Quiet Music I – III

[LINER NOTE]

Quiet Music, Music for Piano, a shadowy, hermetic piano miniature, is the initial piece of a forty-two-minute exploration of Hunter Coblentz’s musical soundworld: his series of compositions entitled “Quiet Music I – III”. Cryptic musical materials – phrases, gestures, fragments, constellations, cells, tones – some riveting with suppressed energy, some almost inert, all cast in a range of subtle harmonic colours – greyish, whitish, silvery, and from time to time jewel-like and radiant – seem to find themselves in a strange and uncertain environment and come slowly into contact, shifting and morphing.

Hunter Coblentz, a Canadian composer based in England, writes music with a highly refined sensibility, favouring in his work a serious and occasionally sombre sonic atmosphere, but with a constant flow of invention and a penchant for understated beauty with moments of ambiguity, surprise and delight.

The aforementioned Quiet Music, Music for Piano, originally written in 2016 for Benjamin Powell as part of (the sadly no longer) Manchester-based new music ensemble Psappha’s “Composing for Piano” scheme, is a gem of introversion. A hushed rhapsodic opening section, a mere minute and a half long, presents a germinal idea – a soft, expanding line – a brief preliminary consideration of phrase, melody, and resonance. This is followed by a microscopic spikiness, an erratic gesture which resurfaces here and there throughout the cycle. The central passage of the piece comprises pulsating chords, dark chromatic resonances which drift away, never quite settled, before the frenetic qualities of earlier re-enter in the final minute with a newfound fluidity, a fleeting delicate play of notes, soft, filigree and petal-like.

Some years later, in 2023, a subsequent work was composed, Quiet Music II for piano, electric guitar and percussion, at the request of the present writer for a newly formed contemporary music ensemble. This work expands on the earlier piano piece, but moves in a still darker direction, with an austere, almost ritualistic character. The piano and electric guitar pass individual tones back and forth, a loose but persistent slow hocket, a kind of primordial two-ness. Melancholic affects emerge, and the piano finds space for its jumpiness in concise interludes, amidst throbbing bell-like chords, sounding like a ring-modulator, which arise from the guitar’s equally tempered quartertone scordatura in combination with (and in difference to) the piano’s standard tuning. Here and there the heavy mood is accentuated by sustained bass drum rumbles, cymbal rolls, and triangle strikes, as played in this recording by London-based percussionist angela wai nok hui.

The chilly air of this dark and explorative music reaches an apex in Quiet Music III for piano, tenor saxophone, cello, electric guitar and percussion, composed in 2024, which is, at a little over twenty-four minutes, the longest piece in the series. A soft, deep tone from the bass drum attunes the ears before the piano takes a short solo of pointillistic melodic fragments. From here develops an intricate ensemble piece, with each instrument, or each sonic object, like a character on a small stage, with a thin layer of dust and with skewed, soft morning light from a window. Always fragile and emergent, this antique microtheatre of barely-moving but eminently alive sound-beings is always evolving and probing the possibilities of the situation. Synchronicity becomes a central idea here, two or more of the ensemble cast starting or ending together, growing, then perhaps dissipating, dispersing, vanishing. The music moves quickly between slow ideas. Owing to the larger instrumentation, this composition has the broadest range of timbre and the richest texture, with particular note of the saxophone multiphonics and quartertones, which were informed, and on this recording played, by David Zucchi. The music manages not to be claustrophobic, instead revelling in stillness and quietude, always keeping its horizons open.

On 9th June 2018, I gave the live premiere of Quiet Music, Music for Piano at Glasgow Experimental Music Series. It is greatly pleasing to see how this piano miniature ignited a musical trajectory for Hunter that has led, seven years later, to this album release. The music here rewards concentrated and repeated listening: it reveals itself little by little, and its subtleties leave lasting impressions.

Gregor Forbes

August 2025

[TRACK LISTING]

1. Quiet Music, Music for Piano (2016)
Solo Piano

2. Quiet Music II (2023)
Piano, Guitar, Percussion

3. Quiet Music III (2024)
Piano, Guitar, Percussion, Cello, Saxophone

[41’30]

[ALBUM CREDITS]

Piano, Guitar, Cello: Hunter Coblentz
www.huntercoblentz.com

Percussion: angela wai nok hui
www.angelahuiwainok.com

Saxophone: David Zucchi
www.davidzucchi.com

Mixing & Mastering: Hunter Coblentz

Recorded Dec. 27, 2024 (St Leonards-on-Sea), Feb. 24, 2025 (Gipsy Hill, London), May 9, 2025 (Brockley, London)

Released 21 November 2025

Copyright © 2025 Hunter Coblentz
All rights reserved.