Some works just aren’t meant for Spotify, where individual tracks are placed on playlists and commodified in the name of “music discovery” or to simply pad the pockets of labels, fractions of pennies at a time. Some works, by contrast, exist so that the listeners can actually discover themselves. Those works let ears bathe in sound — and the absence of it — in the hope that minds are transformed when the recording does finally come to a close. That desire and need to unchain the brain with music is why listeners press play on John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk or Morton Feldman.
Elizabeth A. Baker’s new, 13-track release, Quadrivium, is one of those metamorphic works that peels back layers of the psyche with repeated listens. At nearly two hours long, it would be a double LP, and Baker, 29, has skillfully split it into two halves in which the front highlights minimalist solo piano compositions and avant garde prepared piano improvisations before the back end massages in meditative New Age ideas, spoken word, and electronics. It is dense, with songs touching on topics like psychosis (“Command Voices — 251A,” “Command Voices — 415X”), alienation (“Outcast”) and even uses for synthetic neurological compounds (“GHB — The Natural Calm & Synthetic Danger”). “What is done in silence,” sits at the heart of the album and finds two versions of Baker’s voice reading off IP addresses during an exploration of Digital Stockholm Syndrome. Some cuts, like the meditative, 13-minute opening track “Sashay,” may need to actually grow legs before listeners fully understand what’s going on. That was certainly the case for Baker, who is a product of Saint Petersburg College’s Music and Record Arts program (MIRA).
BATTERIES INCLUDED
Why is St. Pete composer Elizabeth A. Baker using a vibrator to make music?
“That’s a toddler piece that I’ve had for about four years now,” Baker, told CL. The composition — written by Nathan Anthony Corder, whom Bay area rock fans will recognize from proggy bands like Jitters and Nude Tayne — is the only Quadrivium track not written solely by Baker.
“That song scared me at first because every single measure is in a different meter, and I have to count for my life,” Baker said, adding that Corder’s compositions force musicians to think in a different way. “‘Sashay’ takes a lot of control to play. It’s 13 minutes of minimalism and counting. Audiences don’t hear it, but I personally am like, ‘Alight, so I’m in 9/8, now I’m in 10/8, now I’m in 3/4’ — it took me three years to feel comfortable.”
While Baker’s creative upbringing wasn’t uncomfortable — she lived in a home with two supportive parents and grew up on out-of-the-box classical works like Stravinsky’s controversial ballet, “The Rite of Spring” — the road to Quadrivium wasn’t always easy. She studied classical guitar during her first stint at MIRA and then went down the same path at Florida Southern before realizing that classical guitar performance wouldn’t be a sustainable career choice for her.
WORK, WHIMSY
The inaugural Florida International Toy Piano Festival blurs the lines
“Most of the time people have no idea what you’re doing. They’re like, ‘You’re playing flamenco,’ and I’m like, ‘Nah, I’m playing Bach,’” she laughed. She took the commercial music education from Florida Southern back to MIRA, where faculty like Dave Greenberg and Mark Matthews encouraged Baker — an independent learner who thrives on freedom — to do what she needed to do to become a better artist.
“I spent the days practicing on all of the Steinway grand pianos on campus and eventually had an arrangement with security where they would lock the building I was in last. I left the Gibbs campus at, like, 10:30 or 11 at night every day except Saturday,” she said. The fact that she’s a black, female experimental composer isn’t lost on Baker (read VAN Magazine's interview with her for more context), and she even considers Nina Simone’s biography to be something like a cautionary tale.
“There’s so much in her history, mistakes that she made through naivete. We looked at her as so strong, but in other ways she was so weak,” she said, respectfully, of the mid-century composer and activist whose story so often gets romanticized in pop culture. Baker also isn’t afraid to bring up the idea of tokenism when discussing how curators and programmers select artists to showcase. “Yes, we should have an awareness of black artists, however, I don’t like this thing where it’s like, ‘We have a black artist, so we are a diverse programmer.’ It makes you start to think that the only reason I am here is because I make them look diverse.”
In short, Baker is unafraid to have the hard conversations, and she didn’t take shortcuts in trying to explore them on Quadrivium, where much of the solo piano was recorded in one day at the Palladium in St. Petersburg. Engineer Greg LeCompte (Dark Matter Recording) even 3D-printed a special mic holder and borrowed a stereo AEA ribbon mic from Dan Byer (Rock Garden Studio) so that they could do some over-the-shoulder recording that would capture the perspective of the pianist.
“A lot of people will mic the room, mic the piano and even go inside the piano, but I hadn’t heard of a lot of people really getting in to do one from the player’s perspective,” Baker said, adding that the effect appears on several spots within the album. “When Melissa [Harris, mastering engineer] put it all together it really has this unique piano sound that really highlights that perspective.”
New perspectives, perhaps, are Quadrivium’s best exports. The album isn’t a conventional listen by any means; the title is a nod at the idea of curricula involving the “mathematical arts” of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. But Quadrivium isn’t burdensome — or laborious, either. It’s an invitation to get focused, unplug from distractions, and take a lap around an extensive work of art. And hopefully learn a little bit about yourself when it’s all said and done.
This article appears in May 24-31, 2018.