Album Review by Dawoud Kringle
Artist: Philip Ellis Foster
Title: The Cosmos Project
Label: self-released
Format: Digital
Genre: experimental/avant-garde music
Stream and buy here: https://philipellisfoster.bandcamp.com/album/the-cosmos-project
In the realm of experimental avant-garde music, Philip Ellis Foster has carved out his niche.
Foster studied piano as a child. He performed with two friends, playing Chopin’s Polonaise #5 for six hands. In 1990, after putting music to the side for a long while, he discovered improvised music at a Music for People workshop with David Darling. He subsequently participated in several other workshops, including percussion with Raquy Danziger, Meredith Monk’s multimedia workshop, and two Arabic Music retreats.
He also became the founder and facilitator of the Open Music Ensemble, a group dedicated to free-form improvisational acoustic music. He later fulfilled a similar role with the Open Dance Ensemble. In 2012, he took a course in reading music at the Juilliard School and played percussion with Karl Berger’s Improvisers Orchestra monthly for a year at The Stone in New York City.
His compositional education began in the summer of 2015 at the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat under the direction of Martin Bresnick. Foster also attended a semester course, Composition for Percussion Ensemble with Elliot Cole at the New School, a composition master class led by Mathias Steinauer at Ticino Musica, the International Music Institute Darmstadt, and a composition course taught by Christian Ofenbauer at the Mozarteum. In 2017, he returned to Walden School, where I worked with Renee Favand-See and Olivia de Prato, and then to Ticino Musica in Lugano, where he studied under Oscar Bianchi and Simon Steen-Andersen.
His compositions include four pieces for different percussion ensembles, a trio for violin, flute, and narrator, a piece for five unspecified instruments, and a short piece on the life of St. Francis for harp, string quartet, and percussion. His interpretations of other works include John Cage’s C-AG-E-D.
Cosmos is one of Foster’s experiments with graphic musical scores.
During a composition lesson, Foster showed Mart-Matis Lill images of some of his ink drawings. Lill suggested using the drawings for a score, with pitch indicated by height on the vertical axis and duration expressed by movement from left to right in a horizontal direction. He created a piece for a mixed quartet, with dynamics indicated by the size of the ink marks. He titled the piece “Cosmography.” Later that summer, Foster revised the score for a performance with four wind players, cello, and piano with staging guided by Nicholas Isherwood. The musicians were asked to rotate the drawings ninety degrees after each transverse.
Cosmography has been performed several times since, in various iterations: e.g., in the dark by the Flux Quartet, with projections at an ISIM conference, and in just intonation by the Del Sol Quartet. In June 2021, Foster was asked to write a piece for the ukulele for Giovanni Albini. He used the drawings from Cosmography and modified the instructions for a solo performer. In 2021, he was invited to compose a piece for marimba for Payton MacDonald. He revised the score for marimba and renamed it “Cosmos.”
From 2021 to 2024, he received about sixteen recordings after approaching several musicians to record interpretations of his score. James Ilgenfritz helped mix and master the pieces, and Cosmos was released on August 13, 2024. The musicians on this album are Giovanni Albini (ukulele), Steven Beck (piano), Thomas Buckner (voice), Robert Dick (bass flute, piccolo, glissando headjoint flute), Ken Filiano and James Ilgenfritz (basses), Steve Gorn (soprano saxophone & bansuri), Gamin Kang (piri), Skip LaPlante (96-tone harp), Sylvain Leroux (Fula flute), Payton MacDonald (marimba), Galen Passen (sitar), Ben Richter (accordion), Adam Robinson (shakuhachi), Jonathan Saraga (trumpet), Dave Sewelson (baritone saxophone), Ellery Trafford (percussion), and Lucie Vítková (voice, hichiriki).
The album opens with Giovanni Albini‘s interpretation of the ukulele. In Movement 1, the listener is brought into a strange realm where the ukulele does things that one never associates with the instrument. The instrument is taken to more familiar timbral territory with Movement 2. Albini reconciles the two dissimilar interpretations with Movement 3, drawing a poetic, almost flamenco-esque flavor to the music before its startling conclusion.
Thomas Bruckner‘s vocal interpretation of the Cosmos score bears no resemblance to Albini’s. Here, a very experimental avant garde, and I dare say, startling approach to a vocal performance.
After this, we are presented with Robert Dick‘s exploration of the piece on bass flute, piccolo, and glissando headjoint flute. His interpretation is no less “out” than anyone else’s. Yet, it has a very natural quality – that is to say, it sounds like it belongs in nature rather than being an intellectual artifice.
The bass duo of Ken Filiano and James Ilgenfritz brought something unexpected. Here, an indistinctly jazzy and ambient musical structure is presented that, while sharply contrasted with what we heard before, still draws meaning from the score.
This movement toward a more structured improvisation is (probably unintentionally) echoed by Steve Gorn. His soprano saxophone exploration of Movement 1 is drenched in a jazz sensibility. His bansuri responds in Movement 2 with a more relaxed, understated, yet unrestrained performance. Movement 3 returns to the soprano saxophone, where Gorn ties everything together in a concise musical statement.
Elsewhere in the collection, MFM member Sylvian Leroux follows (again, unintentionally) Gorn’s model of a recognizable musical structure rather than a foray into the ultra-experimental. His Fula flute deftly executes his labyrinthine set of ideas.
I was fascinated by Skip LaPlante‘s abandoned, almost reckless performance on the 96-tone harp. Unlike most others, his instrument allows an exploration of microtones and alternative temperaments that evoke otherworldly moods. Galen Passen brought out very unexpected sounds from his sitar. His approach, while very musical, was almost heterodox.
This album demonstrates the musician’s adventurous dive into the musical task of creating order from chaos. While each performance was highly individualistic and unique, none failed. Beyond this, it demonstrates Foster’s brilliance for developing and facilitating environments where all musical possibilities are brought within a conceptual framework and given absolute freedom of expression.
