Timothy McCormack — The Hand Is A Ear
Timothy McCormack is an American modern classical composer who creates very textural, often noisy/ non-harmonic work. The Hand Is A Ear is a perfect title for this two-track collection, as McCormack's compositions often focus on the physical relationship between the performer and their instruments, with often very lengthy dwells of repetitive/ droning tones.
The release appears on the always-worthy Kairos Music- the Austrian label who focus on releasing the best/ most creative in modern classical/ modern composition. The CD is presented in the label's house-style digipak with a stuck-on glossy/ colour booklet; this runs twenty-six pages, with English and German texts, giving a bio of both composer & players, as well as an essay about the works featured here.
The first piece here is “Your Body Is A Volume” which dates from 2016/ 2019. It’s for string quartet, but it’s most certainly not your normal lush, grand and soothing type of string work. The piece runs at just shy of the fifty-one-minute mark- for two violins, a viola, and a violoncello. It’s built around loud, often rattling and grating tones which are fed out in long textural maps of sound. The sound created comes across somewhere between an amplified snore, dragging of a spade along tarmac, and the gurgling/ baying of some huge creature. There are one or two moments of space, droning bleak ambience- but mainly the piece is focused on being as grating, noisy, and discordant as possible.
The second piece here is “The Hand Is An Ear/ The Ear Is Heart”- it’s from 2022, it’s for a single violin, and comes in at just over the nineteen-minute mark. The work is built around grating, scraping, and rattling tones- at times it feels like it’s building & buzzing, at other times it’s paring back, then at others it comes off like a series of creaks…that seemingly never end. And towards the end of proceedings, you get a series of wonderful, jarrying high-end plucks & mid-range drones occurring.
I guess it goes without saying, but you have to really enjoy the noisier, taut, and non-harmonic side of the modern classical genre to even put The Hand Is A Ear on. But if you do, you’ll find an original and distinctive composer's work- which is most certainly played with real passion & focus.