<nettime-ann> Brand New CD, Threnody, Shorter Discourses of the Buddha -

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

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Brand New CD, Threnody, Shorter Discourses of the Buddha -


Available from Public Eyesore
http://www.publiceyesore.com/
http://www.publiceyesore.com/catalog.php?pg=3&pit=133

With
Azure Carter, voice / songs,
Luke Damrosch, madal, guzheng, electronics
Alan Sondheim, acoustic instruments

We have a new release, available now! The new cd has 24 pieces,
including five songs with Azure Carter, and live Supercollider
reverse reverberation (revrev) from Luke Damrosch. I play 19
instruments, the musical structures are innovative and at times
fast enough that speed itself becomes an essential component of
the pieces. There are also slower pieces, pieces with Luke on
madal and retuned guzheng, pieces with qin, and several double-
recorded duets with myself (alto clarinet and clarinet for
example). I try to reach the limits of my ability, breaking new
ground when I can. The emotional range of the music is broad;
the title indicates a sense of mourning, but the shorter
discourses of the Buddha imply peace, planes of sound, fast and
slow structures, enlightening.

http://www.alansondheim.org/insideproof.jpg

> From Jason Weiss (author of Steve Lacy: Conversations; Always in
Trouble: An Oral History of ESP-Disk; Back in No Time: The Brion
Gysin Reader, etc.)

"Who could have made such music? What was he thinking? Or
rather, what were his fingers telling him with their ecstatic
stuttering, their motormouth metalanguage?

"And do you call this music? It does not sound like noise. In
its skittering, scampering, blurting of pure expression, it is
alive, unmistakably alive. Like a creature we don't quite
recognize, that moves by its own lights, that does not need our
permission to exist, that finds or makes its own spaces and
habitats.

"Music is always abstract, so it would seem a redundancy to
think of this as abstract music. Of course, we do not consider
songs abstract, nor familiar melodies or classical forms---even
when we are aware that what seems familiar is really a matter of
cultural habits and slowly developed norms (which are themselves
constantly changing, naturally). This music, this splash of
tonalities and textures, this breathing of illuminations in
their flurries of flight, might well be an abstraction of the
seemingly-non-abstract. Quickest glimpse of a melody from afar,
so far that it must be foreign, though no less human for that;
and so quick, so speeded up perhaps, that we do not know what we
are hearing. The spine of a massive animal poking up through a
surface we did not even realize was there.

"Alan Sondheim is a polymath, a restless connecter, explorer of
virtual realms, tinkerer in the currency of questions, ever
curious about impossible articulations of the body, of bodies,
of dust and stars. Or what had seemed impossible. Luke Damrosch,
meanwhile, tracks the flickering web of Alan's spells, catches
their reflections, follows them through to their secret
heartbeat. And Azure Carter? Azure assures him, ensures the
voice within the music, soft anchor to a wild ear, filters the
wind of vast expanses into a sigh, a melodic speaking, we are
here, we were here, we may be somewhere else tomorrow."

http://www.alansondheim.org/threncover.jpg

Please consider ordering and supporting this music; and please
share this announcement! We need your support!

Also, consider ordering Avatar Woman, from Public Eyesore,

http://www.publiceyesore.com/catalog.php?pg=3&pit=123
(see numerous reviews for Avatar Woman here)

Thank you so much!

- Alan Sondheim, sondheim@panix.com

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