Opening Veins

The music by David Felder and Andrew Rindfleisch on this disc couldn't be more different in concept or atmosphere. What these artful composers share is an abiding curiosity for aural imagery—how color both of instrumental and electronic persuasion melds with programmatic ideas to produce compelling, challenging and forceful narratives. Felder and Rindfleisch have spent their careers delving into the unknown while retaining connections with the near and distant pasts. The influences in the scores performed here are numerous, with nods to jazz and myriad 20th-century techniques. But most important is the way each piece inhabits a distinctive sonic world through novel performing forces that open up the expressive potential of the topics at hand. In revealing the salient qualities in each score, the music making of the Slee Sinfonietta tells us much about the complementary creativity of Felder and Rindfleisch even as it renders the pairing of these composers something on the order of ideal.