Submitted by Joanne De Pue on September 21, 2022 - 11:09am
American composer and virtuoso violist Melia Watras’ latest album String Masks primarily features her sensitive playing and several string instrument- centred compositions – with a brief detour to a delicate unaccompanied song with Icelandic lyrics. The dramatic exception is the 23-minute title track which also includes singers, actors and instruments invented by the iconoclastic American composer and music theorist Harry Partch (1901-1974), by far the longest and most complex work here.