Listeners should be advised that Adam Rudolph doesn’t play a beat on this album; it’s a gathering of recent compositions performed by various others, including members of his own New York-based Go: Organic Orchestra. The clear standouts are the first two tracks, in which the Momenta String Quartet gives incisive readings of “Morphic Resonances” and “Syntactic Adventures”—the latter piece dedicated to Rudolph’s mentor Yusef Lateef. Rudolph’s background as a percussionist manifests itself in the use of what he calls “ostinatos of circularity,” layered polyrhythms that create the effect of one part blending almost imperceptibly into another. On the aptly titled “Morphic Resonances,” the sound generated by the violins, viola and cello often brings to mind a backwards tape loop, with individual note attacks camouflaged by subtle shifts in timbre.
