*** Sarah Cahill

MAURICE RAVEL: MIROIRS AND GASPARD DE LA NUIT

(New Albion)

Ravel is not "new music," but Sarah Cahill's usual repertoire is. Nonetheless, Cahill became so captivated by Ravel's piano pieces that she played nothing else for three years. The result is Ravel read through a new-music lens. In her liner notes Cahill explains that she associates his music most directly with Olivier Messiaen and Morton Feldman; and indeed, her slow tempos and placid dynamics make these works sound more like Feldman, in particular, than like other music of Ravel's time (the postmodern mystic Giacinto Scelsi also comes to mind). Perhaps because she physically occupied these pieces for so long, Cahill conveys a mood both static and informal, a kind of frozen improvisation. Yet the sinful beauty of Ravel's Impressionism isn't lost on her, and she never lets these pieces dissolve into pretty mush. You may find yourself thinking: why doesn't all music sound like this? Or is it just that Cahill has found a unique way to communicate Ravel's beauty to her contemporaries?

-- Damon Krukowski