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NW 80704CD
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"The pieces on this compact disk span almost three decades and represent the principal threads that have run through Ingram Marshall's (b. 1942) work: his remarkable skill in using electronics to create expressive and voluptuously beautiful pieces; the influence of Indonesian music, particularly in the slowed-down sense of time and melodic repetition; a thorough knowledge of some of the most stirring and poignant compositions of the Western tradition, especially Sibelius and Bach; and the hovering presence of Charles Ives, particularly his use of quotation and juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated elements. The works on this CD can be thought of as an archaeological dig, flowing in reverse chronological order from a recent work to one of the composer's earliest. They range from the dramatic and gripping 2002 work relating to a horrible event in New York City to a timeless ethereal 1976 piece relating to an idyllic period in Indonesia. Along with these dynamic contrasts, there's surprising consistency: Marshall's lifelong efforts to combine electronics with instruments and to render them with warmth and expressivity; but moreover, his extraordinary ability to capture profound human feeling and create works of poignancy and depth."
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NW 80577CD
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"This CD comprises the text-sound works (1974-1980) on which Ingram Marshall concentrated throughout the 70s and falls into two parts: the works from the Fragility Cycles period ('Cries Upon the Mountains', 'SUNG', 'Sibelius in His Radio Corner', and 'IKON') and the earlier works ('Cortez', 'Weather Report', and 'The Emperor's Birthday'). "'Cortez', 'Weather Report', and 'The Emperor's Birthday' form a kind of trilogy representing my work with "text-sound" in the early seventies. The techniques used to generate musical fabrics and structures out of spoken text are similar in all three works, but the source materials are all quite different. I used tape loops to create repetitive patterns from words or phrases; musical structures were developed out of the resulting fabric. It is not the original utterance or sound bit that is the building block, but the whole cloth created from it."-- Marshall. 'SUNG' and 'IKON' are both based on poems by Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf. The first piece, referring to the Sung Dynasty, is scored initially as a solo/duo recitative by painter Jan Håfström and dancer Margareta Åsberg, after which the tape processes multiply their voices into a ghostly chorus as Marshall's spectral bass appears with the English translation, to be in turn transformed into its own small chorus. 'IKON', Marshall's setting of Ekelöf's Ayiasma, is a mystical meditation on an ancient ikon seen in a Greek church. The air of apocalyptic finality in the text is enhanced by the electronics, with the pervasive soundscape being that of an entropic cosmic machine. Marshall again intones the English translation; the incantatory recitation of the Swedish original is by Ekelöf himself. "'Rop på fjellet (Cries Upon the Mountains)' again uses materials 'collected' in Scandinavia, most significantly an ancient recording of locklåtar and rop from Swedish mountain herdinner (shepherdesses) traditionally used to call goats and cattle from great distances, although clearly also cultivated for their own intrinsic, shrill beauty. The live element is my own voice, a high keening processed through a tape delay system." -- Marshall.' Sibelius in His Radio Corner' was inspired by a photograph of the Finnish composer during his 'forty years of silence,' sitting in an armchair and listening to his own work being performed on the radio. "In his old age Sibelius enjoyed pulling in distant broadcasts of his music off the short-wave. I imagined that with all the static and signal drift, some of these listening experiences might have been proleptically like a modern-day electronically processed kurzwellen piece." Marshall's brooding, mysterious sonic landscapes are essential listening for anyone interested in Minimalism and the musique concrète tradition in electronic music."
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