Fade
As composer Dan Becker’s debut solo CD, Fade is a manifesto of sorts, exploring his fascination with process in all its forms. “Not just musical ones,” he says, “but sociological, mathematical, and natural processes as well. I fancy I can almost ‘see’ them unfolding and whirling around me; all whizzing by, colliding, merging, often intersecting. I find great delight in this.”
Interspersed throughout the album is a set of five “ReInventions”, essentially “cover tunes” of five of JS Bach’s Inventions (played with cyborg-like panache by a Disklavier “player piano”). Becker asks the question: “What would happen if one injected some postminimal processes into the preexisting ones already embedded in the DNA of these Inventions?” These “ReInventions” are the result of that chemical reaction (think Nancarrow meets Bach on Reich’s stoop.)
Other more personal chamber works fill out the CD. The opener “Gridlock”, Becker’s most performed work and a predictable favorite with musicians and audiences alike, has been called by Kyle Gann a “virtual manifesto for postminimalist formalism.” “Fade,” the title track, is something of a lullaby written for his yet-to-be born daughter. Becker’s preferred world of musical processes proves impressively capable of capturing the emotionally tentative, hesitant and fragile state that all adoptive parents-to-be understand.
“Keeping Time” and “A Dream of Waking” complete the disc, showing new angles and approaches to how process can be embodied in a musical composition. For in the end this concept of process, when explored deeply, expands to embrace notions of relationship and ultimately community. And for Becker this is a good place for any obsession to lead.
Becker is the founder and Artistic Director of the Common Sense Composers’ Collective, and is the current Chair of Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
