Restless Nation: The Music of Andy Teirstein

On one hand, ‘world music’ denotes a sound or style resulting from melding instrumentation (including vocalisation) drawn from different cultural traditions. Then there is ‘world music’ intentionally composed to forge a singularly cohesive expression from disparate cultural elements. Restless Nation: The Music of Andy Teirstein draws from both definitions in a gloriously impressionistic rendering of a home-schooling expedition across the US undertaken by the composer, his wife and their two children.

As performed by the Mivos and Cassatt String Quartets, Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Marco Ambrosini (nyckelharpa), Yair Dalal (oud) and Teirstein (dulcimer, harmonica), the work’s four major movements evoke various aspects of the adventure – the open road, sounds of insects and night animals, playful experiences, contemplative moments, the journey home – purportedly from the children’s perspective while completely avoiding childish themes. A student of Leonard Bernstein and Henry Brant, Teirstein has composed for film, opera and moving theatre. Restless Nation bears traces of all of these genres from the dramatic, frenzied exultations of the opening movement to myriad pastoral passages and folk references in the second and third sections to the wistful, lyrical sway of the final movement, which was inspired by a love letter discovered by Teirstein in the Woody Guthrie archives.