Recording conducted by Bernard Haitink featuring the Chicago Symphony
Chorus, soprano Miah Persson and mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn
Naxos of America and the CSO present a sweepstakes to celebrate the
launch of distribution of CSO Resound by NOA
- click sweepstakes link above or see details below
Mahler’s towering Symphony No. 2 in C Minor (Resurrection) is the ninth and newest release on CSO Resound, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s award-winning record label. Having previously recorded Mahler’s First, Third and Sixth symphonies, Principal Conductor Bernard Haitink and the CSO continue to showcase their unique collaboration with Mahler’s Second Symphony. Mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn sings the touching “Urlicht” solo, and soprano Miah Persson and the Chicago Symphony Chorus, under the direction of Duain Wolfe, are featured as well.
The two-disc album will be released in the U.S. Tuesday, November 17, and worldwide on November 30. It can be downloaded exclusively through iTunes for one month starting November 17 and through other major digital music services beginning December 17, including Amazon, Rhapsody, eMusic and HDtracks. Listeners can purchase the album in CD, hybrid SACD or digital download formats.
Beginning with this release, CSO Resound initiates a new distribution agreement with Naxos of America. The agreement encompasses the distribution of physical CDs and hybrid SACDs in the United States and Canada, as well as digital distribution worldwide.
Amsterdam-born Bernard Haitink is one of today’s most celebrated conductors, with an international conducting career that has spanned more than five decades. Appointed principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2006, he has established a remarkable rapport with the Orchestra, demonstrated by unsurpassed music making in Chicago, New York, Europe and Asia. His distinguished 25-year tenure as music director of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, with which he has been associated since 1956, brought worldwide praise for his development of the ensemble and his interpretations of the music of Mahler and Bruckner. He now serves as conductor laureate of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and is conductor emeritus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, having been principal conductor there for nine years. He has received many international awards in recognition of his services to music, including both an honorary knighthood and the Companion of Honour in the United Kingdom and the House Order of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands. Haitink was named Musical America’s 2007 Musician of the Year.
Swedish soprano Miah Persson is in great demand with the major opera houses and orchestras of the world. She has appeared at the Salzburg Festival, Royal Opera, Aix-en-Provence Festival, Barcelona Liceu, Netherlands Opera, San Francisco Opera, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Frankfurt Opera, Wiener Staatsoper and Paris Opera. In concert, she has appeared at the BBC Proms and with the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Musiciens du Louvre, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. She has given recitals at Wigmore Hall and Frankfurt Opera. Conductors with whom she has performed include Sir Charles Mackerras, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Iván Fischer, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Semyon Bychkov, René Jacobs, and Marc Minkowski.
Christianne Stotijn earned her solo diploma for violin in 2000 at the Amsterdam Conservatoire. She has worked extensively with Bernard Haitink, who is one of the most influential figures in her career, having appeared with him and the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Boston, BBC Proms, Concertgebouw and Radio France. She also has collaborated with conductors René Jacobs, Gustavo Dudamel, Marc Minkowski and Iván Fischer, and she has performed with the Czech Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra and La Scala Philharmonic. An impassioned performer of song recitals, she has appeared at Wigmore Hall, Vienna Musikverein and Carnegie Hall. Christianne Stotijn is the recipient of the ECHO Rising Stars Award, Borletti Buitoni Award and Dutch Music Prize and was a BBC New Generation Artist.
A musical force in Chicago and around the world, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been consistently hailed as one of the finest international orchestras since its founding in 1891. At its helm are three of the greatest conductors of our time: Principal Conductor Bernard Haitink, Conductor Emeritus Pierre Boulez and Music Director Designate Riccardo Muti, who becomes the Orchestra’s 10th music director in September 2010.
The Orchestra’s expansive catalog of more than 900 recordings has earned 60 Grammy Awards—more than any other orchestra in the world. In 2007, in order to significantly broaden the reach of the world-class music making of the Orchestra, the CSO launched its own record label, CSO Resound. All CSO Resound releases are selected from live recordings of CSO concerts in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center, documenting and extending a unique concert experience.
