French horn player Rachel Drehmann comes to us from the echoey motorcycle garage beneath her apartment for her House Music Series video. She’s performing Ben Brody’s Oscillations, which unites multiple French Horn and synthesizer lines, looping them and repeating them to create a pleasant atmosphere.
Drehmann has been working with Metropolis Ensemble for more than a decade and has known Brody since 2004, when they were both students at Manhattan School of Music. Brody is a musical chameleon who composes, plays guitar, and plays brass instruments; so is Drehmann, whose regular freelance work involves everything ranging from Broadway to ballet.
When Metropolis Artistic Director Andrew Cyr asked Drehmann to participate in the House Music Series, she knew Oscillations was the perfect piece to choose. She had received Oscillations right before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic while in a freelancing frenzy—performing in Frozen and touring to China and the West Coast. Now, she had just the right amount of time to work on the piece and give it a proper presentation. For her, the track’s steady pulsation and repetition feels like quarantine, where each day is about the same as the last. But what drew her to performing Oscillations most of all was the music’s delicate, bewitching appeal. — Vanessa Ague
Episode: 68Date: November 24, 2020Artist: Rachel DrehmannInstrumentation: French Horn and ElectronicsWork: "Oscillations"Composer: Benjamin Louis BrodyMore from House Music