Waiting For The JH Memorial

A solo for traverso written for and performed by Alison Melville.  From the CD "Something in the Air"

http://www.alisonmelville.com/bird.htm

The Ill-Fated Ornithopter

An electronic composition composed completely from recordings of bass recorder and traverso improvisations by Alison Melville.  

From the Bird Project CD "Something in the Air"

http://www.alisonmelville.com/bird.htm

Birdddub

a little taste of organistrum:prototype at Electric Eclectics festival in Meaford Ontario, 2022.

thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for support for the initial creation  of this piece in 2018, and to Gordon and Laura for making EE amazing.

organistrum:prototype at Electric Eclectics 2022

Buchla Sines Sequence

hurdy gurdy, pianet, and just two modules.

Deus Ante Machina

as i suspected, hurdy gurdy + norns graintopia is an excellent combination.

hg and graintopia experiment

From a live performance, October 2014.  hurdy gurdy and live looping.

Silence Excerpt 2

Excerpts from a live, improvised performance at the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound.  Kitchener-Waterloo, 2014

Pierre-Yves Martel: viola da gamba
Ben Grossman: hurdy gurdy (vielle à roue)

Martel Grossman 1

Title cue for the Book Television/Bravo documentary Voices of Dissent by Liz Marshall.  The idea for the score was to use mostly Turkish traditional instruments to create music that didn't necessarily sound traditional.

Cue1

From a live improvisation at the Ambient Ping, Toronto

Set2part6

Live recording of a performance by PMS (Barry Prophet, Alison Melville, Paul Jenkins, Katherine Keenan, Ben Grossman) of an improv 'score' by BG based on the Chant melody.

Benedicamusdomino

A randomly generated mix of the two improvised CDs which comprise Macrophone.  All sounds in these recordings are hurdy gurdy only.

Macro4

A randomly generated mix of the two improvised CDs which comprise Macrophone. All sounds in these recordings are hurdy gurdy only.

Macro3

Macro2

Macro1

an excerpt from a recent live Snake Church service.

Snake Church Single

a hit on every Turksish and Arabic drum I had handy.  plus a little something rumbly too.

Boom

Electro Doom

Modular Creep

another guitar meditation, just a little different in tone.

Sludge

hg improvisation

Driving

recorded live at the Mystery and Wonder series in Montreal, QC.  Recording by the kind and tallented Mathieu Bélanger.

improvised and played on a hurdy gurdy by Wolfgang Weichselbaumer.  no effects or processing of any kind were used.

Solo At Mystery And Wonder

Live from the Guelph Jazz Festival 2019, a solo performance on vielle à roue (hurdy gurdy/zanfoña/Drehleier etc).

Completely improvised, there are no electronic effects used at all, just the amplified instrument.  Please excuse the noisy archival-quality recording.

Live at the Guelph Jazz Festival 2019

Purple Phaze

the opening track from my new album, isolation etudes vol. 1 available at https://bengrossman.bandcamp.com/album/isolation-etudes-vol-1

it's all live, improvised pieces for hurdy gurdy, recorded quick-and-dirty style.

Beastesque

i'm pleased to finally release the documentary recording of my installation from april 2018, organistrum:prototype.  built with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and presented with Ed Video and Kazoo! Fest in guelph, the piece uses 6 long strings (between 20 and 32 meters long) bowed by rosined wheels under computer control.  the resulting sound is very intense, harmonically rich, and room-fillingly immersive.  this may not be the easiest-listening...

thank you for your support and your interest in my work!

i hope you're all safe and well.

the full 63 minute album can be found here:

https://bengrossman.bandcamp.com/album/organistrum-prototype

organistrum:prototype excerpt

All Saints Day

"Ben Grossman is a busy musician: improviser, studio musician, composer, noisemaker and audio provocateur.  He works in many fields, having played on over 100 CDs, soundtracks for film and television, sound design for theatre, installations, work designed for radio transmission, and live performances spanning early medieval music to experimental electronica.  Ben's tools of choice are electronics, percussion, and, especially, the  hurdy gurdy (Drehleier/vielle à roue), a contemporary electro-acoustic string instrument with roots in the European middle ages.  He studied the instrument in Europe and has also studied Turkish music in Istanbul.  With an abiding interest in pushing the limits of his instruments and pushing the boundaries of whatever venue or medium in which he works, Ben's solo CD, Macrophone was released in 2007 and features a unique two disc form for simultaneous, aleatoric playback.


ben_grossman

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