Gordon: Van Gogh

If there now exists a Second New York School to follow on from the first formed by Cage and his colleagues in the 1950s, then its members would surely comprise Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. This triumvirate has gone further than any in creating a heady polystylisiic mix combining elements of high and low, minimal and maximal, strict and improvised, global and local. Traces of both the polymetric language of totalism and the free-form eclecticism of Zorn may be heard in this music, allied with a post-Stravinskian style of rhythmic muscularity and high-velocity dissonance characteristic of maverick Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. All of which leads on neatly to Gordon's latest release, a portrait opera of sorts, drawn using texts taken from proto-expressionist painter Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo. Gordon's predilection for suspending sustained vocal lines above pulsing, often visceral loops and patterns is certainly reminiscent of the Dutch minimalist,