The bottom line is that Black Noise is a superb and highly inventive piece. It makes no concessions to popular tastes, but maintains its edgy quality from begin to end with out compromise. Although not really jazz, the jazz-inspired rhythms, combined in as they’re with very complex, unusual meters, is extraordinarily difficult for the performers, yet conductor Gil Rose and his Boston Modern Orchestra Project play it with a sure grasp of the complete construction. The complete suite, which lasts 84 Art & Music minutes spread over two CDs, is extremely imaginative and, though there are some heavy-handed moments, Nathan has accomplished a splendid job of keeping the music diversified and recent throughout. No two pieces are really alike besides in their common use of atonality and often microtonality, and in this means Nathan avoids the entice of so many fashionable composers by preserving his strategies fluid and different.
Eleven …