As we slip and slide, step and stutter, bop and be toward the millennium, it seems like there is less of a sense of apocalypse in the air than a practical project of picking up on the best pieces of the past in order to lay down a foundation for the puzzle of the future. Musically speaking, for the past thirty years or so, composers, musicians, and music ensembles like Relâche have been doing just that. Guided by choice and intuition as well as by taste, training, and timeliness, the new music of our era is at its best when it selects aspects of a tradition while simultaneously breaking new ground. Tradition, of course, does not mean what it used to: one of the great lessons of the 20th century has been that there are traditions all over the world. A second lesson - more like a discovery - is that there is, and always was an extraordinary variety of music to be heard, played, and enjoyed. Third: the century has a tradition of its own. Today's composers, like those represented on this CD, draw on multiple traditions and vast musical resources and combine them in wondrously imaginative forms. Similarly, ensembles like Relâche have learned and continue to explore ways of making music that inevitably blend styles, techniques, and sonic materials that capture the depth and richness of the human achievement in music. In this CD, four knowledgeable master composers have worked closely with the Relâche ensemble to create a recording in which pieces with echoes of traditions magically sound as if they have been made for tomorrow.

Relâche was founded in 1977. Its original mission was both to play the music of early 20th century Euro-American experimental and avant garde traditions and seek out the most innovative music and composers in the present. The mission has been more than accomplished, although it has changed along with the times. Relâche now rarely performs music from the "historical" repertoire and is devoted to the music of living composers from around the world. At home, in Philadelphia, and on tour, Relâche has been known to play the music of contemporaries from the Americas, Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, and Australia. Most of the music Relâche plays has either been commissioned or developed through special projects or arrangements with the composers. On this CD, two composers, Michael Nyman and Stephen Montague are from Great Britain (Montague, an American, has lived in London since 1975), Arturo Marquez is from Mexico City, and Kyle Gann divides his time between Pennsylvania and New York City.

One consequence of being in close contact with composers has been that the members of the Relâche ensemble have become intimately familiar with an auspicious range of musical imaginations and compositional styles. Thus, in the works by Michael Nyman and Stephen Montague, the composers' intimate and nuanced fashioning of rhythms and timbres have been precisely picked up by the players. In Arturo Marquez's Octeto Malandro, which was developed in residencies in the context of the Music in Motion project, the subtleties of the Cuban derived materials Danzon and Son (typical in his music) were explicitly defined by the composer as the composition was worked out.

By now, the Relâche sound and the capabilities of the musicians and directorial staff are distinguished enough to be in many ears. Composers who have developed working relationships with Relâche have found new ways to create music in various collaborative situations. As with Marquez, Kyle Gann and Stephen Montague refined their pieces with specific players and their distinct instrumental sounds in mind. Like many and others, these composers are aware of the intricate feel the players have for each other. As Tim Page once noted in The New York Times, "Few contemporary music ensembles play with the dedication, high spirits, and near telepathic sense of teamwork that characterizes Relâche."

As the Relâche project exemplifies, the explorations by composers and musicians worldwide over the decades has been a way of discovering what parts fit together. In Europe and the Americas, formalized elite and (no less formal) indigenous folk traditions have been absorbed into each other. This has occurred in tandem with recognition of the musical forms, techniques, and styles extant in the rest of the world. From "minimalist" repetitive performance forms to use of special tunings, complex rhythms, or vocal styles, composers, musicians, and audiences are learning about the particular vectors and patternings of human expressiveness. Simultaneously, as Euro-American forms, styles, and, of course, technology are brought into the musics of other cultures, the combinatory emphasis and processes of selection (or economics or politics) have a great deal to tell all of us.

In this regard, the compositions on this CD implicitly remind us that the sources and fate of music are intertwined as much with historical consciousness as with individual talents. Arturo Marquez's song and dance Octeto Malandro seems intent on passionately settling some scores about the movement of rhythms from the body through the lands of the Spanish speaking South American countries. Analogously, Kyle Gann's Hespapa ki Lakhota ki Thawapi alludes to the power of song even as it evokes the trauma of loss, which is too well known in the relations between the American government and Native peoples. For Stephen Montague, musical history is the more direct referent. His Paramell VI is meant to weave parallel melodies that imply different ways of musicated feeling as coded across centuries and cultures.

In Michael Nyman's whimsical HRT the stakes are less political and emotional, but nevertheless sniping at, if not history, then, maybe, its trend makers. Have you heard that inflection at the end of sentences in certain people's speech that sounds annoying (?), peculiar (?), Australian-like (?). Whatever. You know, it makes people sound as if they are asking a question. Linguists call the effect a "High Rise Terminal" and Nyman has been canny enough to make an 'inflectious' tune out of it. The voice, after all, was, like, probably the first instrument and the source of all music, right? Go figure.

As for Thelonius Sphere Monk, there is no telling what he would have made of Relâche, these composers, or this music. They all just put it down so you could pick it up.

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