Browse by Artist: TYRANNY, "BLUE" GENE

Artist:	TYRANNY, "BLUE" GENE
Title:	Country Boy Country Dog
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1065

Originally released in 1994. "'Blue' Gene Tyranny, acoustic & electronic keyboards, field & studio recording, electronic transforms; Timothy Buckley, accordion in The CBCD Intro; the Arch Ensemble for Experimental Music, Robert Hughes, conductor. A realization of Tyranny's How to Discover Music In the Sounds of Your Daily Life, a procedural score for recording and composing with environmental sounds. Eclectic, flowing music alternately gesturing toward impressionism and minimalism."

Artist:	TYRANNY, "BLUE" GENE
Title:	Take Your Time
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1066

A CD of works for solo piano. "Thirty-five of the 36 songs in this 'audio storyboard' are individually built around an atmospheric primary chord, counter-rhythms, and a body of notes which creates a potential melody that unfolds bit by bit. 'The Driver's Son' is scored for a narrator, a chorus of 5 people creating 15 voices, an electronically modified orchestra of folk and concert instruments and parts for a lighting designer and a live video animator known as The Guide. The realization for electro-magnetically stimulated piano (1993) heard here employs feedback circuit devices, designed by composer David Meschter, that initiate subtle sustaining tones when placed on the strings. The slowly appearing, ethereal sounds in this piece are 'artificial harmonics' that resonate high in the piano strings when one chord is silently depressed and another chord of the same form but a half-step lower is loudly struck and quickly released. 36 of these, interlaced with 36 'natural harmonics,' were recorded and then the initial loud attack was removed with computer editing. This procedure left a bed of subtle, non-corporeal sounds that seem to lie on the surface of the strings like a cloud, and allowed listeners to hear sounds that normally are only perceived by the pianist sitting a few feet away from the strings."

Artist:	TYRANNY, "BLUE" GENE
Title:	The Somewhere Songs/The Invention Of Memory
Label:	MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	MUTABLE 17529

"This beautiful new recording by 'Blue' Gene Tyranny includes the mysterious The Somewhere Songs cycle (1997-2001) for baritone voice and electronics, and 'The Invention of Memory' (2003-2005). A lyrical discourse for baritone voice, string ensemble, guitar, and piano, The Somewhere Songs concerns friendships in or undergoing difficult circumstances. The narrator, in a sense, builds his own circumstantial world as he sings -- the vocal part was composed first by singing spontaneously and the 'transitional systems' (pitch/rhythm, etc., material) were derived from that vocal line to generate other acoustic and electronic parts. The question of the 'true intentions' of the two former friends is of course left to the listener. 'The Invention of Memory' is about the behavior and physiology of the brain. In the course of reading, Tyranny was struck by what seemed to be rough parallels between the way that people have described forms of memory and certain musical procedures. This thought created a strange sensation in him -- something about the true nature of music. 'The Invention of Memory' was written to research this nameless correlation. An initial 'Song,' heard in a piano solo at the outset, provides a basic reference to which the players return, similar to a past event that is recalled in varied ways. The song is then 'scanned' by the players, employing different musical procedures. Some of the musical forms employed are traditional (canonic imitation, passacaglia) while the majority are compositional procedures Tyranny developed for earlier pieces, including melodic transfers within a closed loop (from the transformational lattice score of 'Stars Over San Francisco,' 1972), drone with internal motion (from 'The Interior Distance,' 1959), camouflage (from 'Sleeping Beauty in Camouflage,' 1992), and the song modulated by its own internal voice ('gravity' modulation from 'The Driver's Son,' 1989 - present). 'Blue' Gene Tyranny, composer and pianist of avant garde music, has toured extensively in solo and group concerts throughout the U.S., Europe, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. He also played in teenage rock bands and for a gospel church. He has composed over 50 works for electronic, instrumental and vocal ensembles, over 30 film and video soundtracks, and 50 scores for dance and theatre productions. He has performed on many albums and performed with such diverse performer-composers as Robert Ashley, Peter Gordon, Laurie Andersen, John Cage, Leroy Jenkins, David Behrman, Brenda Hutchinson, Jon Gibson, William Duckworth (The Cathedral Band), Phil Perkins, Ben Manley, Carla Bley, Iggy Pop, Lise Vachon, and many others."

Artist:	TYRANNY, "BLUE" GENE
Title:	Out Of The Blue
Label:	UNSEEN WORLDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	UW 001CD

"For the first time on CD, here is the official reissue of 'Blue' Gene Tyranny's first album from 1977 (originally one of the first Lovely Music releases) beautifully remastered, with new artwork and 24-page booklet. This is a long awaited event for some and will be an unexpected surprise for others. Blue is a Grammy-nominated composer and pianist who has performed on records by Robert Ashley (Perfect Lives, Celestial Excursions), John Cage, and Laurie Anderson, yet this is quite different. Composing for what is essentially a chamber rock ensemble, a cast of female vocalists, and himself on the Polymoog and RMI synthesizers, Blue has created a song-cycle that reflects his intensely melodic and free piano technique in a polished studio record. Out of the Blue elegantly combines adventurous New Music technique, the style and appeal of pop music, and the grace of classical music to form an unclassifiable and totally revelatory whole. The album consists of the sublimely poppy 'Next Time Might Be Your Time,' the searing and soaring instrumental 'for David K.,' the soulful, contemplative hymn 'Leading a Double Life,' and finally the casually-epic 26-minute masterpiece for voices & electronic and acoustic instruments, 'A Letter from Home.'"

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