ZACK BROWNING, Rock Galaxy

When a composer’s decades long aesthetic is defined by intriguing, perfectly pegged phrases like “speed demon music” and “the aural equivalent of a pinball machine,” listeners fresh to the experience know they’re in for a surreal, genre-defying and sensory kaleidoscopic experience. So while Zack Browning’s latest soulfully epic whirlwind aural immersion is titled Rock Galaxy, it’s way beyond rock and far out into the universe, incorporating everything from prog rock and jazz fusion to contemporary classical music.

The long-awaited follow-up to his second collection Soul Doctrine (2018), the journey of Rock Galaxy, beginning with hypnotic opening piano and vibraphone riffs and dramatic tribal drumming of “Sol Prophecy,” inspired by the Miracle of the Sun at Fátima and the six dates of the Mary apparitions, is rooted in a choice Browning made in the mid-80s. His thriving career found him dividing his time between being a classically trained trumpeter and pop pianist, but he chose a more fulfilling path – composing music that, in the spirit of German electronic/computer music pioneer Herbert Brün, “makes the composer necessary.”

From then on his fascinating, freewheeling compositional approach evolved from a personal compositional style rooted in an array of unique structural aesthetics and mystical frameworks. Chief among them are Planetary Magic Squares (Agrippa) and The Flying Star System (Feng Shui). For the first, Browning uses the seven planetary magic squares described in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s 1531 book De Occulta Philosophia. Essentially, these square grids, where rows, columns and diagonals add up to the same number, are used to dictate musical elements like rhythm, pitch density, timbre and orchestration.

The Feng Shui system finds Browning incorporating the 3x3 Lo Shu Square, where rotations and applications of the square serve to create structural models for his compositions. Another notable element in Browning’s works is his mapping of personal data, such as birth dates and historical events, into his magic squares to determine the melodic flow and rhythmic energy of a piece. Traditionally, his pieces fuse live acoustic instruments like saxophone, violin and  clarinet (and, as on the opening piece of Rock Galaxy, vibes) with computer generated sonic textures.   

To paraphrase Elton John and Bernie Taupin, you might not understand the science, but be aware when you immerse in the music that more complexities exist behind the scenes in the service of this empowering and diverse sonic universe. Commissioned by Nota do Meio, “Sol Prophecy” lays a mighty, manic foundation for the collection via a percussive swirl of emphatic piano fire by Alice Viera and Rúben Lopes and the sonic boom of Francisco Ribiero and Tiago Dias’ resonating percussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ3KIErVAsU

“Cosmic Changes,” commissioned by the chamber group MEMO, is a magical, fluttering flute-harp romp featuring Elisa Moles (flute) and Molly O’Roark (harp) that is both wild, free, fluttering and angelic yet grounded in depth and earthiness between the flights of fancy. Browning composed it to represent the Five Element Theory of Feng Shui where the Five Phases (Fire, Water, Wood, Earth and Metal) and the magic squares of their associated plants are artfully combined.

Browning brings some impactful historical perspective on race relations in America to light on the all percussion piece “Mercury Music,” which features the surreal, emotionally charged work of Tiago Dias and draws its inspiration and hypnotic, peripatetic tribal strength from the date of February 4, the birthdate of Rosa Parks and percussionist Michael Barnes (who commissioned the piece) and the date six states withdrew from the Union to form the Confederacy. It’s an intense, thought provoking intertwining that also taps into December 1, the date Parks refused to give up her bus seat, to generate additional textures.

The title track “Rock Galaxy” feels like a euphoric cinematic/symphonic space odyssey, with the punchy excitement and swelling energy of the Jupiter String Quartet blending with the exotic, percussive dynamics of William Moersch’s exotic marimba. While it takes listeners into deep space on a timeless flight into who knows where, it’s grounded in the very earthly date of April 17, the day Benjamin Franklin died in 1790 and April 23, the birthdate of Meg Freivogel, violinist and founder of the Jupiter Quartet. It’s also the date Shakespeare died in 1616 – and there’s all sort of planetary movement around these dates that Browning and the musicians take a deep dive into.

Sometimes, the most powerful, thought-provoking gems emerge from the birthdates of slightly less famous or non-historical figures. Such is the case with the frenetic, visceral piano pounding excursion “Upscale Jammer,” with Ju-Ping Song’s ivory mastery building suspense and bringing explosive catharsis via three connected pieces around the birthdate of Jerry King Musser, who commissioned the piece through the NakedEye Ensemble, featuring Song as artistic director, and then using that as source material for the other action.

Anyone who’s ever wondered about the tonal differences between vibraphone and marimba will get a tonal lesson and an exciting feast for the ears soul dance between the two on “Fate and Fusion,” featuring the wild stops, starts, acceleration and momentary ambient flow of intertwining artists Francisco Ribiero (vibes) and Rui Camões  (marimba). This piece uses the date of April 15 (hopefully not chosen for tax day!), where in 1987 the composer’s daughter was born while in 1991, the father of one of the commissioners of the work died. Jazz heads will appreciate a tie-in with Horace Silver’s iconic “Song for My Father,” which Part III of the piece is based on variations of.

Rock Galaxy wraps with rockets fueled by musical eclecticism taking us in our mind’s eye to two planets we can see clearly in the sky on any given night – our neighbor Venus and that distant but massive ball of gas we love as Jupiter. Cheerful, freely dancing flutes from the Eastern Illinois University Faculty Woodwind Quintet play a prominent role on “Jupiter LVB,” named also for Beethoven, whose 250^th birthday inspired Browning’s four compositional actions designed around the composer’s name, birth date, zodiac sign and Fifth Symphony.

If you wonder if planets can have soul, Browing has your answer on the closing piece “Moon Venus,” a dark, haunting percussion and ambience driven piece commissioned by Jeremy Brunk and the Millikin University Percussion Ensemble. It blends music inspired by the ruling planets of Brunk and Godfather of Soul James Brown, complete with delicately shifted source material from two other Browns (see how this chain works?) – jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown’s “Sandu” and Jamaican singer Dennis Brown’s “Revolution.”