CHRISTOPHER FOX - A Glimpse of Sion's Glory
Open the Gate
A Glimpse of Sion's Glory
The Missouri Harmony
Rendered Account
American Choruses: 1 - Walt Whitman
American Choruses: 2 - Song
American Choruses: 3 - America
American Choruses: 4 - Transcription

EXAUDI/ James Weeks, director
Benjamin Bayl, organ

***** BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
‘Christopher Fox is 50 this year, and it is hard to think of a better birthday present than this marvellous disc of his choral music from Exaudi. With works spanning a 20-year period, both the evolution of Fox’s ideas and the enduring individuality of his compositional voice can be heard. His fascination with the ideology and practice of earlier times is most apparent in the work that gives the disc its title, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory, with its fervent interchange of ideas from, among others, Puritans, Levellers and Milton. Musically it typifies Fox’s penchant for causing relatively simple material to interact to produce vibrantly complex results, so that the overlapping of texts evokes the hubbub of lively debate. Exaudi traverse the demands of this music with ease, and Benjamin Bayl is equally assured in the sustained unpredictability of the one organ work in the mix, The Missouri Harmony. The disc concludes with the prodigiously assured early work American Choruses (1984) which starts with incisive clarity, and becomes gradually more nebulous. The final ‘Transcription’ is a vast body of sound within which there is motion, like watching the sea under a leaden sky; powerful, hypnotic and a liitlle unnerving. Recommended.’

CHRISTOPHER FOX cello music
Straight Lines in Broken Times3
chant suspendu
Generic Compositions #3, #4 & #5
inner
ANTON LUKOSZEVIEZE cello

Metier Sound & Vision 2001, MSV CD92059

PHILIP CLARK - THE WIRE
"Ditching the traditional associations of the instrument, these four pieces for solo cello grew out of composer Fox's relationship with cellist Anton Lukoszevieze. The recent 45 minute long Inner was written especially for him, It's a labyrinthine work that encapsulates the desire outlined in Fox's own sleevenote to 'find a way of marrying the audibility of process in minimalism with the potential for complexity of process in most serial music'. The surface of Inner is therefore often disarmingly straightforward, with nursery rhyme melodies that move without much rhythmic fuss. But underneath, a dense maze of melodic and gestural underpinnings paddle furiously to prevent the material from sounding prosaic. Fox divides the work into 34 sections, defining six areas of 'family resemblances and evolutions' for the listener to follow. As they're all jumbled up much of the fascination comes from trying to work out what fits where. Fox describes being absorbed by the process through which a solo musician, stand-up comedian or storyteller develops a bond with their audience. In Anton Lukoszevieze, he has found a consummate narrative performer who makes much of the tension between the often delicate purity of the music and its structural rigour.

Straight Lines In Broken Times, Chant Suspendu and Generic Compositions 3-5 all illuminate equally distinctive soundworlds. Built on different modulations of the same microtonal scale, Straight Lines has a strained, oddly vulnerable hovering quality that is both alienating and alluring. In comparison the heavily knotted sounds of Chant Suspendu casts the cello as a musical chainsaw in which the outer strings are detuned to provide an acrid drone. Fox cites Xenakis and Richard Barrett as other composers who have treated the cello as an 'empirical sound object'. His Generic Compositions similarly attempt to build musical discourse out of the inherent physical properties of instrumental behaviour. They are engrossing pieces in which slides, bow movements and pizzicatos become an end in themselves. Inner tells you everything you need to know about the uncharted possibilities of acoustic composition."

PAUL DRIVER, THE SUNDAY TIMES
"THIS third disc in Metier's series devoted to the music of Christopher Fox (b 1955) consists entirely of works for solo cello, played with radiant commitment by a votary of avant-gardism. Three of the works - Straight Lines in Broken Times3, Chant Suspendu, Generic Compositions 3, 4 and 5 (the latter an overlay of separate Ètudes) - are relatively short. But the remarkable fourth, Inner, lasts 45 minutes. The simplest of little phrases is revisited 33 times to form an epic succession that suggests a dadaist version of a Bach chaconne, but has the genuine spiritual pull of one of Morton Feldman's rapt excursions, the emphasis now on horizontal line rather than gradual revoicing of chords."


