i mourned you twice this week and will again tomorrow

A collection of phone recordings of harp improvisations for meditative purposes, remixed and rearranged to push the boundaries of harp music.

Tracklist:

Sunshowers
Walking
Stampede
Aurora
Dusk
Fire
Frost
Gold
Comets/Stardust
Eclipse



[Audio description]
1. Sunshowers

Multicolored textures swirl in a repetitive daze, changing moods two times before dissapating


2. Walking

Ambling fingerpicking backed by appearances and disappearances of overtones blanketing the sound

3. Stampede

Rush of beating and clapping leading to ecstactic polyrhythmic circling

4. Aurora

Dusty counterrhythms crashing and shifting tones while leaving shadows of sound, before final melodic transformation toward brightness

5. Dusk

Echoing steps climbing into atmospheric fragments of sounds before colliding into rolling buildup and final explosion

6. Fire

Multioctave rhythmic playing leading to reversal

7. Frost

Cascading call and response of glittery, lightly plucked dustings. Intense storm of scratchy sound

8. Gold

Cycles of rising and remaining before fading away

9. Comets/Sundust

Unyielding pressure playing with how much to let go

10. Eclipse

Inversed beginnings with variations

Permanently Transient

Performance: United Instruments of Lucilin
Recording: Tritone Studios

"Draw" and "blow" are terms used to refer to breathing in and out in harmonica playing. Zoetrope VI is centered around the breathing patterns of the harmonica player (in this case the percussionist). The piece follows the speed with which they inhale and exhale, gradually speeding up as more and more blemishes are added to the texture by the other instruments in the ensemble. Eventually, a spinning sound image briefly forms from the musical mass. 

The "Zoetrope" pieces mix together disparate elements in teeming masses to see if they can be made to sound as one. How does their coming together and falling apart enrich or erase the individual motifs' identities? And which of their qualities do the individual motifs end up contributing to the whole? The Zoetrope series is inspired by the pre-cinematic animation device the "Zoetrope" and emulates its achievement of cohesion through speed, varied imitation and repetition.

Composed September/October 2023

Zoetrope VI: Draw / Blow (2023)

For choir and obbligato improviser; 
text from Lamentations 1:12 and "The Cry" by Denise Levertov, with permissions from New Directions Publishing

Commissioned & premiered by Khorikos with Charlotte Greve (alto saxophone), November 12, 2023, Shrine Church of St. Anthony of Padua, NYC.

The first line of Lamentations 1:12 is a question in the original Hebrew: “Is it nothing to you?” This is missed in the vulgate Latin translation into the widely spread "O vos omnes", but the question is more pertinent. Not only a call for help or pity, but implicitly a warning. Matthew Henry’s 1710 commentary puts it concisely: "Jerusalem sitting dejected on the ground calls on those that passed by to consider whether her example did not concern them. Her outward sufferings were great but her inward sufferings were harder to bear through the sense of guilt. Sorrow for sin must be great sorrow and must affect the soul.” Our sorrows now are certainly “great”, especially oriented towards a future whose imagination is inextricable from the specter of a more total destruction than ever before. Hence Denise Levertov’s poem, “The Cry,” which gives voice to that inward suffering through the very impossibility: “Nothing for eloquence / no rhetoric / fits / that unrendering” — paradoxically, it only made sense to try and work through this nothing, to sing in its face with the old and new words, to know your NOW only through what it could be, and choose accordingly with the ineffable escape route of sounds: the bird, the child, the choir, the saxophone. These real and poetic things, and the very efficacy of how they articulate themselves, are constantly shifting around uneasily over the course of this piece.

Is It Nothing

For ten instruments. Performed by Talea Ensemble (David Baker, conductor) on 28 March 2023.

THIS AUDIO IS RAW AND UNEDITED.

For Wayne Shorter

Performed by Erin Lesser on May 2nd, 2024, at Northwestern University.

