Rock’s Out and Bach’s In on Patrick Higgins’ TOCSIN

The biggest surprise about Patrick Higgins’ 2015 record Bachanalia was how straight he played it. Maybe best known as a guitarist for the experimental trance group Zs, Higgins approached a variety of Bach’s works for solo strings and keyboard on their own terms, adapting them to his instrument without trying to repurpose or contextualize. It’s that part of Higgins’ head that’s heard on his new TOCSIN, coming out Oct. 16 on Telegraph Hard (the same label that issued the Bach set) in CD, double LP and download editions. His compositions for string quartet and mixed ensemble don’t much reveal his rockish leanings, but his hand is apparent in the drive, in the immediacy of what Higgins terms “crisis music.”

The album opens with his SQ3, played by the exceptional Mivos Quartet (who recorded his String Quartet No. 2 in 2013). It’s hard to escape the trappings of the string quartet, it’s pretty much the lifeblood of chamber music, and Higgins doesn’t exactly try. Instead he meets it head on with a keen sensibility for arrangement.

The titular work, for piano and two cellos, is stronger. The instrumentation allows more texture and Higgins embraces the contrasts, as do the players. Pianist Vicky Chow and cellist Mariel Roberts both play with the Bang on a Can All Stars, an outfit well versed in energetic music, and Brian Snow (Björk, Meredith Monk, Max Richter) completes the unusual trio. The two movements race from one repetition to the next with dramatic shifts in volume and tempo, Chow’s prepared piano at times providing adding, metallic rhythms. The near percussiveness of TOCSIN is followed by some actual percussion on Emptyset [0,0]. Fantastic oblong clockwork on snare, woodblocks and piano setting a stumbling pace for an octet of strings and reeds.

The album concludes in a bold and beautiful move with Higgins’ string quartet arrangement of the final section (left incomplete, intentionally or otherwise) of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. Performers all too often try to resolve the piece, either by tacking on another of Bach’s works or writing their own finale. Higgins lifts it from the set of 18 fugues and canons, treating it (as on his arrangements of Bach for guitar) with reverence while presenting it in isolation, letting its broken phrase ring in the air. There’s no lack of humility in borrowing what are often considered to be Bach’s last words. Fortunately, the rest of the album excuses the hubris.