Previous CSO Resound releases include Mahler’s Third Symphony, with Michelle DeYoung and the Chicago Symphony Chorus; Mahler’s First and Sixth symphonies; Poulenc’s Gloria with Jessica Rivera and Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloé; and Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, all conducted by Bernard Haitink; Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago, with Yo-Yo Ma, Wu Man, the Silk Road Ensemble and conductors Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Alan Gilbert (2008 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical); and a download-only recording of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony under Myung-Whun Chung. A two-disc CD/DVD set of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 conducted by Bernard Haitink (2008 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance), with video of the CSO’s Beyond the Score exploration of the work, was released in August 2008. CSO Resound is underwritten by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Smykal.
Founded in 1957, the Chicago Symphony Chorus, currently under the leadership of Director and Conductor Duain Wolfe, has earned admiration and acclaim as one of the world’s superior symphonic choruses. The Chicago Symphony Chorus has performed and recorded virtually all the major works in the choral symphonic repertoire, including important world premieres, and has been a key part of the CSO’s history. Chicago Symphony Orchestra recordings featuring the Chorus have won nine Grammy Awards for best choral performance, including Verdi’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Bach’s B minor Mass and two recordings of Brahms’ A German Requiem.
Founded in 1982 as a way to document the McKnight Fellowship winners of the Minnesota Composers Forum, Innova Recordings initially featured mainly the works of Minnesota composers such as Eric Stokes, Libby Larsen, Paul Schoenfield and Steven Paulus. In 1994 the label opened its doors to any artists with a finished master tape that wanted access to an established distribution network, and now, produces and releases up to 25 CDs per year. On November 17, Naxos of America proudly began distribution of the releases of Innova Recordings.
Innova is dedicated to forward-“hearing” work that pushes and challenges the boundaries of contemporary music. The label’s releases are less dictated by record-bin-constraints or typical notions of marketability, but by the integrity of the work, its originality, conceptual richness and technical quality, and the artist’s willingness to support and promote the release. The label attempts to redefine the typical relationship between artist and label. Artist and label work together, taking advantage of each other’s strengths, to provide both the tools of an established record label and the freedom usually associated with self-publishing.
Innova is geared towards work that is unlikely to find a home in the mainstream record industry. The label focuses on world class music—regardless of its genre (or lack of one, even though for convenience we use words like New Classical, Jazz, Experimental, Electronic and World)—that commercial labels overlook. Several projects have brought national attention to the label: Philip Blackburn’s field recordings from Vietnam (Stilling Time) and his archival series of the works of Harry Partch and Henry Brant. Prominent titles also include GVSU’s recording of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, Douglas J Cuomo’s Arjuna’s Dilemma and Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Apti. Other Innova releases have earned awards and nominations for Grammy, Emmy, and Pulitzer prizes, while numerous titles have received wide acclaim and charted significantly.
“The awesome young musicians from the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble have teamed up with some of the most imaginative DJ’s, remixers and composers to realize not only one of the best In C performances ever, but also some ‘alternate universe’ In C’s that got me smiling, beaming and sometimes amazed. A new revelational viewpoint on a piece that has been turned every way but loose over the past 45 years.” – Terry Riley
This new version comes not from loft-based hipsters in New York or California, but via a mostly undergraduate crew from Allendale, Mich. Beyond the geographical surprise, it actually makes sense that a young ensemble has shown a flair for this music. The kids, as itwere, have always been alright with t he minimalists. Pete Townshend was so influenced by Riley’s early synthesizer pieces that he named “Baba O’Riley” in part after the composer. “Black Mozart,” from Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon’s latest record, might just as easily have been dedicated to a minimalist, given its catchy, brief figure that repeats through verse and chorus alike. The members of Grand Valley State’s ensemble play with a confident swing that suggests they understand these links implicitly. It’s also why this new release offers not just their own astute performance but also 18 remixes by a collection of big names, such as DJ Spooky and Pulitzer winner David Lang.– Seth Coulter Walls, Newsweek, October 1, 2009
The Story
Hailed as “the story of the year in classical music” by WNYC’s John Shaefer in 2007, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble’s recording of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians vaulted to number one on the iTunes and Amazon charts and spent eleven weeks on the Billboard charts. As an answer to that recording which garnered 30 positive reviews and a feature article in the New York Times, the GVSU New Music Ensemble decided to tackle the work of another Minimalist icon; Terry Riley’s In C.
