For Ko

Description: 
Partita and Doubles
Composers: 
J.S. Bach
Caleb Burhans
Clara Iannotta
Matt Marks
Andrew Greenwald
Performers: 
Yuki Numata Resnick
Catalog Number: 
#951
Genre: 
new classical
Collection: 
violin
Location: 

Buffalo, NY

Price: 
$15.00
Release Date: 
Aug 26, 2016
Liner Notes: 
View
1 CD
One Sheet: 

Violinist Yuki Numata Resnick has had J.S. Bach on the brain for as long as she can remember. An active performer with Talea Ensemble and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Numata Resnick steps out of the chamber music setting on her debut solo album For Ko. to explore her obsession with Bach through the context of new original works written for her by composers Caleb Burhans, Andrew Greenwald, Clara Iannotta, and Matt Marks.

Like Shakespeare to theater, Bach is so central to the Western art music canon that he is impossible to avoid, yet almost as difficult to make one’s own. Thus, the idea for this album is simple: create a dialogue between old and new by commissioning a series of works that would sit alongside — and indeed within — one of Bach’s great contributions, the Partita No. 1 in B minor.

Using the Partita as a point of departure, each composer creates unique sound worlds that take the listener on an unexpected journey from a post-minimalist, foggy memory of Bach to a children’s story about a monkey named Trunket. The resulting album does more than just recite Bach -- it finds and grounds the great composer in a personal space that’s at once intimate and welcoming.

Reviews: 

I CARE IF YOU LISTEN

“Late into the evening, violin soloist Yuki Numata Resnick delighted The Square Room audience with a brilliant set of movements from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Violin Partita No. 1 in B Minor interspersed with contemporary works by Caleb Burhans, Andrew Greenwald, Clara Iannotta, and Matt Marks. In Resnick’s interpretation of Bach, her tone achieved unity in spite of dichotomy–incisive yet rich, mournful yet resilient. The fourth movement in particular revealed the depth of the violinist’s skill. The speed and dexterity, the effortless deluge of notes were nothing short of breathtaking.

Resnick’s performance of Iannotta’s Dad Wasps in the Jam-jar provided about as stark a contrast as possible, with the slow screeching of the bow against the strings producing an avant-garde air that was both exceedingly tactile and inherently ephemeral. The most whimsical piece of the night was undoubtedly Trunket’s Sarabande by Marks, in which, while playing, Resnick narrated a story about an intelligent if somewhat antisocial inventor monkey living in the town of Saltine. In this impressive display of multitasking, Resnick proved to be an engaging storyteller as well as a phenomenal musician.” - Daniel Kushner

CLASSICAL-MODERN MUSIC REVIEW
"Resnick's dedicated, resonant reading of Bach is quite beautiful. The contemporary sojourns and their varying degrees of distance from the Partita serve to situate the music both in the present and in the past. It is a well-played and provocative resituating of Bach. A few plays will gradually draw you into an enchanted world that spans the centuries." [FULL ARTICLE]
Grego Edwards