BETH CUSTER
Vinculum Symphony Live (BC Records)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

---

Viniculum Symphony Live documents a performance of avant garde music, carefully constructed art noise and the blasts, moans and whispers of sheer sound for the sake of it presented by composer/performer/producer and a cast including the Left Coast Chamber Orchestra, an ad hoc collection of San Francisco Bay area improvisers and a group of experimental instrument builders and their eclectic conglomeration of bangers, clangers, tooters and, well, and just about anything you can imagine and several things you probably can't.

The instrumentation, beyond what you'd expect from a chamber orchestra, includes tuba, trumpet, drums, bass clarinet and voice. Beyond that, there's also the gliss glass, zube tube, slinkyphone, large metalophone, trillium cluster, disorderly tumbling forth, branching corrugahorn, long tube, howler, whiffle, polyglobular trumpet, drone wheel, fipple flute and a robot named JoJo. For starters. And a DJ spinning, sampling and scratching to boot.

What they do is blend Custer's progressive compositions, conducted by Deirdre McClure, with periods of structured improvisation, conducted by Custer herself. Woven in and about are vocal performances by gospel singer Tina Zenon of San Francisco's Sacred Heart Choir.

If it all sounds inexplicably complex in print, well, it's similarly inexplicable in audio. Wonderfully inexplicable. Custer draws on influences from pop to bop and beyond to create her remarkable pastiche of sounds, and exploits the full range of each of her collaborators. While it's not really like anything else, you might get a sense of the mood if you imagined John Cage writing for Harry Partch and orchestra. If that notion has any meaning to you, you'll find this one both meaningful and curiously entertaining. If that means nothing to you at all, well Mr. Jones, there's something going on here and you don't know what it is. It's time you found out. The answer is at the best CD store in your town or at www.bethcuster.com. Look it up.

Track List:

Improvisation Group 1 * Brenda's Music Box * Improvisation Group 2 * VIEY * Improvisation Group 3 * I've Heard It Before * Improvisation Group 4 * Long Time Now * Tune Your Room * Improvisation Group 4.5 * Brenda's Music Box, Too * Comforting Cacophony * All Fall Again * Improvisation Group 5 * In The Broken Fields Where I Lie

© 2000 - Shaun Dale