Showing posts with label George Lewis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Lewis. Show all posts
Monday, February 8, 2021
Friday, June 23, 2017
Rob Burke / George Lewis / Paul Grabowsky / Mark Helisa - Shift (2017)
Released June 20, 2017
The music on this CD is the result of four musicians with a background in jazz coming together to experiment and create music without the need for critical approval either from institutional oversight or industry-enforced norms and prerequisites. And because each is free to express himself as a collaborating individual without genre-based limitation, the music they create is ‘free’ music. As well as the analogue instruments, the music has input from the shapeshifted voice of the Ableton controller, a machine operated by George Lewis that records phrases and snippets of music in situ, digitally alters them and feeds them back into the music-making process, providing the musicians with another cue to which they can react.
The music, as all music does, starts with an idea and the enthusiasm of the players to chase it, to play with it as well as to play it, to use their expertise and experience to de- and re-construct it, to improvise around it and eventually to reconcile it in a synthesis that satisfies them and gives the willing listener a new and exciting aural experience. This is music that liberates. -Andrys Onsman
01. Shift 5:54 Quartet
02. Move 8:16 Quartet
03. Carry 6:19 RB, GL,
04. Transfer 6:11 GL, MH
05. Transport 5:10 RB, GL, PG
06. Convey 6:01 RB, GL, PG
07. Relocate 9:01 GL, PG
08. Displace 4:15 RB, MH
09. Rearrange 4:30 Quartet
10. Reposition 5:15 Quartet
11. Modify 5:57 PG, MH
George Lewis – Trombone and Electronics
Paul Grabowsky – Piano and Snare Drum
Mark Helias – Acoustic Bass
Recorded 26th July 2014
Eastside Sound Recording Studio – Lower Eastside – New York USA
Engineered: Marc Urselli
Mixed: April 14 2016, Mastered: Dec 2016 by Andrea Benassai
Sonoria Recording Plant, Prato Italy.
Produced by Robert Burke
Art work by Atia Cader
Special Thanks to: the musicians, Atia Cader, Yasmin Burke, Hanna Burke, Amali Burke – for inspiration and patience. To Monash University and the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music for the ‘research support’, Andrea Benassai for his tireless work and to Andrys Onsman for the wonderful discussions about what this all means.
©Robert Burke 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
George Lewis - The Will to Adorn (NEW FOCUS RECORDINGS 2017)
George Lewis is a modern musical polymath, in the truest sense of the word. As the legendary trombonist and pioneering member of the Chicago based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Lewis was a driving force in one of the most important movements in improvised music in the last decades of the 20th century.
His work with interactive computer software has transformed the fields of electro-acoustic music and virtual instruments. He has had an equally large impact on the academic community, both through his publications and his mentoring of student composers and performers alike. Lewis’s work as a composer fuses the many facets of his musicianship together, and his collaboration with ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) documented here on this recording, gives us an opportunity to see the wide net that he casts. The recording opens with the title track, a boisterous and colorful ensemble work that is inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s 1934 essay, “Characteristics of Negro Expression.” Hurston’s description of churchgoing folks’ penchant for “decorating a decoration” captivated Lewis, and the piece manifests that exuberance through explosive, embellished lines, glitchy off-kilter grooves, and subtly shaded microtonal chords. Shadowgraph, 5 and Artificial Life 2007 are both examples of Lewis’s open-form scores, in which he strives to facilitate a structured improvisation experience through non-standard notation.
Shadowgraph was written for the AACM big band, comprised of a series of symbol instructions, and is among pieces Lewis wrote for what he calls the “creative orchestra.” Artificial Life 2007 was written for the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and seeks to “exteriorize the process of decision-making” inherent in improvised playing through more explicit text instructions. Born Obbligato was written for ICE as a companion piece to Beethoven’s Septet op. 20. Lewis borrows structural and textural ideas from Beethoven’s septet, and also adds percussion to the fourth movement, performed here by virtuoso Steven Schick.
The recording closes with Lewis’s performance of T.J. Anderson’s In Memoriam Albert Lee Murray, a writer and colleague of Anderson who often chose the African-American musical tradition as his subject matter and the departure point for inspiration.
01. Will To Adorn 14:20
02. Shadowgraph, 5 05:14
03. Artificial Life, 2007 04:57
04. Born Obbligato I. 06:44
05. Born Obbligato II. 02:59
06. Born Obbligato III. 03:26
07. Born Obbligato IV. 03:55
08. Born Obbligato V. 01:30
09. Born Obbligato VI. 05:47
10. In Memoriam Albert Lee Murray 03:08
Engineers: Silas Brown (track 1), Ross Karre (track 2-3), Jessica Slaven (tracks 4-6, 8-9), George Lewis (track 7), Ryan Streber (track 10)
Recording locations:
Track 1 Miller Theatre, Columbia University, NY, NY
Track 2 Roulette, Brooklyn, NY
Track 3 Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center
Track 4-6, 8-9 Abrons Arts Center
Track 7 Clark Studio Theatre, Lincoln Center, NY
Track 10 Oktaven Audio, Mt. Vernon, NY
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