Since the words ''minimalist'' or ''minimalism'' appear on both the front and the back of the packaging of this disc, albeit heavily qualified by context, I should perhaps say that Stephen Montague is a minimalist for those who have always understood that minimalism had a point, but who nevertheless tend to fall asleep after the first five minutes or so. Montague uses ostinato rhythms and repeated figures, but what he does with them is eventful and purposeful, cumulatively structured, indeed not really minimal at all. His music develops, its expectations are sometimes confirmed, sometimes dramatically, poignantly or wittily denied. A whole lot more happens in his pieces than in any properly so-called minimalist composition, even in such a quiet (never louder than pp) and meditatively relaxed, such a thoroughly laid-back (in a phrase since he uses it himself) West Coast piece as Haiku.
The rather fancy but not very helpful title of From the White Edge of Phrygia refers to the use of white noise (very sparing, produced by violinists playing on their bridges and wind players breathing through their instruments) and of the Phrygian mode. It is 18 minutes long, and in a standard-model minimal piece you would spend about 15 of them praying for some note, any note that forms no part of the Phrygian scale. In fact Montague does step aside from his chosen mode, with satisfying dramatic effect, but not before he has begun developing his material in terms of activity and complexity. There is a distinct sense of movement, and at the end, of finality. It is an effective piece and has already been successfully used as a ballet score, but the First String Quartet is a substantial advance on it. A single movement with a regular (hence, if you insist, 'minimal') pulse throughout, it has a wide range of texture (from genuine quartet writing to unison ostinatos) and of pace. More importantly it has a wide emotional range, too: an exciting and hurtling toccata at the centre of the work breaks up into gestures that sound protesting before a long concluding section with the character of a lament. The integration of the quartet with live electronics and a computer-generated tape is particularly impressive, Montague is minimal, if you like, in his discriminating refusal to overdo such things
Haiku is peaceful, calm and slow to change; resourceful compositional skill ensures that it does not turn into one of those West Coast pieces that are only endurable with chemical aid. Tigida Pipa for four singers all wielding percussion instruments a setting of nonsense words by Montague himself, is both a brilliant show-off encore piece for Singcircle and genuinely funny, even on second or third hearing. The contexts, by the way, for those words that I've already gravely over-used myself, are (front cover) ''a superb post-minimalist'' (The Village Voice) and (back cover) ''ebullient and inventive far beyond the Steve Reich school of minimalism'' (Opera). Hear hear to both. Admirable performances, cleanly recorded.'