With more than twelve mostly outstanding recordings of In C already on the market, the ensemble simply did not want record another interpretation of the piece. Bill Ryan, director of the GVSU New Music Ensemble, had an idea. The open instrumentation, interchangeable parts and overriding philosophy of freedom of In C would be the ideal foundation for remixing. A 2-CD release that would include a full performance of Riley’s In C as it was intended and short remixes of the work using the GVSU recording tracks as its inspiration. On November 17, Innova Recordings will release the product of this inspiration; In C Remixed.
The Remixers
Representing a true cross-section of musical genres, the remixers on In C Remixed bring together the worlds of classical, pop, electronica, jazz, trip-hop, dance, techno, industrial, disco, ambient, and more. With collective accolades including Grammy nominations (Jack Dangers), a Pulitzer Prize (David Lang), an Emmy nomination (Daniel Bernard Roumain-DBR), a Guggenheim Fellowship (Mason Bates), an ASCAP Foundation/Morton Gould Young Composer Award (Dennis DeSantis), a Fulbright Scholarship (Michael Lowenstern) and an Oscar-winning soundtrack (Nico Muhly), their music has been heard in numerous major motion films, on television and radio, and performed at the most notable venues with the top orchestras throughout the world.
Many of the remixers commented about the first time they each encountered Terry Riley’s In C, remarked on the creative processes that they used when they were crafting their remixes, and also gave explanation of the resulting works:
Bints Mix and Foster Grant Mix, Michael Lowenstern
“For me, the flexibility of In C is singularly unique in its ability to alternately live in the background and/or draw in the listener’s focus. I tried to stay true to that sensibility as I organized my thoughts around the two remixes I made for this compilation, and hopefully succeeded in making them a similar type of ‘flexible listening.’”
Counting in C, Jab Abumrad
“First time I heard In C I was a freshman in college, majoring in music composition and completely lost in a wilderness of scary music. Serial, post-war atonality. Our teacher was asking us to compose music that literally hurt (I was told someone in a class a few years ahead of me had actually sawed an old piano in half for a piece). So anyhow, at one of my more despairing moments, I went to the music library, and on recommendation from a friend, checked out In C on vinyl. And when I dropped the needle on the record, I almost wanted to cry. Here was “serious music” that was actually…fun.”
In Sea of C, DJ Spooky
“When you hear the opening lines of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” – you know they heard Riley’s work. When you think of Philip Glass, John Adams, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk, Harry Partch, Morton Feldman, Lou Harrison and others, you can also connect the dots. In C was the original DNA of many of these composers relationship to repetition. I hope that the listener can hear a mirror reflection in a hip hop take on the same composition. The Futurists always thought the future would be noise. Who would have guessed that their ideas would be usurped by repetition! I hope you enjoy the work.”
Zachary’s Dream, Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR)
“The poet in me, if asked what Zachary’s Dream means, might reply that I wanted this remix to be a soundtrack to the moment when you’re very young, and very tired, and are falling asleep in the backseat of a car or on a train, as you fight to stay awake, if only to listen to the ambient sounds on the radio or the music on your loose fitting headphones, and your siblings conversation, and the anecdotes of your parents mind-numbing, endless quarreling—all of this, a soothing, comforting lullaby for the over-stimulated children we all might be.”
