Browse by Artist: HORVITZ, WAYNE

Artist:	HORVITZ, WAYNE
Title:	Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, and Soloist
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80672CD

"Perhaps the best way to characterize Wayne Horvitz's (b. 1955) Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, and Soloist (2004) -- based on the life and times of the legendary labor activist and organizer -- is as a radio play that tells the story of a man's life in words, instrumental music and songs. Like a song cycle, Joe Hill incorporates much previously written material (nearly all of it re-harmonized). There are songs by Hill himself, such as 'The Rebel Girl' and 'There is Power in the Union,' but also by others, including the folk poem 'The Lumberjack's Prayer,' Mississippi John Hurt's 'Spike Driver's Blues,' and an old English street cry, 'Chairs to Mend.' It also employs spoken word, including Joe Hill's famous 'Last Will and Testament,' plus words used as narration and dramatic dialogue. But 'song cycles' don't usually include ravishingly beautiful stretches of chamber music, much less a completely open line in the score for an improvising guitarist -- in this case, the most influential one of our time, Bill Frisell. This Rubik's cube of jazz, folk, classical and popular music is strikingly elegiac and autumnal in tone, more requiem and lament than celebration or call to 'action.' This is appropriate to its theme of martyrdom, though there are also many exhilarating, jaunty, and humorous sections. Apart from classical music and the blues, its other major influences are what has come to be called Americana -- to be more specific, Appalachian music's nasal vocals, affection for open fifths, ambiguity between major and minor thirds, and the jazzy Broadway writing of Leonard Bernstein, particularly his penchant for rapid time-signature changes. Horvitz has chosen to tell Hill's story in music that is both complex and direct, ironic and sentimental, dissonant and gorgeous, popular and artful, and that relishes a well-wrought song as much as long-form development."

Artist:	HORVITZ, WAYNE
Title:	Film Music 1998-2001
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7514

"Mastermind of Zony Mash, The President and veteran of countless projects with Bobby Previte and Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz has been making music since the mid-1970s. Delightfully varied and endlessly listenable, this compilation of soundtracks for television and film showcases his incredible versatility as producer, performer, composer and arranger. Over seventy minutes of sound cues touching upon jazz, funk, folk, ambient, world music and classical, are meticulously crafted into a variety of highly personal hybrids in Wayne's inimitable style. Featuring some of the greatest musicians on the Seattle scene, including longtime collaborator Bill Frisell, Film Music 1998-2001, is an instant classic by one of the most consistently creative musicians out of the downtown scene."

Artist:	HORVITZ, WAYNE
Title:	Whispers, Hymns and a Murmur
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 8021

"A new CD of classical compositions by the mastermind of Zony Mash, The President, Pigpen, the NY Composers Orchestra and countless other bands. Blending a profound knowledge of jazz and popular musics with a soaring lyricism and arranging/production skills that have graced CDs by Bill Frisell, Eddie Palmieri and Peter Apfelbaum, the compositions here blend abstract expressionism with a touch of the blues. Imaginative and seductive music for strings with an organic sense of structure and unity by a founder of the downtown scene."

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