Only when trying out the CD did we get a better take on Gibson's style and language, which is marked by a conviction he knows what he wants to say, that he is unconcerned with current fashions and willing to search out new territories. The CD tells us those territories are principally sonic, timbral. The three works written between 1987 and the present involve computer-generated tape. Ex Machina, for tape alone, brings us virtually up to the minute. Nonetheless, Gibson is achieving something we rarely hear in electronic compositions these days, spontaneous forms with genuine musical ideas.
Unusual ensembles are also in evidence.
In the former two works, high tech is married to the expertise of flutist Kristin Winter-Jones and percussionist Steven Hall. While in each marriage, the personality of the child comes through more clearly in the acoustic components, the final selection transcends transistors in an appealingly peripatetic faux-pianism.