OUT NOW | Violist Zachary Carrettín's New CD: "Metamorphosis"

Recorded during lockdown using social distancing and masks, the disc features Bach's Cello Suites 1–3 performed on viola

Sono Luminus Records announced the release of American violist Zachary Carrettín's new album, "Metamorphosis."

"I’ve always thought of the Bach Cello Suites as personal meditations. Elements include song, dance, elision, cadence, gesture, rhetoric, cantilena (vocal line), counterpoint, and of course, harmony," Zachary told The Violin Channel.

"There is an inherent freedom in these works, inviting a musician to explore phrasing, choosing different 'pivot' moments for the shaping to and from harmonic changes. The inner voices of the counterpoint disappear and reappear but continue in the mind as a continuous musical line. The notation leaves much room for a changing interpretation throughout a musician’s life, (I favor Anna Magdalena Bach’s manuscript as there is no extant autograph manuscript by J.S. Bach himself.)

"I chose the title, 'Metamorphosis,' reflecting on how I’ve changed in the quarter-century. I’ve played the suites, sonatas, and partitas, and these have continued to change in my mind as living artworks, paintings in sound.

"The recording process was the first remote project Sono Luminus produced during the pandemic. In April of 2020, my partner in life and music, pianist Mina Gajic, our chihuahua Apple, and I drove thirty hours each way from Boulder, Colorado to Virginia, not stopping for a hotel or at a restaurant due to the Covid-19 situation. The engineer was in his booth in a mask and the producer was in her studio in Cleveland, patched in via audio/video feed.

"I spent three afternoons, each with a Bach suite, in the intimate historic chapel now owned by Sono Luminus. Mina and Apple sat quietly, one with a score in hand and the other just happy to be traveling with us. With human contact at an extreme minimum, including staying alone at the home of a friend who was out of the country, and dining alone at the house, there were many hours of silence. The experience was intimate and offered me time to reflect on the pandemic suffering and loss worldwide, including the loss of people dear to me.

"Recording Suites 1, 2, and 3 during lockdown was a quiet experience, similar to playing music alone on the bank of a creek. This music, now three hundred years old, has traveled across time and across cultures and has transformed within the consciousness of the listener and the musicians who play these works.

"Whether an interpretation favors breadth, gesture, dance, or song, Bach’s music is always imbued with gratitude for life and creation, and a longing to be one with the divine. Whether light-hearted or languid, richly contrapuntal or melodically simple, harmonically profound or whimsical, the cello suites maintain a connection to something deeply meaningful. The sentences (phrases) can be 'spoken' in a variety of ways and therefore each performance offers its own musical dialogue.

"My hope is that the listener will feel as though they are in an intimate environment, hearing a personal journey through these remarkable pieces, and maybe that they will feel as though we are sharing a moment together, despite the distancing we are all experiencing during the pandemic."

Metamorphosis

Zachary Carrettín, viola

Label: Sono Luminous Records

Release Date: April 23, 2021