Nashville Composer Cristina Spinei’s Debut Album Explores the Rhythms of Dance

Composers often have vastly different approaches to writing music. Old Johann Sebastian Bach always sat at his trusty writing desk when cranking out scores, while Igor Stravinsky insisted on composing at the piano. Nashville-based composer Cristina Spinei creates music on the move.

“When I work on a new piece, I look to develop themes and motifs that I can dance to,” writes Spinei in the liner notes of her debut album, Music for Dance. “If an idea doesn’t make me move in some way, it gets set aside in a scrap file. Composers tend to have a writing ritual, and mine involves a lot of dancing around the music studio.”

 Spinei’s predilection for dance comes naturally. As a child growing up in Stamford, Conn., she dreamed of becoming a prima ballerina. But she switched to composing at age 9 after attending a dress rehearsal of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Given that Spinei and Rossini share the same unlikely birthday — Feb. 29 — her choice seems almost providential.

 After she graduated from the Juilliard School in New York City, Spinei’s first commissions were all from dance companies. Four of the six instrumental dances on her new album were written for choreographer Kathleen Dyer. The most ambitious of these pieces is a string quartet called Bootleg Sugar Lips. Dyer had asked Spinei to write a piece similar to composer John Adams’ pulsating, frenetically energetic Shaker Loops. As a joke, Spinei came back with a score titled Bootleg Shaker Loops. The dancers mistook the title as Bootleg Sugar Lips. The erratum was just wacky enough to stick.

 Composed in 2012, Bootleg Sugar Lips opens with oscillating strings that buzz like a hive of angry bees. This feverish, turbulent music eventually gives way to a less hurried middle section, in which sustained chords arise over a steady, heartbeat of a pulse. The finale features more frenzied music, with simple melodies and fragments emerging from the work’s throbbing background. On the recording, violinists Pala García and Joan Plana, violist Amanda Verner and cellist Aleisha Verner play with a welcome mix of polish and power.

 From, composed in 2010, is remarkably calm and introspective. It is an achingly beautiful slow dance, with somber exchanges among the instruments often ending in moments of reflective silence. The members of the Voxare String Quartet give this music an impassioned reading.

 Spinei describes Perspectives, arranged for string quartet in 2012, as a conversation among the four instruments. Although it opens quietly, it quickly becomes an animated discussion, with the various instruments dovetailing with one another, as if one is completing the other’s thoughts. García, Plana and the Verner sisters play this music with color and feeling.

 The earliest-written piece on the album is Some Breaking, a string quartet completed in 2009. The “breaking” in this case refers to heartbreak, represented by dark minor-key melodies and mournful countermelodies. The imaginative second section is almost all pizzicato, creating a kind of pointillistic effect. The final section ends with bright, rhythmically intricate music, which the Voxare Quartet plays with gusto.

 The largest-scale piece is Synched, originally scored in 2010 as an aleatoric work — a chance piece never played the same way twice — for string octet and electronics. Spinei later rearranged Synched as a fixed score for string orchestra. That’s the version heard on this album, and conductor José Serebrier leads the St. Michel Strings in an intensely lyrical performance.

 My favorite piece on the album is Meet Me Under the Clock, a charming duet for cello and marimba. The title refers to the clock at New York’s Grand Central Terminal, where Spinei used to wait for her sister to get off the train from Connecticut. The juxtaposition of a steady beat and bubbling music calls to mind the stationary observer surrounded by a swirling crowd. Cellist Sari De Leon Reist and percussionist Colleen Phelps give this music a sparkling account.

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