Huntley Dent, Fanfare magazineThis eclectic collection of chamber works by Stephen Rush affords barely a peek into the multi-media whirlwind of his existence. He paints, collaborates on art installations with scientists from the Fermi Lab, tours with Crystal Mooncone (his “electronic psychedelic improvisation band”), runs a contemporary music project (the Digital Music Ensemble), writes on “harmolodics” and Ornette Coleman, and performs the duties of a professor of music at the University of Michigan. Perhaps he dropped acid in the 1960s and no one told him tripping is temporary. The dozen works on the program cover a range of instrumentation from woodwind quintet to a tuba sonata and a duo for alto saxophone and harp (the last two are particularly ingenious and enjoyable). There is no electronica, or indeed any hint of the genre. In his brief and engagingly candid notes (e.g., “In 2008 I felt a bit useless as a composer”), Rush drops clues about his major influences, from Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, and free jazz to South Indian music and Stravinsky. It must be said, though, that these influences, except for jazz, are heavily filtered through a composer’s imagination, and since this composer has the mind of a mega-magpie, you can’t really guess what went into the blender before the smoothie came out. When music emerges from such a life—I should say “What a life!”—one expects to be startled. I wasn’t really startled, however. Rush seems to have many styles suited to many genres from what I’ve read. A certain abstractness prevails here, and a good deal of the music is propelled by Rush’s feeling for jazz in its bebop momentum, while the tonality roams wherever it wants to, and instruments are not used in any extreme way. The duo for saxophone and harp, Whirlwind (2015), calls for real virtuosity on the part of its commissioners, Jonathan Hulting-Cohen and Jennifer Ellis. They carry through admirably, and if you suppose that a Coleman-inflected saxophone would mix like oil and water with a Debussy-inflected harp, this captivating piece will disabuse you. The Tuba Sonata (1998) is often used in competitions, we are told, and at first you hear a much more varied and complex piano part than for the soloist. But by the end we arrive as some tuba pyrotechnics. I never expect to join those two words together ever again. The booklet’s art work was painted by Rush himself and is the impetus for an improvisatory piece for Zen meditation titled Taming the Ox, derived from a book on Zen, Riding the Ox Home. We get three versions of the piece, each lasting around three to four minutes, and each entirely different. That’s because Rush contributed no music, only the multi-colored abstract figures sampled in the booklet. The musicians and audience at a Zen retreat were asked to meditate on these figures, and then the performers improvised on their conception of what the figures meant to them. The results are surprisingly consonant and pretty, despite the fierce reputation that aleatory music once (deservedly) had. It would be intriguing to investigate Rush’s other styles, for example in his operas, symphonies, and choral works. He exemplifies the open field that is now contemporary music, an ecology with no borders and many microclimates. I imagine that there’s a dizzying array in Rush’s copious output. Several pieces here would appeal to even a slightly exploratory listener, and the whole collection deserves a listen by contemporary music devotees.