New York City-based flutist Tessa Brinckman has created a wide landscape of contemporary flute solos and duos, much of it in distant collaboration with acclaimed composers and musicians from France, USA, Japan, South Africa, and her native New Zealand. Her multiple flutes entwine with the culturally and temporally diverse sounds of Buchla, water tanks, taonga pūoro, guitar, prepared piano, field recordings and a poem. Take Wing, Roll Back invites the listener to geo-poetic worlds past and present, infused with humor, pathos and drive, offering a warm kind of futurism.

Dawn Brightens the Day of Mortals Robed in Purple is Norio Fukushi’s hymn to his beloved mountain. Eight sections lead with a poetic line:

The forests sway in the way of the wind / Deep in the forest dark the devil dwells / When stars from heaven fall, the lakes stand clear, reflecting / Fog subtly veils the face of the river / Dawn brightens the day of mortals robed in purple / Birds take wing with the morning / Nor sage nor seer knows where the endless prairie trail goes / Good indeed to be at rest

Sonus Redux: And the Wave Rolled Back is a wild collaboration of sources and composers, quoting Jean-Marie Leclair’s Sonata II in C major from the Premier Livre de Sonatas, Oeuvre I (1723) and Hunter S. Thompson, unfurling dense layers of Tessa Brinckman’s collection of baroque flutes, prepared piano, underpinned by Todd Barton’s Buchla harmonizations.

Tessa Brinckman grew up with Māori stories of the taniwha (spiritual protectors and antagonists). Taniwha is a tribute to the dead, the living, ancient pathways and machines (specifically the subways), that vibrate the foundations of Manhattan. Stems were recorded in New Zealand (with Horomona Horo), in New York City and Oregon.

Wade Through Water and Zeuze question the limited Western view of what African music can be. Andile Khumalo references sounds from around the African continent, Asia and the West. Wade Through Water was inspired by the Hermann Hesse poem “Happiness". Tessa Brinckman adapted Andile’s original Wade (for clarinet and piano) to alto flute and piano, making use of the alto flute’s colorful extended techniques. “Ze uze” is an isiXhosa term with two meanings — to invite someone to visit, and to issue a warning about that visit.

You Never Come Out The Same is a collaborative score with Cara Stacey, and the title is a Bahian aphorism about the value of water and cycles in healing. The music draws from central African xylophone music, Sundanese chamber music and Māori waiata. Extended techniques on the piccolo and the prepared piano enhance the wilderness of emotions.

Tenderness of Cranes is derived from the traditional Japanese shakuhachi piece, Tsuru No Sugamori, depicting the life cycle of the wild crane, a symbol of longevity and bonding. Shirish Korde oscillates his music effortlessly between traditional Japanese and contemporary Western aesthetics and instrumental techniques.

A Cracticus Fancie melds together an archival recording of Denis Glover (1912-1980) reading his famous New Zealand poem, The Magpies, with field recordings, and contemporary live/processed piccolo sound-worlds. It was inspired an Australian First Nations story of cracticus tibicena saving the people from perpetual darkness, Denis Glover visiting Tessa Brinckman’s grandparents as a mischievous raconteur, a re-imagining of Denis’ poem from the viewpoint of a magpie, the Irish folk song The Magpie, and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

- Tessa Brinckman