In C (Todd Reynolds Remix), Todd Reynolds
“As I sat down to work on this, it became clear to me just how much of it all was still close to the surface. As the mix developed, I was reminded of the time I spent on that motorbike as the temples, rice terraces, wild dogs, people selling their art, water, forest, all whirred by, natural and man-made beauty unfolding by the second, and I, simply a humble observer. Not surprisingly, it’s much like the first time I played my way through In C, where I discovered that the listening and the watching was as profound a part of the process as the playing. Terry Riley has given us a timeless work which elevates “presence in the moment” to the art form it truly is, and this mix is my humble response to it.”
simple remix, David Lang
“I have always loved In C and over the years have participated in many many performances – as a trombonist, as a percussionist, as a guitarist, and even once (erratically, I am afraid) playing the pulse. I remember my college new music ensemble drinking a bit too much after a concert and singing the whole thing, backstage in an art center in Mendocino California. It is an easy piece to do badly – I also remember one performance in which everyone agreed too much, and the whole performance took on a march-like quality, as we all unwittingly moved in lock-step with each other. In memory of that performance I remixed a section as a kind of slow march, with the studio help of Todd Reynolds and a spectacularly funereal bass drum sample from Paul Coleman.”
Founded in 1982 as a way to document the McKnight Fellowship winners of the Minnesota Composers Forum, Innova Recordings initially featured mainly the works of Minnesota composers such as Eric Stokes, Libby Larsen, Paul Schoenfield and Steven Paulus. In 1994 the label opened its doors to any artists with a finished master tape that wanted access to an established distribution network, and now, produces and releases up to 25 CDs per year. On November 17, Naxos of America proudly begins distribution of the releases of Innova Recordings.
Innova is dedicated to forward-“hearing” work that pushes and challenges the boundaries of contemporary music. The label’s releases are less dictated by record-bin-constraints or typical notions of marketability, but by the integrity of the work, its originality, conceptual richness and technical quality, and the artist’s willingness to support and promote the release. The label attempts to redefine the typical relationship between artist and label. Artist and label work together, taking advantage of each other’s strengths, to provide both the tools of an established record label and the freedom usually associated with self-publishing.
Innova is geared towards work that is unlikely to find a home in the mainstream record industry. The label focuses on world class music—regardless of its genre (or lack of one, even though for convenience we use words like New Classical, Jazz, Experimental, Electronic and World)—that commercial labels overlook. Several projects have brought national attention to the label: Philip Blackburn’s field recordings from Vietnam (Stilling Time) and his archival series of the works of Harry Partch and Henry Brant. Prominent titles also include GVSU’s recording of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, Douglas J Cuomo’s Arjuna’s Dilemma and Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Apti. Other Innova releases have earned awards and nominations for Grammy, Emmy, and Pulitzer prizes, while numerous titles have received wide acclaim and charted significantly.
When he graduated from high school, William Schuman enrolled in New York University with every intention of doing a commerce degree. Then his sister took him to a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. That very night, he decided to become a composer. Schuman went on to become one of the most important American composers and composition teachers of the 20th century. He was president of Julliard School, President of Lincoln Centre in New York, and the composer of eight major symphonies. This podcast looks at a new recording of his Symphony No. 6, Prayer in a Time of War, and New England Tryptich, with the Seattle Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz.
“Tom Beghin belongs to the very few concert pianists with a professional musicological background who can turn his discoveries of rhetoric and other intellectual features in classical scores into fascinating new and impressive interpretations.”
—László Somfai, author of The Keyboard Sonatas of Joseph Haydn,
University of Chicago Press, 1995.
On October 27, 2009, Naxos of America released a groundbreaking project—and its first Blu-ray production— from McGill University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, entitled The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard. The brainchild of performer and musicologist Tom Beghin, Tonmeister and producer Martha de Francisco, and recording engineer Wieslaw Woszczyk, The Virtual Haydn employs virtual acoustics for the first time in a recording of this magnitude.
