Browse by Artist: POLANSKY, LARRY

Artist:	POLANSKY, LARRY
Title:	Change
Label:	ARTIFACT
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ART 1023

"Polansky's 'morphing' pieces, for instruments and computers, are collected on his third solo CD on Artifact Recordings. These works explore musical change in diverse and strange ways. Several were written by computer, using formal, mathematical, and software morphing techniques. Performers include the composer, Daniel Goode (clarinet), Empi Esguerra (voice), Sarah Cahill (piano), Nick Didkovsky (guitar), Leo Ciesa (drums), Greg Anderson (bass), and Tom Erbe (sound).

Artist:	POLANSKY, LARRY
Title:	Four-Voice Canons
Label:	COLD BLUE MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	CB 011CD

"Over the past 25 years, Larry Polansky has been composing a series of fascinating mensuration canons (a formal concept dating back to the Renaissance) that run a sonic gamut from wildly boisterous (#6) to serenely introverted (#17, Guitar Canon). This disc brings together thirteen of these pieces (one of which is found here in three different 'realizations'). Each of the canons on this disc could be considered a different orchestration of two basic concepts -- the mensuration canon and the permutational cycling of a small number of musical elements. The instrumentation varies wildly: gamelan, electric guitars, children's voices, computer-generated sounds, marimbas, non-pitched percussion, choir, and chamber ensemble. The pitch materials, rhythms, tempos, and textures also vary dramatically from piece to piece."

Artist:	POLANSKY, LARRY
Title:	Lonesome Road (The Crawford Variations)
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80566CD

"Larry Polansky (b. 1954), though known primarily for his work in the field of computer music, has produced a major addition to the keyboard literature, this massive theme-and-variations on Ruth Crawford Seeger's arrangement of the folk song 'Lonesome Road'. Inspired by his deep engagement with her music, 'Lonesome Road' (1988-89) is a prime example of Polansky's penchant for building large architectonic structures through complex transformational processes. The work is in three sections of seventeen variations each. This is the world-premiere recording of this mammoth piece, a wonderful amalgam of Ivesian pianism, gamelan patterns, jazz-tinged harmonies, and folk song. Its size and grandeur hark back to a pianistic outsider tradition of sui generis works and it is the most important American keyboard work since Frederic Rzewski's 'The People United Will Never Be Defeated'."

Artist:	POLANSKY, LARRY
Title:	The Theory Of Impossible Melody
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80684CD

Performed by Jody Diamond, Chris Mann (voice); Phil Burk and Larry Polansky (live computers, fretless electric guitars); Robin Hayward (tubas). "Among the lineages of knowledge that Larry Polansky (b. 1954) has woven together in his creative work, as both a composer and theorist, have been mathematics, intonation theory, cybernetics, systems theory, artificial intelligence, musicology (both Western and non-Western), American Sign Language, and Jewish mysticism. He has combined these and many other fields of study together into some of the most important music written by anyone of his generation while retaining status as the composer who is most worthy of being called a true theorist. In many ways, his compositions are themselves injunctive demonstrations of his theoretical insights that stand as critiques of the theoreticism that is now endemic to the art world. This intellectual integrity and facility has also been responsible for one of the most interesting characteristics of Polansky's compositional output. His music is one of the most successful, and rare, examples of a confluence between two, generally conflicting, 20th century musical streams. Like his mentor, James Tenney -- and many other late 20th century experimental masters who were inspired by the aesthetic innovations of Cage -- Polansky creates musical expositions of phenomenal reality. Sometimes these are based in psychoacoustic science, and sometimes they are grounded in mathematical formalisms. Sometimes they explore both at once. What he also manages to do -- and this is where he succeeds at the above-mentioned confluence -- is so often reveal these concepts within an expressive musical frame that is strongly linked to more traditional musical values."

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