Eric Chasalow: His “Ghosts of Our Former Selves” is ““a dramatic journey, like any larger scale work of art.” Mike Lovett photograph
His mother’s death, ten years ago. His father’s death in 2017, coinciding with his own lymphoma diagnosis and treatment. The passing of a mentor, Mario Davidovsky, in 2019. A cascade of ecological and political catastrophes. Fires in Australia, burning hundreds of millions of animals. Pandemic, and societal shutdown.
Composer Eric Chasalow had to write something that encapsulated all that. “Ghosts of Our Former Selves,” ten songs that outline a single, interwoven story, is the result.
Chasalow, a Newton resident, is dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences at Brandeis, and a well-known composer and advocate for electronic music. Most of his works combine electronics with other instruments, as does “Ghosts of Our Former Selves.”
His earliest studies at Columbia included time at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, famed for its then-novel approach to electronics and music-making. That time included studies with Davidovsky.
In addition to his own compositions, in 1996 he and singer-songwriter Barbara Cassidy, his wife, founded the Video Archive of Electroacoustic Music, an oral history of the genre. It includes interviews with pioneers like Davidovsky, Pauline Oliveros, Max Matthews, Milton Babbitt and others.
Chasalow has dozens of his own compositions, but “Ghosts of Our Former Selves” is a departure: he wrote the lyrics, sings the songs, plays the instruments (with some backing). This is personal.
“There are voices that you hear in your own head,” he says. “I hear these voices as if they are recordings, detailed memories of teachers and family members and others.”
Coupled with that, the apocalyptic times.
“This moment, there is so much hate and injustice,” he says, or as he writes in one song, “every hate just calling for another.”
“I connected to that feeling of dread,” he says, “it’s a feeling you cannot undo.”
A return to active performing, something Chasalow had pushed aside for composing and teaching, made the personal connection complete.
“Barbara and I started playing together as a duo,” he says. “I started writing lyrics too. It brought me back to performing again.
“I started out playing rock ’n’ roll, and then jazz, writing big band charts, when I was in high school,” he says. “Then I picked up the flute, and dove into the Bach flute sonatas. Lots of studio experience, recording live concerts, engineering and producing. But performing I left behind.”
The album is available digitally, best linked through www.ericchasalow.com. A Zoom launch colloquium, Oct. 15 at 4:00 p.m., serves as the official release.
The music is spare, belying the complexities possible when combining electronics with acoustical instruments. Chasalow delivers lyrics in a soft, fragile voice, bordering on spoken word. In concept, and sonic textures, “Ghosts of Our Former Selves” feels like Radiohead, with a mesmerizing sound-world and vocals linking songs that shift in mood and memory.
Each of the ten movements explores personal references, with many tangents. Chasalow conceives of “Ghosts of Our Former Selves” in symphonic terms, hoping the listener can absorb the work in its entirety. “Like sitting in a concert hall,” he says, “the experience demands it, it frames it.
“I think of it as a dramatic journey, like any larger scale work of art,” he says. “Individual portraits, each one with its own affect. Like Baroque dance movements. This is my story to tell.”
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Opera News and Leonore Overture. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.