CHRISTOPHER FOX piano music
More Light
Paired off
Prime Site
Complimentary Forms More
things in the air than are visible
IAN PACE piano

Metier Sound & Vision 1998, MSV CD92022

PAUL DRIVER, THE SUNDAY TIMES
"THIS DISC is a good introduction to the work of a composer (b 1955) who is both an interesting conceptualist and a craftsman well able to realise his ideas in an aurally satisfying way. More Light (1988) is a subtle, 23-minute unfolding, during which repeated ideas steadily alter their shapes - a homage to Morton Feldman and indirectly to Cage abnd Monet. Prime Site works on the opposite principle of avoiding repetition altogether. More things in the air than are visible (1994) is a three-part structure using taped sounds (mechanistic and atmospheric, repectively) in the outer sections. There the pianist is confined to detached chords, but is given his head in the florid middle part. Also included are two brief tributes: Paired off (1995), built on the musical letters of Erik Satie's name, and Complimentary Forms (1996), built on those of Michael Finnissy's. Pace plays with clarity and fervour throughout."

THE SUNDAY TIMES, 10 RECORDS FOR CHRISTMAS 1998, PAUL DRIVER
"A crisp introduction to an interesting British composer (b 1955). During the course of More Light (1988) repeated ideas steadily alter their shapes. Prime site (1997) works on the principle of avoiding repetition altogether."

ANDY HAMILTON, CLASSIC CD *****
"'MORE LIGHT' may be the first CD of Christopher Fox's music to appear. It is one of the first releases on Metier, a label which has become an essential outlet for contemporary British composition. Born in 1955, Fox is a fascinating figure. His music seem disparate stylistically, not surprising perhaps when one considers Fox's avowed rejection of style, rhetoric and gesture in favour of musical process. Certainly he subverts the traditional contract between minimalism and complexity - his pieces have affinities with both. The influences likewise seem diverse. More Light is the major work, its slow music a memorial to the great, lamented American composer Morton Feldman: its request for "more light" ultimately ends in forlorn failure. Complementary Forms is dedicated to British master Michael Finnissy on his fiftieth birthday, while Paired Off is based around Satie's "Pear-Shaped Pieces". This is music where the apparently bland exterior discloses a wealth of invention on repeated listening. Pianist Ian Pace's performances are exceptional and insightful"

GRAMOPHONE
"CHRISTOPHER FOX merges often complex technical procedures into sensuous streams of sound that beguile as well as fascinate the ear. More Light illustrates this to perfection. None of the other pieces is as gripping, although More things in the air than are visible finds a satisfying solution for enveloping the piano within a wider, although never neutral ambience."

THE WIRE
"MINIMALISM and complexity seem unavoidable labels. Though they're inadequate, they offer some guide to the listener through the confusing mass of contemporary composition. But then along comes Chris Fox, a composer who messes up journalistic simplifications because he clearly has affinities with both camps. More Light is the first of two CDs of Fox's music on Metier, which is becoming an essential source of some of the most uncompromising new compositions. Chris Fox, born in 1955, is a tantalising figure in British music. None of the pieces in Ian Pace's recital of his piano scores is remotely similar. This seems to be true of Fox's output as a whole - less conventional works include "Trummermusik" for mezzo-soprano and hurdy-gurdy, and the multimedia "Alarmed And Dangerous" , which crosses the boundaries of documentary, radio play and music. This disparate quality follows from Fox's avowed rejection of style - and rhetoric - in favour of musical process.

All the pieces here are first recordings. Influences come from many directions. More Light is the major work, and its slow music a memorial to Morton Feldman. The attempt to achieve 'light' ends in forlorn failure. Complementary Forms is dedicated to Michael Finnissy on his 50th birthday, while Paired Off is based around Satie's "Pear-Shaped Pieces".