The set features four double-layer Blu-ray discs containing 15 hours of music, offered in both 5.0 surround (DTS-HD) and high-resolution stereo (PCM), as well as three hours of HD video, including a “making of” documentary Playing the Room, with subtitles in Dutch, French, German, and Japanese. Additionally, the user may navigate from one “virtual room” to the next—or from one instrument to another—mixing, matching, and comparing the performance of a short piece for musical clock, for a total of 7 x 9 possible combinations. A beautifully designed 64-page booklet contains richly illustrated program information as well as three informative and imaginative essays by the producers. Smart Blu-ray pop-up menus allow for efficient navigation through a wealth of material.
The music of Haydn has been a longtime passion and area of study for keyboardist Tom Beghin, whose innovative scholarship, especially in the domain of musical rhetoric, has been widely recognized, most recently in his editorship of Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric (University of Chicago Press, 2007). The Virtual Haydn, as Beghin explains, “is still very much about Haydn, but has become about so much more. These discs challenge all conventions of performing, recording, and listening, and introduce new paradigms.”
Listeners experience the complete works for solo keyboard in nine virtual rooms—that is, replications of actual rooms where Haydn, or a typical player of his keyboard music, would have performed. They have been acoustically sampled, electronically mapped, and precisely recreated in the recording studio. Featured rooms range from the most private to the most public, from Haydn’s own study in his Eisenstadt home to the famous Holywell Music Room in Oxford, England.
Further enhancing this unique experience of the Haydn repertoire are the seven historical keyboards on which the music is performed. All seven instruments, from a 1760s clavichord to a 1798 English grand piano, were built for this project by today’s leading artisans. This release captures the first performances on three of the instruments: a 1755 harpsichord with an idiomatic “Viennese short octave,” a 1788 Tafelklavier, and a 1780 fortepiano with an early-Viennese “stoss”-action. Modern audiences are able to experience these instruments in the acoustical environments for which they were originally designed.
Surrounded by a semi-sphere of 24 speakers, Tom Beghin plays as if in the historical room. The sounds of his performance are captured, mixed with reverberation responses identical to those of the actual room, and retransmitted almost instantaneously through the sphere, allowing him to engage “the room”—that is, to “play” with it, then and there. It is as if it is 1774 and the listener is seated next to Prince Nicolaus Esterházy in the grand Ceremonial Room of his Eszterháza Palace while the artist—possibly Haydn himself—is playing on the Prince’s newly-acquired double-manual harpsichord. By contrast, we experience Haydn’s sonatas for Princess Marie Esterházy, played on a Kober square piano, in the intimate setting of a Prunkraum of Vienna’s Albertina. Or we embrace the more public eighteenth-century concert experience of the acoustically accurate yet virtual English concert hall for a performance on a Longman, Clementi & Co. piano of the two concert sonatas that Haydn wrote for the celebrated Therese Jansen.
Musicking happens through instruments, in rooms, by people. No repertoire celebrates this experience more than Haydn’s keyboard works. This revolutionary recording project stands as a tribute to the timeless appeal of a composer whose life and career revolved around similarly experimental interactions with technologies and audiences.
Tom Beghin is at the forefront of a new generation of interpreters of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century music. His discography includes 10 CDs on the Bridge, Claves, Eufoda, and Et’cetera labels. As a scholar he has published in major musicological journals and volumes, and has co-edited Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric (University of Chicago Press, 2007). His mentors include Malcolm Bilson, James Webster, Rudolf Buchbinder, Jean Goverts, and Alan Weiss. He is currently Associate Professor at McGill University.
Martha de Francisco is an internationally acknowledged leader in the field of sound recording and record production, and has credits on over 300 recordings, most of them for worldwide release on the main record labels. She has worked in the best concert halls and has collaborated with some of the greatest classical musicians of our time. Her research topics include the latest surround-sound techniques, music recording with virtual acoustics, and the aesthetics of recorded music. At present she is Associate Professor at McGill University.
