Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels:

• Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby: A Novel (One World, 2021), about a transgender woman, her ex-husband, and the cisgender woman he impregnated: on how there are many ways to parent and live.

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Roscoe Mitchell is an avant-garde jazz saxophonist and composer who emphasizes interplay between and among voices, and in particular the free space each voice has to express itself. We could see this in parallel to John Cage’s vision of music as sound in time and space. He sums up his musical philosophy: “Music is 50 percent sound and 50 percent silence. If one sits down and listens to nothing but silence in a very quiet place, it's very intense. So, when one interrupts that silence with a sound, one must make sure that the sound has the same intensity as the silence.” This quality stands out in his work. (YouTube playlist is here.) Mitchell, a founding member of Art Ensemble of Chicago, is a leading figure in free jazz. Here he is live at Resonance in 2013, at the Kennedy Center in 2019, at Roulette Intermedium in 2021, at the Borealis Festival for Experimental Music in 2022. 

Approximately three decades before free jazz emerged, woodwind specialist Sidney Bechet (playlists), along with trumpeter Louis Armstrong (releases; playlists), developed the art form known as jazz. Other notable early figures were King Oliver (playlists), Fletcher Henderson (playlists), and Jelly Roll Morton (playlists). With its American roots, and its emergence from the blues, American jazz is characterized by the wide latitude the performers have not only to interpret the music but to rewrite it as they perform it. Nevertheless, early jazz exponents, such as Bechet, adhered closely to melodic lines, which their progeny in the free jazz idiom did not always do. Therefore, the work of these early jazz masters illustrates the value of latitude. 

A little later, jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, (releases), along with his violinist Stéphane Grappelli, (playlists) took jazz into a new era. His free and easy Gypsy style expanded jazz’s range.

Virtually everything in jazz illustrates the idea of latitude. Here are just a couple artists and albums from later eras:

• Don Braden Septet, “After Dark” (1993) (65’)
• James Carter, “The Real Quietstorm” (1995) (59’)
• Christian McBride’s New Jawn, “Prime” (2023) (55’): “The  music of New Jawn is something between a mashup of modern jazz styles  and post-bop reconstruction, with McBride giving his veteran mates . . . plenty of room for angular improvisation while keeping the swing and traditional motifs intact.”

In the genre commonly called “classical music”, contemporary composer John Corigliano has contributed works that evoke images of free space and latitude:

• “Winging It”: Improvisations for piano (2008) (approx. 14-15’)
• Chioroscuro for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart (1997) (approx. 11-13’)
• “Fantasia on an Ostinato” (1985) (approx. 12’)
• “Kaleidoscope” for two pianos (1959) (approx. 6-7’)
• “Étude Fantasy” (1976) (approx. 17-18’) 

Other compositions:

• Marcel Landowski, Symphony No. 3, “des Espaces” (The Spaces) (1965) (approx. 18’). The composer explains: “This symphony . . . by its deliberately broad and developed thematic structure, seeks, apart from any literary idea, to find a musical pulsation that allows an evocation of the wide open spaces on Earth, and even those inner ones sometimes imagined in our dreams.”
• Mieczysław Weinberg, Clarinet Sonata, Op. 28 (1945) (approx. 19-21’): “Weinberg composed the Sonata op.28 for clarinet (in A) and piano in the autumn of 1945, after the end of the war.”
• Malcolm Arnold, Viola Concerto, Op. 108 (1971) (approx. 20’): “A first movement full of bustling semiquavers, and a brisk jig for the finale flank the heart of the work, an extended slow movement.”
• Raga Misra Tilang (Mishra Tilang): performances are by Sharma and Hussain, Narayan and Prasad, and Sultan Khan.
• Andrea Tarrodi, Piano Concerto No. 1, “Stellar Clouds” (2015) (approx. 27’), refers “to journeys of heavenly ascension . . . with grand sculptural shapes and finely hewn effects of timbre and texture. Listeners must decide for themselves whether the astronomical titles are helpful.” As the title suggests, the music creates a sense of space.
• Henri Dutilleux, Symphony No. 1 (1951) (approx. 32’): “. . . Dutilleux was still, as he said, ‘a young musician who seemed to be swimming “against the tide”’ . . .” “Structurally unconventional—it opens, unusually, with a passacaglia—it illustrates his principle of ‘progressive growth’ through its sustained lyricism and towering, chorale-like statements.”

Albums:

• Chris Reyman, “Koan” (2019) (64’): “Koan study is a practice developed by Zen Buddhists to dislodge one from a fixed way of thinking.”
• “Barry Harris Plays Todd Dameron” (1975) (42’): “. . . the pianist's effortlessly relaxed, almost leisurely handling of tempo and subtle turns of phrase . . . make for a worthwhile session.”
• Matthew Shipp Quartet, “Not Bound” (2017) (58’) is “an exceptional tour de force of spontaneous music within a compositional framework.”
• Matthew Shipp & Sabir Mateen, “SaMA” (2010) (50’)
• Raül Refree, “El espacio entre” (2023) (43’): “
• Daniel Hersog Jazz Orchestra, “Open Spaces: Folk Songs Reimagined” (2023) (75’): “He includes traditional folk songs on this album, in addition to familiar tunes by Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot and his own folk-based compositions. All are given a glistening polish in the sweeping cinematic arrangements which he writes for his orchestra, and are further enhanced by excellent solo work from a number of musicians.”
• Tom Beghin, “C.P.E. Bach: Sonatas with Varied Reprises, Wq. 50” (2024) (149'): “. . . (Beghin) wrote out the repeats himself rather than give the usual repeat sign. Tom Beghin’s magnificent introductory essay explores Bach’s (complex) motivations in acute detail and guides the listener through the process. Then he goes further still. . . . (Bach) kept updating his 1760 publication, inscribing changes in his personal copies of it by hand. And so a bonus CD gives the whole set in full once more, this time incorporating those handwritten changes.”
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Music: songs and other short pieces

• Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, “Free Fallin’” (lyrics)
• Fleetwood Mac, “Go Your Own Way” (lyrics)
• Dixie Chicks, “Wide Open Spaces” (lyrics)

Visual Arts

Film and Stage