Inspired by the poem "This Bread I break" by Dylan Thomas the piece encompasses transition in its highest form from oat to loaf and from grape to wine from wine to blood and bread to body.

Featuring- 
Thomas Lumley - Tenor Saxophone & Composition
Efe Erdem - Trombone
Benjamin Herman - Alto Saxophone
Alex Van Popta - Keys
Bernardo D'Addario - Bass
Luis Mora Matus - Drums

Recorded Live in De Doelen Rotterdam NL on May 30th 2014


This Bread I Break

Born in Damascus. Producer, composer. Here you can find some of my songs, works for movies, italian radio, tv and my tunes "Andrea Veltroni", my first profile. Ciao :-)

I've been a student of music for over 20 years now, I've never stopped loving the infinite diversity and wonder of music and its great power over me. 

I was formally trained as a classical singer focusing on Italian arias and German Lieder Songs. My passion is for composition, and I am hopeful for my future projects, as I approach my final year of undergraduate studies in Music, Please Subscribe and watch this space.

Oh yes and if the name is a puzzle it's bad Latin for "the composing monkey" 

Mirror Shards can be interpreted as the result of all the artistic development based on the self-interests of composer/percussionist/improviser Joe Formanek, such as amplified micro-sound percussion instrumentation, electroacoustic laptop-drumset improvisation, experimenting with recording and mixing techniques, free improvisation, modern electronic music, and composing with field recordings just to point out some salient ones.

Another way Mirror Shards can be interpreted is to consider its strict yet unique conceptual and technical approach to creating music.

Conceptually, there are four principle disciplines being exercised with their own techniques and aesthetics while complimenting the others : improvisation, composition, electroacoustic techniques, and, what Joe has invented, the concept of auto-history. The innovative concept of auto-history can be understood as a methodology to improvisation and composition that keeps constant sonic contact with the artists former self, thus the music being not only a composition of a single moment but of several moments throughout the artist’s life, allowing a new kind of reflective insight into the time-based evolution of the artist’s personal development.

Technically, employing an electroacoustic apparatus (aka Mirror Shards), which is at once a laptop-drumset using digital signal processing and a history-database DJ station. With a massive collection of recorded improvisations and compositions organized onto a database, all of which are at a fingers touch during a live improvisation and in the studio, the most distinctive characteristic of Mirror Shards is the quality of improvising with the history of one’s self. The experience of “driving” the apparatus is a surreal encounter with one’s previous stages of artistic development, forcing a critical reflection and interaction with one’s past.

Another interpretation could be on how Mirror Shards is rooted in similar disciplinary mindsets as musician/composer Anthony Braxton, Steve Lehmann and Vijay Iyer, tackling the age old question of combining improvisation with composition.  After many years of honing conventional and especially unconventional skills as a drummer and as an electronic musician, Joe demonstrates an exercise of concepts, such as the interplay of time and non-time based styles, traditional and extended instrumental techniques, field recordings, micro sampling, and sophisticated software resampling.

This is a highly collaborative project and has been involved with Francisco Lopez (composer), Chris Formanek (composer), François Ducat (film director), Hervé Perez (sax, composer), Elm Records Collective., and Mangoest Records.

 

Thomas Lumley from Aberdyfi on the west coast of Mid-Wales. Graduating with a first class BA honors degree from Leeds College of Music winning the coveted David Holt Saxophone Prize. Thomas' skills lie in his uncanny improvisational ability and unique creative compositional approach to the jazz and free improv idiom. With influences from the modern jazz world (Coltrane, Steve Coleman, Zorn etc.) along with keen interests in Contemporary Improvised music (Bailey, Evan Parker, ICP, AECM), Balkan folk music, Hindustani Classical music, Afro Cuban music and DIY Avant Guard Electronica Thomas' style has very broad yet totally original influences. 
 
 
Thomas' main musical focus is involved with the acute and detailed processes of improvisation and how it can be squeezed, manipulated and synthesised with elements from separate genres and academic processes from the contemporary classical world to produce wonderfully elaborate music that inspires both the the mind and the spirit. One such example of this in Thomas’ music is his use of Dutch composer Peter Schatt’s Tone Clock; a twelve tone system that uses varying combinations of intervals to produce 12 unique modes or “hours” . 
 
 
After Graduation in 2012 from CODARTS Conservatory in Rotterdam as a Master of Music (funded by the Arts Council of Wales’ Advanced study award program) Thomas has toured the UK and Europe extensively with many different projects the most notable being Leeds based critically acclaimed group Omnivore, Rotterdam (NL) Based Hip-Hop group The Refreshed Orchestra and the Cologne (DE) based free improv groups Blemishes and Damsels in Distress.
 
 
Having performed with many artists, names including Claude Deppa, Tony Allen (Fela Kuti), Brian Jackson (Gil Scott-Heron), Mathew Bourne, Frank Vigroux, Chris Sharkey (Acoustic Lady Land, Trio Vd), Dave Kane, Huw Warren, along with being a previously active Member of LIMA (Leeds improvised Music Association. )Thomas is now based in London, UK and is currently writing for London based new music/improvising trio New World Order and Solo Project THL Solo.

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Music is my passion there's nothing else to say, I mainly repost Jazz and Blues Tracks sometime Pop, I am not particularly interested in House Techno Hip Pop,etc.