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CD
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CA 21051CD
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"After receiving a traditional French diploma in music, Florent Ghys researched experimental and minimalist music -- leading him to Bang on a Can's Summer Festival at MASS MoCA in 2007. Returned to his hometown in Bordeaux and missing the community he found around the summer festival, Ghys asked himself, 'What would I write if I had to write for an ensemble in which I am the only player? 'Ghys says of his process: 'The reasons for this schizophrenic question are multiple. Returning to Bordeaux from Paris, I had the feeling of being musically isolated - of being out of tune with my new environment - and I couldn't stop writing. I was also interested in the idea of breaking the boundary between the composer and the musician. And the feeling I had of sitting in the audience while my music was being played onstage wasn't, to be honest, all that satisfying. I didn't intend to compose a solo for myself playing the upright bass, nor did I intend to compose a piece for me and a fleet of clones, but I did intend to create a 'multiple-me' ensemble. I know multi-track recording will never replace live recording, but multi-tracking was an interesting starting point to see if it would change my compositional process while writing strictly for me - after all, the instrumentation for the EP was linked only to the instruments I can actually play. I could have an upright bass, a bass, a guitar, an electric guitar, a voice. I could also use a pianino (a small 6 octaves piano) and hit some dishes in my kitchen.'"
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CA 21060CD
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"Two of Cantaloupe Music's artists join forces to release a digital EP featuring 10 pieces composed by Don Byron and performed by Lisa Moore, 'New York's queen of avant-garde piano' (The New Yorker). The heart of the release Seven Etudes for Piano was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Byron says of Seven Etudes: 'One movement was inspired by a famous Picasso painting, Guernica; another movement was inspired by a long-forgotten ad campaign for a soft drink; another explores the rhythmic structure of the Wiener Waltz. Overall, the pianist/vocalist is asked to reveal her inner 'entertainer' as well as her mathematical musicianship.' 'I wrote Himm during the period where I discovered Black Gospel Culture,' says Byron of one of the other pieces that round out the EP. 'I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church, and the kind of religious philosophy and music I discovered in TD Jakes' preaching and Kirk Franklin's music surprised me. It was much more Dr. Phil than the 'unanswered suffering+heaven' formula I grew up with, and it's changed my life in many ways.'"
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CA 21048CD
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16-minute CD EP. "Sentieri Selvaggi is a group made up of some of the best Italian musicians, united in a cultural project aimed to bring contemporary music to a larger audience. Founded in 1997 by Carlo Boccadoro, Filippo Del Corno and Angelo Miotto, the group has garnered much international acclaim and has developed close working relationships with renowned composers -- Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, David Lang, James MacMillan, Gavin Bryars and Louis Andriessen. In Sentieri Selvaggi's new EP, the Italian ensemble presents pieces from two of today's most celebrated composers -- Gavin Bryars and Philip Glass. When Bryars recorded his first album for ECM, Three Viennese Dancers, Manfred Eicher (the founder of ECM) introduced him to American guitarist Bill Frisell's In Line. Bryars transcribed the melody of one of Frisell's solos, and the result transported Frisell's notes into a magical, but melancholy world -- distinctive of Bryar's music. Notably, he slowed down the tempo of the theme and used the piano to play a simple pattern, which continued for the entire piece. Bryars also added sweet melodies performed by a strange ensemble of a recorder, a clarinet, a vibraphone (played with a bow to produce harmonies), a violin and a bass. The result, 'Sub Rosa,' is a sense of almost ethereal lightness pervading through the score. The second piece -- 'Facades,' was originally composed for the score of Koyannisquatsi, a cult film directed by Godfrey Reggio and Glass' debut to film scoring. As 'Facades'' scene was cut from the film, Glass transposed it into a piece for his ensemble of saxophones and electronic keyboards, and released it on Glassworks. Sentieri Selvaggi's recording is a further re-orchestration, including strings, a flute and a clarinet. Stylistically, the piece is halfway between Glass' first period, based on few cells obsessively repeated which undergo very gradual harmonic changes, and the following decade, a period more melodic and lyrical. The immediate communicability of this piece made it into one of the most popular works of Glass."
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CA 21049CD
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One track CD EP, for 8 guitars and voice. "[purgatorio] Popopera is a new dance work created by Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten, principal choreographers of the Amsterdam-based troupe Emio Greco/PC. When I met Emio and Pieter in New York in 2000, I was taken by their thoughtful intensity and this attraction only grew when I saw their dance. Their work captures an other worldly energy that, when on the verge of cresting, just continues to get wilder and wilder. We began then a long conversation about creating a new work together. I suggested that the dance company learn how to play electric guitars and perform the music I write for them as part of a new dance piece. Although Emio and Pieter had reservations about this, they were intrigued, and in the summer of 2005 I met the dance company at MASS Moca in North Adams, Massachusetts and we began a 10 day workshop to see if it was even feasible to think that they could learn how to play music. I was joined there by Bryce Dessner and Katie Geissinger, who coached the dancers in guitar and voice (respectively). Bryce and I immediately went to Guitar World in Albany and had the pleasure of buying eight new guitars. None of us, I think, were prepared for the intensity with which the dancers committed themselves to playing the guitar. The days consisted of long grinding morning to evening sessions in which they rarely wanted to take a break and never seemed to tire. At the end of the ten days we gave a workshop performance (!!) to an invited audience and Popopera was born. Over the next three years I met repeatedly with the company, always in intense workshop situations, and was assisted by Taylor Levine who was their principal guitar coach throughout this period. Very early in the process I retuned the guitars, tuning the bottom three strings to F and the top three strings to E. This tuning created very rich sonorities and allowed me to create dense sounding harmonies. Between the summer of 2007 and the premiere in June of 2008 at the Holland Festival, Taylor Levine and I met with the company for intense multi-week sessions in Italy, Amsterdam, and again at Mass MOCA. From the very beginning the company incorporated movement into the creation of the piece, so that after a bit of music was learned they would start to workshop the movement. This whole thing might have seemed crazy to everyone involved in this project but at a certain point it became clear that they were about to pull off something spectacular. All of a sudden they stopped being dancers and became musicians. I don't know exactly when this all happened but it encouraged me to write some fairly tricky rhythmic interplays between the group members."
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