The Return

Salon 33 4

Salon 33 3

Salon 33 2

Salon 33 1

Date: March 11th, 1979. A Sunday Afternoon.
Place: Guggenheim Museum.
What: The first performance of The Diamond Electronic Music Ensemble.
Recording: Recordings were not allowed unless you paid a ridiculous in-house price. So this recording was done freelance, with a large man in an overcoat sneaking in a portable ¼ tape recorder strapped to his belly. Truly. The ¼” tape spent many years disintegrating and being stretched before it was finally transferred to digital. Thus what remains is a faint hint of what was heard.
Whatever we were, we were loud. The crashing opening of simple fifths and octaves were routed through a Mutron BiPhase, creating a stereophonic sweep of overtones arching slowly back and forth that entirely enveloped the auditorium. Drove to upstate New York to get one of the very first.  Rather cool in its day. Still would be today.
Features instrumentation of Lyricon Wind Controller powering an Arp 2600 (me), two Crumar keyboards (Dave Beck, Michael McFrederick) and drums (Michael Lauren), and an Arp Sequencer patched to a second Arp 2600. All analog.  Lyric Images is a grand 4 movement symphonic work.

Lyric Images

I originally wrote “Man of Music” in the mid-1980s  for The StarScape Singers, an extraordinary chorale group from Toronto. But after working on it for a while, we decided it was really an orchestra work in spirit.

Never one to be dismayed, I recreated it first as a multi-track synth work, playing all the parts myself. A few years later, with the advent of the first notation software, I expanded the piece and scored it for full orchestra. Occasionally, I would attempt to create an electric orchestra version. But the technology, at least to my ears, was not up to the task. In the last few months, I dusted it off and finally produced a version that I feel is listenable.

So here it is - as a six-and-a-half minute overture titled “Man of Music,” dedicated to the conductor and founder of StarScape, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills.

Listen on good speakers or headphones for the best fidelity if you can.
SD
October 2024

Man Of Music.

THE JESTER | Music by Stuart Diamond | Words by Robert Host

The Jester is one of my favorite works. It is an electronic song-cycle created with the first commercial analog synthesizers, including a classic Buchla modular system, a full-studio ARP 2500, and the Baldwin Electric Harpsichord.  Recorded on one of the first Ampex AG-440 analog tape recorders. 

For those who know or care about such matters, these were the crucible instruments of their time.

The work itself is primitive, yet perhaps primal. It is an hallucinogenic, nightmare trip into a sonic dreamscape, a place where a Christ figure and The Jester fuse into a mocking, jousting Savior.

The Jester

11 Sun Light

10 Moon Light

09 Two Light

08 The Furnace

07 Midwinter Frost

06 Forest In The Trees

01 Ductia (French 13th Century)

KONZERTO
Stuart Diamond
Karen Bentley Pollick - Solo Violin
Kurt Kuwasaki - Recording Engineer and Mastering

04 Konzerto- IV. Vivace

03 Konzerto- III. Largo

02 Konzerto- II. Moderato

01 Konzerto- I. Allegro

Paul Fejko, Organist and Stuart Diamond, Lyricon Wind Synthesizer

"Tyme's Escape" is improvisation with mad genius organist Paul Fejko.  The premise: Paul and I had never played together before. So the plan was to meet in this cathedral in Worcester, Massachussets  that features a famous organ with over 7000 pipes. Turn on the tape recorder and play for an hour. 2AM in the morning (to avoid daytime car traffic noise), freezing cold night, playing in our winter coats.  No recording or description can capture the reality of what happened. The Lyricon soars over 7500 organ pipes coming from 360 degrees. And when the massive 32 foot Contra Bombarde pipes come in sync with the Lyricon bass notes - the stone floors and walls of the cathedral vibrating in resonance – they create a colossal sound surpassing even the power of largest symphony orchestras or rock band.  Outside of this recording (a pale reflection of the sonic truth) the only ones to testify to do it all were myself, Paul, the producer, the audio engineer and an assistant."

Stuart Diamond

16 Night Embrace

15 Nocturnal Quet

14 Quiescence

13 Tyme's Escape

04 Flight

03 Emergence

02 Dawns Search

01 Nights Release

Paean to St. Francis 
By Karen Bentley Pollick and Stuart Diamond
Karen Bentley Pollick, vocals
Vocals recorded in San Pancho, Nayarit on the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4, 2020

www.kbentley.com
www.diamondmusic.org

Paean To St. Francis

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