Matters of hierarchy often come to the fore when composers and classical ensembles represent themselves on an album cover. Who’s the boss? Who has the name with the most marketing clout? That’s not the case on Interius/Exterius. The composer, Catherine Lamb, and the performers, Ghost Ensemble, have instead expressed this record’s collaborative quality.
In 2022 Lamb, an American violist who lives in Germany, came to the U.S. to workshop ideas with New York-based chamber group Ghost Ensemble. Both composer and band shared interests in microtonal music and the deep-listening practice of Pauline Oliveros, but as they worked together, Ghost Ensemble learned more about Lamb’s very particular tuning concepts and she gained knowledge that informed the finished piece. Ghost Ensemble performed the six-part Interius/Exterius in 2022 and recorded it two years later, and you suppose that the time spent on getting to know it has something to do with how well the nine musicians balance relaxed pacing with specific execution of the tonal relationships that hold the music together.
Ghost Ensemble’s instrumentation—four low strings, two high winds, accordion, harp and hammered dulcimer—is well equipped to realize the overlapping long tones that give the music a sense of continuous development. The group doesn’t solidify into a trance-inducing drone, but navigates a purposeful course that gently piques the listener’s curiosity about where the next step may fall. At some points, the cadence of the bowing evokes breathing, but bright, generously spaced harp and hammered-dulcimer notes puts you more in the mind of a constellation of stars.
These ongoing, contrasting spatial effects correspond to Lamb’s intent to make sounds that relate to each other in an in/out fashion. They situate the listener smack in the middle of this exchange, simultaneously encircling and flowing past at a pace that is unhurried, but never lulling.
Interius/Exterius is a non-intoxicating but absorbing countermeasure for whatever assails you, and who doesn’t feel bombarded by something in 2025? [Grayfade]
—Bill Meyer
