American Visions

A 21st century musician, taking us into the millennium with a new vision of music. The Washington Square Contemporary Music Society is among the world's most outstanding new-music ensembles.

Karchin's pieces combine the rhythmic drive associated with downtown music with the harmonic and structural rigor of uptown serialism. These pieces are serious as well as fun to listen to. —Steve Hicken, American Record Guide

To the Sun and Stars is a new album on Bridge of vocal music by Louis Karchin. The works – American Visions, To the Sun, To the Stars, The Gods of Winter, and ‘A Way Separate…’ – were written between 1992 and 2012, so provide a good cross-section of his style: dissonant, rhythmic and angular. This might sound forbidding except that he also does not eschew overt, even lush, tonal references as, for example, at the arresting major-chord declamation of ‘Who are you, Grand Canyon?’ a third of the way through the first movement of American Visions. Karchin is normally labelled a modernist, but such gestures give his music more flexibility and variety than perhaps the term suggests. This disc also demonstrates a gift for vocal writing; the texts set with great clarity and expressivity, the unobtrusive accompaniment supporting, colouring and commenting. Performances are rock-solid under the direction of the composer, the cast of singers impressive. The album is available on Spotify. Worth exploring.