More things in the air than are visible involves tape in is two outer movements. There's parallel with the Irish composer Gerald Barry, who's similarly non-expressive and exploits a wide variety of approaches. The results here are undeniably intriguing - music where there's always a lot going on, often beneath an apparently bland exterior. Highly Recommended."

AVANT NO.12
"Christopher Fox's composition, More Light, begins with dancing figures that gradually break down and are replaced, after a brief pause, by others that are, at first, similar, and then after a while are not. Gradually these are reduced to a small compass of pitches, fractured and naggingly repetitive, which are followed once again by a measure of silence. The next section moves at what one could call 'Feldman tempo' (the slow material in this piece is dedicated to him). During its 23-minute timespan, the various sections of More Light change and change again, sometimes evolutionarily, sometimes abruptly and without precedent, always interestingly. The CD contains two other large compositions: Prime Site , which is harmonically ambiguous and structurally complex (there is no narrative, so to speak, and - if I've understood it correctly - as the music progresses in its alzheimer-like fashion it retains a vivid memory only of what occurred barely a moment ago, and of a more distant, 'historical' memory), and More things in the air than are visible, all three movements of which are markedly different in character. This last point is true of the shorter pieces, too. Ian Pace plays this powerful but almost unfathomable music with great sensitivity. The sleeve notes by Pace and Fox could hardly be better, and I'm bound to say I'm looking forward to the companion volume that Metier has promised."


CHRISTOPHER FOX songs, short piano works and tape pieces
SOLO PIANO: Second Eight You, Us, Me (Habanera) I Sing for the Muses and Myself Worthless Leather, Block
SONG CYCLES: A.N.N.A. Blossom Time, Louisiana
TAPE PIECES: MERZsonata, Cylinders Barn
AMANDA CRAWLEY soprano IAN PACE piano

Metier Sound & Vision 1999 MSV CD92031


PAUL DRIVER, THE SUNDAY TIMES
"This second Metier disc devoted to the inventive British composer comprises first recordings of eight works, mostly involving Ian Pace and joined by Amanda Crawley in two song-cycles, A-N-N-A Blossom-time and Louisiana, using Poems (in Fox's own translation from the German) by Kurt Schwitters. These are dry, droll, stylistically capricious miniatures, musical dada. The piano piece You, Us, Me (Habeñera) inspired by Bizet's Carmen and Catherine Clements's feminist commentary on it, is contrastingly unitary, minimalistic, rigorous. Besides three other piano solos, including the Joseph Beuys-influenced Block, for an instrument "prepared" wit Blu-Tak, there are two tape pieces, both evoking Schwitters as a wartime detainee in Britain."

ANDY HAMILTON, CLASSIC CD MAGAZINE (Classic CD Choice, *****)
"Christopher Fox's second album on Metier, following on from last year's More Light, is a tribute to artists he admires, notably the Dadaist genius Kurt Schwitters, whose life-affirming work belied the many vicissitudes of his career. A-N-N-A Blossom-time consists of setting nine nonsense poems by Schwitters, loosely translated into English. Fox says that he tried to locate the songs within musical conventions of the 1920s and 1930s, when the poems were written. The rhythms and harmonies of these catchy songs are often jazzy, thought the harmonies are ones which only became established with modern jazz. Louisiana features shorter songs also based on Schwitters' poetry.

You, Us, Me is a meandering habañera, deliberately flat emotionally and unresolved. MERZSonata forms a collage tribute to Schwitters indebted in many of its sounds and form to the great soundpoem Ursonate. The solo piano piece Block gestures towards Joseph Beuys, who has included grand pianos in many of his installations; I Sing For The Muses and Myself is a short piano piece dedicated to the artists Ian Hamilton Finlay. Ian Pace is convincing in all idioms her, while Amanda Crawley conveys the nonsense most entertainingly... a thoroughly entertaining presentation of the work of this quirky and inventive British composer."