Wieslaw Woszczyk holds the James McGill Professorship in Sound Recording at McGill University. Internationally recognized as a researcher and educator in audio technology, he is the founding director of CIRMMT and McGill’s Graduate Program in Sound Recording. He was President of the Audio Engineering Society, Chair of the AES Technical Council, and is currently AES Governor. His current research addresses virtual acoustics, high-resolution audio, and remote real-time communication of multisensory content using broadband networks.
On October 27, Naxos of America began distribution of cutting-edge New York-based label New Amsterdam Records. Founded as a haven for young New York composers and performers whose music traditionally has slipped through the cracks between genres, New Amsterdam was the brainchild of composers William Brittelle, Judd Greenstein, and Sarah Kirkland Snider.
New Amsterdam Records is a non-profit model service organization run by independent musicians whose goal is to support talented colleagues by functioning as truly “pro-artist”—without the conflict of interests present in conventional record labels. To that end, the vast majority of proceeds from all music sales go directly to New Amsterdam artists in order to help them develop sustainable careers.
In its first year of existence, New Amsterdam’s recordings have been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and in New York magazine, MUSO magazine, and Time Out New York. The Sunday New York Times cited their first group of releases in two separate year-end “best-of” articles. The label’s first 12 albums have garnered radio airplay and glowing reviews from major media outlets around the country (including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.). New Amsterdam also has become a major concert presenter in New York, putting on sold-out shows at venues such as Joe’s Pub, Le Poisson Rouge, and Issue Project Room, as well as a new monthly chamber music show, Archipelego, at the Galapagos Artspace in Brooklyn.
“A smart young chamber group that straddles a line between contemporary classical music and indie rock.”
—WNYC’s Soundcheck
“Striking a balance between the old and the new has rarely sounded this good.”
—Newsweek
Hailed as “a deft young group gaining attention” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), NOW Ensemble is a dynamic band of performers and composers dedicated to chamber music for the 21st century. With their unique instrumentation of flute (Alex Sopp), clarinet (Sara Budde), electric guitar (Mark Dancigers), double bass (Peter Rosenfeld), and piano (Michael Mizrahi), NOW Ensemble brings a fresh sound and new perspective to the classical tradition. The music performed by the ensemble reflects the diverse backgrounds and listening experiences of its members. They play in concert halls, art museums, rock clubs, and jazz venues—for large audiences and intimate gatherings—acoustic and “plugged in.” Over the course of their five years in existence, NOW Ensemble has developed a reputation for performances that are as lively and engaging as they are rigorous and technically sophisticated.
For their debut album, entitled NOW, the group chose seven works by four composers, three of whom are members of the ensemble—Patrick Burke and Judd Greenstein, along with guitarist Dancigers. In addition, the group chose to present a piece by their good friend, the ascendant Nico Muhly. The resulting disc is both a compilation of the band’s core repertoire from its early years and also a highly listenable, smoothly-flowing album that “combine(s) the formal elegance of chamber music with a pop-honed concision and rhythmic vitality” (Time Out New York). NOW Ensemble has performed works by many of today’s most prominent young composers, commissioning over 40 pieces, and has played on some of the country’s most vital new music series, including the Bang on a Can Marathon, Wordless Music, Undiscovered Islands, Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge, Sarasota’s New Music New College, and the Carlsbad Music Festival, as well as the 2008 Festival International de Chihuahua in Chihuahua, Mexico.
“Rustic folk melodies, gangly dances and pulse-oriented workouts on woodblocks and marimbas—as well as flowerpots, rocks and a wheelbarrow—interspersed with quirky narratives.”
—Time Out New York
“Draw[s] on a tremendous variety of sounds and musical traditions.”
—Sequenza 21
The highly esteemed, New York-based percussion quartet So Percussion has teamed up with fiddle/guitar duo Trollstilt for an album that combines the innovative and edgy sounds of contemporary music with ancient Norwegian fiddling. The artists employ multi-media percussion, guitar, Hardanger fiddle, spoken word, and electronics in a unique and compelling collection of music. The album also features the vocals and spoken word of writer, composer, performer, director, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rinde Eckert. Five (and-a-half) Gardens contains a DVD portion featuring motion paintings (a series of paintings strung together with computer animation) set to the music from the album.
