The Praying Mantis and the Bluebird

THE PRAYING MANTIS AND THE BLUEBIRD BY BETH ANDERSON & ANDREW BOLOTOWSKY (2014)

A music box in a forest, winding down as it devours innocence whole.

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I.

Beth Anderson and Andrew Bolotowsky’s The Praying Mantis and the Bluebird (2014) is not a record—it is a lattice of sound stretched across memory and loss, intricately threaded with danger and innocence. Born out of Anderson’s fearless embrace of neo-romanticism and avant-garde minimalism, and Bolotowsky’s unparalleled fluency in the breath and voice of the flute, this album exists at the intersection of play and predation.

Beth Anderson, a Kentucky-born composer based in New York, has always found poetry in simplicity. With a pedigree tracing through John Cage’s experimental spaces and Philip Glass’s minimalist textures, her work navigates a fine, resonant line between tenderness and threat. Bolotowsky, the flutist who trained under the legendary Jean-Pierre Rampal, is a magician of the air, a shaper of breath into forms that seem impossible in their clarity and complexity. Together, they weave a tapestry whose threads bear influences of Vivaldi’s melodic purity, the meditative spirituality of shakuhachi masters, and the adventurous openness of Cage’s prepared instruments. Released by MSR Classics—a label dedicated to unearthing artistic gems—the album offers a journey through the wild lands of emotional and existential truth.

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II.

This music does not tell—it confesses. It holds a mirror to our fragility, daring us to gaze into the glass until it fractures. In the opening moments, one encounters an innocence so crystalline, so precariously balanced, that its collapse seems inevitable. The initial piano phrases are deceptively simple, sparse enough to feel like the echo of a lullaby one might have dreamed. Yet even here, beneath the surface of apparent purity, lurks something darker, hinted at by tonal shifts and subtle tensions, foreshadowing the arrival of a predator hidden within the melody itself.

The bluebird, represented through Bolotowsky’s flute, dances lightly, naïvely, unaware of the lurking mantis beneath—the piano, capable of becoming monstrous, is a presence that Anderson sculpts into forms both beautiful and sinister. She allows it to flirt harmlessly with simple harmonies, only to later reveal its power to transform, to distort, to consume. The piano is not merely an instrument here; it becomes a sentient entity, a force of nature—a mantis poised, patient, and voracious. Anderson learned from Cage how to render a piano monstrous, and Bolotowsky learned from Rampal how to sustain purity even in the face of devastation.

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III.

Through eighteen meticulously structured tracks, each crafted with the precision of a Japanese woodcut, Anderson and Bolotowsky explore a complex narrative arc—part allegory, part existential tragedy. Titles like “Morse Code Preamble,” “Bisecting Canons,” “Skate Suite III Development Waltz,” and “Water Strider Corrente” point to a meticulousness that connects the Baroque tradition of Vivaldi with a contemporary freedom reminiscent of Keith Jarrett’s ecstatic improvisations. The artists blend impressionist delicacy, Baroque structure, and avant-garde experimentalism into a kaleidoscopic whole. This music breathes its lineage clearly, from Debussy’s shimmering surfaces to Prokofiev’s ironic playfulness; from Cage’s liberated soundscapes to the introspective meditation of traditional shakuhachi.

Yet, the album transcends pastiche. It achieves its own language, a syntax defined by emotional complexity. In “The Eight Ancestor,” Bolotowsky’s flute carries us through a fragile, noble lineage; in “Lullababy for the Eight Ancestor,” innocence returns briefly, bittersweetly—a child’s song rendered achingly tragic by context. And then the dreadful yet compelling “Dr. Blood’s Mermaid Lullaby,” where a playful façade masks hidden peril, hinting that the mantis—death or predation—may already have struck, leaving behind wounds that music itself tries desperately to heal.

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IV.

If there is one climax, one pinnacle where the album reveals its soul, it is found in “Shakuhachi Run,” where Bolotowsky, alone, transforms the flute into a channel of mourning. Here is where virtuosity transcends technique, creating a sound so pure, so sustained, that it seems to hold time captive. It is a meditation upon loss, on acceptance, and on letting go—proof that the silence following a perfect note is itself music of the highest order. Anderson, though silent here, remains ever-present in the subtle breath of the composition’s restraint.

The closing tracks reveal a startling revelation: the piano is indeed the mantis, capable of tenderness and destruction. But it chooses, in a gesture almost miraculous, not to devour but to embrace. In “Kummi Dance,” the final piece, the piano and flute intertwine in an ecstatic celebration—seductive, compassionate, virtuosic, and free. The piano applauds, literally claps—an act of Cagean liberation from conventional restraint—joyously affirming life instead of death. Music has tamed the monster.

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V.

The miracle of The Praying Mantis and the Bluebird is that it doesn’t merely reflect life—it intensifies it. It is an album that can sit beside Vivaldi’s transcendent RV 555, Jarrett’s improvised devotion, or Cage’s playful radicalism and not only coexist but converse. It challenges and rewards, terrifies and comforts, destroys and redeems. Like an epic narrative distilled to its most elemental form, each note is necessary, each silence profound.

This record deserves listening that borders on ritualistic—close your eyes and breathe it, let it course through your veins, feel its ecstasy and agony in equal measure. Anderson and Bolotowsky haven’t made something merely pleasant or decorative—they’ve sculpted a space of emotional and philosophical profundity. In their capable hands, music ceases to be merely sound and becomes the texture of life itself: vulnerable, eternal, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

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A mantis waits, motionless in moonlight;
a bluebird sings unafraid—
and we listen, helplessly aware
that innocence, once lost, can only be sung again.