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CB 034CD
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"Four serene yet deeply emotive and entrancing pieces for solo qin (a Chinese zither-like instrument). Quiet, sparse, vaguely eerie, almost Feldmanesque, almost delta-blues-like. Performed by the composer, who mastered the qin while living and teaching for many years in Taiwan. 'Chinese scholars in antiquity took their qin to the mountains to compose music in accord with the aesthetics of nature. They developed string techniques to convey the movements of birds, insects, streams, even zephyrs and mist. Gesture became music, a tactile rhetoric to describe the most distant or delicate notions. Silence was an integral motif. I was inspired by the old qin books of music notation and extended the calligraphy to include a contemporary language.' -- Christopher Roberts." Total playing time: 27:59.
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CB 027CD
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"The Webster Cycles, a somewhat open-ended piece for any combination of wind instruments and/or voices, allows for a good bit of decision-making and improvisation on the part of the performer(s). In the present recorded version, six trombone parts were performed (via overdubbing) by noted composer/performer J.A. Deane. The result is a beautifully coherent yet ever-changing music that slowly shifts its texture and harmonic focus as if its individual parts were refractions of a giant aural prism. The wonderful, subtle inflections and tonal shadings that Deane brings to each phrase imbue the piece with a vibrant, palpable sense of energy and motion. The piece's score is constructed from a selection of words drawn from a Webster's dictionary. The words become pitch sequences or melodic phrases that are to be played within the duration of a long breath. These sequences are grouped into seven sections, which the performer(s) may perform in any order they wish while maintaining the internal order of phrases within each section." 30-minute CD EP.
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CB 021CD
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"Descansos, past is moody, intimate 'in memoriam' music for double bass (performed by Barry Newton) and a choir of nine cellos led by new-music-champion cellist Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick." Descansos, past inhabits the same haunted soundscape as Fox's 2004 release, The City The Wind Swept Away -- the unconventional scoring (pizzicato bass and nine bowed cellos) produces a sort of lush bleakness that evokes the windswept open spaces of the American West. Perhaps Descansos evokes the strange roadside memorials that gave Fox his title, but to these Eastern ears, it is reminiscent of the brooding lyricism of England's Gavin Bryars. This is a music that seems to linger even after the recording itself has ended." -- John Schaefer. 15 minute EP.
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