Five (and-a-half) Gardens is the brainchild of composer Dan Trueman (of Trollstilt), whom PopMatters calls “the most fascinating musician on the face of the Earth.” In a similar style to So Percussion’s most recent album, Amid the Noise (Cantaloupe Music, 2006), Five (and-a-half) Gardens features instruments made from materials such as flower pots, plumbing tubes, and cell phone microphones, as well as traditional percussion instruments, fiddles, and guitars. These instruments are combined with electronic samples, processed sound, and spoken word to create a multi-layered sonic effect. The juxtaposition of traditional folk and percussion music with electronic and computer-synthesized sounds results in a unique listening experience.
Dan Trueman, professor of music at Princeton, is also a co-founder and director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), an ensemble of laptop musicians with six-channel spherical speakers and various control devices. Trueman was awarded a major grant from the MacArthur Foundation for his work with the orchestra. He also is a member of interface, an electronic improvisation ensemble. Their first CD, /swank, was released in early 2001; their DVD, RECORDING FIELD, H, with guest Pauline Oliveros, was released by the Deep Listening label in 2003.
“Invigorating, innovative but immediately approachable… [with] an unguarded quirkiness and a sense of accidental poetry.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Dargel sings in a modest, sweet-toned, conversational way, and writes songs whose lyrics and melodies are at once wistful and wry, tender and irreverent… giving voice to the lives and relationships of his subjects.”
—New York Times
Corey Dargel is a “baroquely unclassifiable” (New Yorker) composer, lyricist, and singer of “elegantly skewed” (Time Out New York) electronic art-pop songs that stir the heart and delight the mind. His gentle assault on the pop idiom creates a tension that pervades his music: deadpan and detached vocals reveal heartbreaking intimacies, awkward and obtrusive drum patterns struggle against fragile harmonies, vocals and music uneasily opposing each other as songs stumble to their ends.
Dargel’s Other People’s Love Songs is based on an earnest, sentimental concept: All 13 songs were commissioned by individuals as gifts to their significant others. Dargel—acting as reporter along with his regular duties as composer, lyricist, and singer—interviewed the couples and learned all about their histories, personalities, quirks, private jokes, and emotional lives. He spun this tender data into music and lyrics that encompass a universe of feeling: not only gratitude, as one would expect from songs written as gifts, but generous measures of wistfulness, longing, frustration, and pride … and, in some cases, regret, sadness, and resignation. The real-life subjects of these songs range from celebrities to the “couple next door.” Newlyweds, long marrieds, gay couples, siblings, daughters, mothers, and others stepped forward to commission these songs. The album is hardly a mere compilation, however; it is a unique and deeply emotional exploration of the many angles of love and relationships. At times, the songs are almost voyeuristic in their intimacy.
Corey Dargel has performed on bills with Joanna Newsom, Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett), Grizzly Bear, Anti-Social Music, Eve Beglarian, Phil Kline, Nico Muhly, William Brittelle, Margaret Lancaster, and the American Composers Orchestra. His music-theater piece about love and voluntary amputation, Removable Parts, premiered in September 2007 at HERE Arts Center in NYC and was hailed by The New York Times as “almost perversely pleasurable … pleases on almost every level … with an intelligent grace that is as moving as it is impressive.” Dargel’s latest composition, Thirteen Near-Death Experiences, is a 50-minute art-pop song cycle about hypochondria, commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and performed by Dargel and ICE.
Infernal Machines is the debut studio recording by New York’s acclaimed 18-piece steampunk big band, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, a group The New York Times’ Nate Chinen describes as “calibrated for maximum intrigue, with a sound that suggests Steve Reich minimalism as well as orchestral jazz in the lineage of Bob Brookmeyer (one of Mr. Argue’s mentors).”
