"Lippel has assembled an astonishing diversity of creative voices contributing to the guitar repertoire in the New Music context. While the individual pieces featured on this album have diverse origins with original circumstances necessitating different purposes, Lippel's curation and presentation of the collection has the effect of transcending these circumstances. In this way, the album highlights their shared flexible and virtuosic vernacular of New Music using the guitar as a focal point. For this reason I consider this release a valuable and necessary addition to the recorded discography of compilation albums in the medium." Classical Music Daily
"Adjacence is the new album from guitar virtuoso Dan Lippel, playing solo as well as in the company of individual players and chamber groups of various sizes. The selection here is very rich: fourteen compositions by thirteen recent and contemporary composers, including two composed or co-composed by Lippel." Avant Music News
"Throughout the more than two hours of Adjacence Lippel and his colleagues kept me enthralled with the breadth and range of an instrument it is all too easy to take for granted." - The Whole Note
"Sophisticated interpretations and good sound recordings are further plus points of the double album." Pizzicato
"sprawling, adventurous, *essential* collection of new chamber works for guitar. Featuring 14 pieces and 12 premiere recordings, this will become a bible for new music guitarists!" An Earful
"The breadth of America’s contemporary music scene is captured in Adjacence, the latest release from guitarist Daniel Lippel. The double album brings together an eclectic group of 14 chamber works for ensembles large and small, ranging from music by established composers like Charles Wuorinen, Tania Léon, and Nico Muhly to pieces by important newer voices. As a soloist with groups like International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and as co-founder of the indefatigable New Focus Recordings, Lippel has probably done more to introduce audiences to the diversity of modern guitar repertoire than anyone else in his generation." - Clive Paget, Musical America
Adjacence is a compilation of several chamber works recorded with various ensembles and collaborators (International Contemporary Ensemble, counter)induction, Flexible Music, Bodies Electric, and various freelance colleagues) that integrate varied aesthetics into one programmatic arc. The program highlights music across the stylistic spectrum, incorporating microtonality, improvisation, timbral experimentation, and carefully managed ensemble textures to create a broad snapshot of chamber repertoire with guitar by many of the community’s prominent composers. All but two of the works (Davidovsky and León) are heard in their premiere recordings and all but two others (Speach and Ko) were written for the ensembles heard on this recording.
Adjacence highlights music involving guitar that invests in a variety of musical parameters, including Ken Ueno’s exploration of a just intonation scordatura, Tyshawn Sorey’s deft balance between intricately through-composed material as a springboard for improvisation contrasted with Tania León’s structured open form score, Mario Davidovsky and Charles Wuorinen’s tightly argued modernism, Nico Muhly and Peter Adriaanz’s personal approaches to minimalism, Sidney Marquez Boquiren and Peter Gilbert’s programmatic expressionism, Bernadette Speach’s timbral exploration, and Tonia Ko and Carl Schimmel’s instrumentation driven invention. The album is both a compendium of several avenues in contemporary guitar chamber music as well as an expression of a conviction that underlying musical components bind together diverse aesthetics more than they separate them.
Executive producer: Daniel Lippel
Session producers: Ryan Streber, all tracks except: Ryan Streber and John Link (Davidovsky), Bernadette Speach (Speach), David Crowell and Daniel Lippel (Adriaansz III and IV, Adriaansz/Lippel, Lippel), Flexible Music (Schimmel), Peter Gilbert (Gilbert), Sidney Boquiren and Ryan Streber (Boquiren)
Recording engineer: Ryan Streber, all tracks except: David Crowell (Adriaansz III and IV, Lippel, Adriaansz/Lippel), Scott Fraser (viola on Ueno), Christopher Jacobs (Schimmel)
Editing: Ryan Streber, all tracks except: David Crowell (Adriaansz III and IV, Adriaansz/Lippel, Lippel), Peter Gilbert (Gilbert), Daniel Lippel (guitar on Ueno)
Editing producer: Daniel Lippel, all tracks except: Peter Gilbert (Gilbert), Ryan Streber and Daniel Lippel (Muhly, Sorey), David Crowell and Daniel Lippel (Adriaansz III and IV, Adriaansz/Lippel, Lippel)
Mixing engineer: Ryan Streber, except David Crowell (Adriaansz Serenades and Dystopian Reprise)
Mastering engineer: Ryan Streber (Oktaven Audio, Mt. Vernon, NY)
Artwork, Design and Layout: Kate Gentile
This recording has been funded in part by support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording Program, University of California at Berkeley Music Department (Ueno), the International Contemporary Ensemble (Sorey), University of New Mexico Music Department (Gilbert), and the Roger Shapiro Fund (Wuorinen). Many thanks to Pete Harden, Bernadette Speach, Neil Beckmann, and Jeffrey Irving for assistance with obtaining and collating scores and clarifying performance details; Ken Ueno, William Anderson, Peter Gilbert, Karola Obermueller, Ross Karre, Peter Adriaansz, Bernadette Speach, and Jeff Irving for facilitating funding support; Jessica Slaven, Eric Huebner, and Scott Fraser for help coordinating recording logistics; Haruka Fujii, John Chang, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and counter)induction for creating the circumstances that allowed for the creation of some of these works; Marc Wolf and Neil Beckmann for behind the scenes label collaboration; Kate Gentile for bringing so much to the design; David Crowell for artful and enthusiastic work on sessions which didn’t have a template; Ryan Streber for ever inspiring virtuosity and musicianship behind the controls; and of course to the composers and performers, thank you so much for lending your inspiring artistry to this project and sharing it with all of us.