.”

The CD has received some impressive reviews:

"Approachable and mesmerizing... 

captivating and engrossing."

- Sequenza21

"A sound world in which music emerges unexpectedly 

out of violent textures, gestures and cries."

- Gramophone

"Delivers a whollop of powerful emotional content... 

the recording is of excellent quality."

- New Music Box

"A composer that is destined for greatness, 

and this recording is proof of that."

- Chamber Musician Today

The "one-man army" Tom Steenland serves as Executive Director of Starkland, has designed most of the label's booklets and packaging, and has mastered many of the releases as well.

Independent Music Award Nominees Thomas Steenland (L) and Keeril Makan

Starkland's full catalog can be found here.

"Target" CD: Daring, Hendrixian, Captivating, Powerful

I'm really pleased that favorable reviews continue to appear for Starkland's Keeril Makan "Target" CD.

In the new Fanfare, Robert Carl concludes that Makan's Resonance Alloy is "one of the best pure-sound pieces I've heard in some time." He finds the "near-psychotic" song cycle Target is a "terrifying" and "daring piece." And he notes the virtuosic solo-cello work Zones d'accord "creates near-overwhelming sounds" that move "from breathier harmonic sweeps to Hendrixian explosions."

Vital Weekly recently stated that the "Target" CD is "a great release" full of "captivating and engaging music." Critic Dolf Mulder especially savored the performances from Alex Waterman ("breathtaking"), Laurie Rubin ("beautiful"), and David Shively ("an amazing tour de force").

Lucid Culture praises the CD as "strange and powerful," "intriguing and diverse," and "minimalist yet often absolutely massive." Writer Alan Young was also stunned by the "viscerally mesmerizing" Resonance Alloy.

Even the venerable but staid Gramophone is attracted to the "extraordinary extremes" of the CD, writing:

"On a purely musical level, these first recordings of four works by Makan are about creating expectations out of chaos, tuning the listener’s ear and creating a sound world in which music emerges unexpectedly out of violent textures, gestures and cries."

Read more here.

Keeril Makan "Target" CD: 3 videos

Three videos with music from Starkland's new "Target" Keeril Makan CD are now available.

Zone's d'accord, performed by Alex Waterman at the CD release concert in September at New York's Issue Project Room, appears here:



The CD's actual studio recording of Resonance Alloy, performed by David Shively, was videotaped at Legacy Sound:



David Lang describes Target as "muscular and terrifying... a scary, aggressive juggernaut of invention." This video presents the second section "Leaflet I," performed by the California E.A.R. Unit and mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin:



Read more about this "approachable and mesmerizing" CD, which has been praised in Gramophone, Sequenza21, Chamber Musician Today, and New Music Box.

Starkland's new Keeril Makan "Target" CD Now Available at Amazon, iTunes, more

Starkland has released Keeril Makan’s “Target” CD, which is now available at: Amazon, CD Baby, and iTunes. (You can hear previews at both iTunes and CD Baby).



Makan has been described as “an arrestingly gifted young American composer” by The New Yorker, and has already received some impressive commissions, including the Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Bang on a Can All-Stars, American Composers Orchestra, and the Other Minds Festival. The CD has premiere recordings of four works: 2, Zones d’accord, Target, and Resonance Alloy.

At New Music Box, Alexandra Gardner comments that the music gives "the ears a workout with timbral complexity drawn from a remarkably spare amount of material that sneaks up and delivers a whollop of powerful emotional content," adding "the recording is of excellent quality."

At Sequenza21, Jay Batzner writes, “The quartet of pieces on Target serve as excellent examples of what makes Makan’s compositions approachable and mesmerizing... Makan makes what should be simple and mundane captivating and engrossing.”

At The Glass, Chris McGovern writes, “Keeril Makan is definitely a composer that is destined for greatness, and this recording is proof of that.”

David Lang, co-founder of the Bang on a Can festival and a Pulitzer-winning composer, wrote the CD’s Introduction. He remarks that when he first heard Makan’s music he was “blown away [by works] so strong and so smart.”

The title piece emerged from Makan’s participation in the John Harbison/Dawn Upshaw Workshop for Composers and Singers. Commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Makan collaborated with poet Jena Osman to create Target for soprano and chamber ensemble. Regarding Target’s premiere at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times observed:

“‘Target,’ is a moody, ruminative and volatile setting of a text assembled from poems by Jena Osman and phrases taken from leaflets dropped over Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11, scored for mezzo-soprano and four instrumentalists, including a percussionist. It is meant as a stinging political commentary on American military intervention abroad. Mr. Makan responded to the earthy, rich and poignant qualities of Ms. Rubin's voice by writing music thick with sliding, moaning figurations for the voice and all the instruments… she gave a courageous performance of difficult music that clearly speaks to her.”

Lang attended the premiere of the “muscular and terrifying” Target, “a scary, aggressive juggernaut of invention.” He remarks that the disturbing text captures “a kind of violent, psychological damage that takes place deep beneath the surface layer of ordinary words.” The CD’s performance features Rubin and the California E.A.R.Unit.



The CD opens with 2, performed by the Either/Or duo of percussionist David Shively and Ethel violinist Jennifer Choi. 20th Century Music writes, “This was a masterful piece, one of the best heard this year. Far from music in the abstract, 2 is a work-it-out-in-the-raw-sounds kind of piece that revels in its sonic splendors.”

Zones d’accord is performed on the CD by Alex Waterman from Either/Or. Sequenza21 comments, “The virtuosity of Waterman’s right hand is truly stunning… [and he]draws out Makan’s ecstatic emotional arc throughout the performance.”

The CD ends with Resonance Alloy (commissioned by Other Minds), recorded by percussionist David Shively in an astonishing, single, unedited performance of the 29 minute work.

Lang concludes that “the emotionality of it all, the drama, the depth of feeling, percolating way down deep, never boiling over and yet never going away” is “strangely powerful, and all his own.”


Tom Steenland and Keeril Makan (and Louis Andriessen)

All the original recordings were made at high-resolution (24-bit,48k/88.2k sampling) audiophile standards. The three non-vocal works were recorded by the Grammy-winning Silas Brown.

Makan’s only other CD, "In Sound" (Tzadik), received impressive reviews: “Top 10 CDs for 2008” (New Music Box); “An amazing disc” (Sequenza21); “frontiers are crossed in this music” (American Record Guide).