Tom Johnson — Orgelpark Color Chart

With Orgelpark Color Chart, minimalist composer Tom Johnson presents us with a one-tone piece for four organs, performed at Orgelvark which is situated within the Parkkerk (church) monument in Gerard Brandtstraat in Amsterdam. Just as the title suggests, each organ is treated like a color within four corners of a field.

The beginning of the track is marked by colder, high pitched frequencies that are frenetic at first--these blocks of pure sustained tone possess a disquieting abandon as they appear and disappear; erupting into almost piercingly childlike voices. Jagged in duration and questioning in intonation, the shades of each organ's color enter and exit the piece with a quivering intensity, ultimately building into a crescendo that is full of warm overlapping frequencies and rich atmospheric drones.

Taken in its entirety, a keen sense of order and balanced symmetry emerges. Johnson allows for the possibilities inherent within each organ's tone to be fully considered - the evocation of fragmentary voices and punctuated stillness within these tones has both physical and allegorical qualities.  While nodding to luminaries Phill Niblock and Eliane Radigue, as mentioned in the release, the piece intimates Morton Feldman's influence on Johnson, who was a student of the former. The fading quality of some of the tones is reminiscent of Feldman's Patterns in a Chromatic Field in particular.

The work as a whole is incredibly beautiful, offering sumptuous push-pull gestures between tone and form. The Orgelpark venue is in the service of the organ and its music, and its presence is felt throughout; lending an air of the not too distant past, and reminding us of the organ's rightful place as an instrument of immense complexity.