This release, which takes its name from a John Philip Sousa quote about the dangers of music technology, features new, definitive studio recordings of material Argue and the band have been developing since their first gig in 2005. “No swing-era revivalist,” writes Time Out New York’s Hank Shteamer, “Argue draws on the full spectrum of modern rock, jazz and classical music with his band, Secret Society. Yet his complex, emotionally-charged pieces handily transcend pastiche … the album ought to not only raise Argue’s profile, but also serve as a reminder that big-band jazz needn’t be a fossil.”
“A nearly perfect creative synthesis between tradition and innovation.”
- BBC
“Big band music for folks who like Jimi Hendrix and Parliament Funkadelic. This is unlike any jazz I’ve heard before.”
- Paste Magazine
“This is a seriously great band, with a tremendous rhythm section, a beautiful blend of brass and winds, chops and enormous reserves of power. The soloists are outstanding, particularly Ryan Keberle’s tasty, funky trombone on ‘Zeno’ and Ingrid Jensen’s searching trumpet on ‘Transit.’ The album comes to an intense and unresolved end, not unlike Mingus’ ‘Black Saint and the Sinner Lady,’ which just leaves one reaching for the replay button. Because, to repeat something else, this is a seriously great record, one of the finest examples of new jazz I’ve heard in the past decade, one of the finest big band records ever made, one of the finest jazz records I’ve truly ever heard.”
- The Big City
Despite the inherent obstacles facing a big band leader in 2009, composer Darcy James Argue is one of the most visible and respected musicians in New York. Part of that success comes from the broad-spectrum popularity of his blog, also called Secret Society, which covers relevant political issues as well as musical ones. Musically, as allaboutjazz.com’s R.J. DeLuke recently observed, “he’s garnered critical praise from just about everyone who has heard the band.” Critics have called him “a young jazz master” (The New Yorker) and noted his penchant for “mixing jazz harmony, rock edge and postmodern angst into a new music creole” (Tom Greenland, AllAboutJazz-New York). “The morning after,” declared Montreal Gazette reviewer Juan Rodriguez, “I was still stunned at what I’d heard—clearly some of the most ambitious and compelling sounds I’ve ever encountered in the past 40 years.”
Argue’s extensive resume also includes arranging work with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, featuring jazz/soul vocalist Lizz Wright, alt-country artist Shelby Lynne, and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. The recipient of a variety of commissions and composition awards, Argue accepted the SOCAN/CAJE Phil Nimmons Emerging Composer Award, in May 2009 at Canada’s National Jazz Awards in Toronto. Learn more at http://secretsociety.typepad.com.
Musicians
Erica vonKleist (flute, alto flute, soprano and alto saxophones), Rob Wilkerson (flute, clarinet, soprano and alto saxophones), Sam Sadigursky (clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones), Mark Small (clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone), Josh Sinton (clarinet, bass clarinet and baritone saxophone), Seneca Black (lead trumpet), Ingrid Jensen (trumpet), Laurie Frink (trumpet), Nadje Noordhuis (trumpet), Tom Goehring (trumpet), Ryan Keberle (trombone), Mike Fahie (trombone), James Hirschfeld (trombone), Jennifer Wharton (bass trombone), Sebastian Noelle (acoustic and electric guitars), Mike Holober (piano and electric piano), Matt Clohesy (contrabass and electric bass), Jon Wikan (drum set, cajon, pandeiro and percussion).
Czech-born composer Bohuslav Martinu was born in a church tower in Policka, Bohemia in 1890. He became a student in the Prague Conservatory, and played with the Czech Philharmonic before moving to Paris to study composition. When World War Two broke out, he fled Europe and moved to the United States where he taught at the Mannes School of Music in New York. All the while, he composed incessantly – including the two piano concertos on this disc. Performers include pianist Robert Kolinsky, conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Sinfonieorchester Basel.
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“Tom Beghin belongs to the very few concert pianists with a professional musicological background who can turn his discoveries of rhetoric and other intellectual features in classical scores into fascinating new and impressive interpretations.”
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