émoi for bass flute [2010]

with works by Richard Barrett, John Croft, Fabrice Fitch, Esaias Järnegard, Brice Pauset

“Forget new complexity: some of the music on flautist Richard Craig’s second Métier disc might simply be called post‐everything. When there’s no tonality, no atonality, no melody and few pitches, what exactly is left? Quite a lot, as it happens – and therein lies the interest. Such technically complex, ‘post‐everything’ music paradoxically brings us back to a primal, at times ecstatic state of Fauvist force.

Evan Johnson’s émoi (2010) for solo bass flute is a case in point. Here, the very act of instrumental articulation strips the sounds of their articulacy. The flute sounds in question are frequently beautiful, at times almost bird‐ like, as if human might become animal through the instrument.”

— Liam Cagney, Gramophone

“Richard Craig’s ‘vale’ pursues a […] musically extraordinary course. In world premieres of works by British, American, French, and Swedish composers, human breath sounds expand into what’s aptly called a vibrant sonic biosphere — the flautist singing, whistling, and humming as well as blowing, as in Evan Johnson’s ‘émoi.’ The American composer focuses on […] a micro-aesthetic of Beckett-like eloquence, here at a general pianissimo level. At the same time, the piece makes unachievable demands, with multiple lines or chords, and an incredibly dense filigree.”

— Andy Hamilton, The Wire

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