Karaksa (2024), for alto flute and electronics

ポストクラシカル・ECMレーベルファンの心を掴む、美しくシネマティックな即興演奏、Flying Lotus等のビートシーンにも派生する異色のストリングス・カルテットのデビュー作!!

J Dillaの楽曲のオーケストラ作品『Suite For Ma Dukes』で一躍有名となり、Flying Lotus最新作『You're Dead』にも参加した、ロサンゼルスの音楽シーンのキーパーソン、ミゲル・アトウッド・ファーガソンが所属する、カルテット・ファンタスティコのデビューアルバムが、遂にリリース!!
シネマティックな即興演奏による全34曲、2枚組CDというヴォ
リューム。 

Quartetto Fantastico / カルテット・ファンタスティコ
profile : Chris Woods+Paul Cartwright (violin) , Miguel
Atwood-Ferguson (viola), Peter Peetee Jacobson(cello)の4人のメンバーによる弦楽四重奏。HIPHOP界の重鎮DR.DREからのオファーにより結成された。メンバーは、全員クラシック出身にも関わらず、完全に即興演奏で楽曲を創る異色のストリングス・カルテットである。

Miguel Atwood-Ferguson / ミゲル・アトウッド・ファーガソン
profile : マルチ・インストゥルメンタリスト、アレンジャー、作曲家、プロデューサー。ジョン・レジェンド、ナールズ・バークレイ、ワイクリフ・ジーンからクインシー・ジョーンズやヘンリー・マンシーニ、そしてフライング・ロータスに至るまで、ミゲルはあらゆる録音の現場に参加した。その才能をソロ・アーティストとして開花させるべく、カルロス・ニーニョがフックアップし、ミゲルはLAのシーンにより深く関わるようになった。フライング・ロータスのレーベルBrainfeeder、Blue Noteからリリースも予定されており、いまLAでも最も注目を集めているミュージシャンの一人と言っても過言ではない。

『いままで、さまざまなアーティストから、この人の名前を聞いてきた。実際、レイ・チャールズからドクター・ドレにまで愛され、フライング・ ロータスやカルロス・ニーニョにも絶大な信頼を得てきたのだから、その才能は疑うべくもない。まだソロ作は一枚も世には出ていないが、 2015年は間違いなく、ミゲル・アトウッド・ファーガソンに注目が集まるだろう。その最初の一枚となるのが、カルテット・ファンタスティコ のフル・アルバム『Music For Dreams』。完全即興のスリリングな瞬間と、緩やかに流れる時間が共にある希有な音楽だ』
原 雅明（rings）

Tracklist:
DISC -1
1. Conference Of The Birds
2. Morning Star
3. Constellation
4. Forgiven
5. Orion
6. Sea Anemone
7. Gateway
8. Event Horizon
9. Hologram
10. Moon Shadow
11. Origin
12. Oracle
13. Sanctuary
14. Outbreak
15. Tenju Kyoju
16. Flight
17. Your Love
18. Horizon Eternal
19. Ritual
20. Interstellar Medium

DISC -2
1. Dream Horizon
2. Revelation
3. Morning Light
4. Endgame
5. Night Passage
6. Antiquity
7. Hatchling
8. Mountain Monastery
9. Summit
10. Death Star
11. NIght Glider
12. Unbeknowst
13. Hero's Journey
14. crib dance

Label: rings 
Cat #: RINC3

https://www.facebook.com/ringsounds


Quartetto Fantastico "Music For Dreams" album teaser

original piano & violin loop
solo piano & violin improvisation

something has changed

Erik Jekabson's breakthrough on Wide Hive Records is exceptional. On thirteen new original orchestral compositions, Erik seamlessly weaves together jazz and minimalism into a mesmerizing sound all his own. 

Erik Jekabson is a well-known Bay Area musician who has played trumpet with Galactic, John Mayer, and Kamasi Washington for Wide Hive’s Throttle Elevator Music. Here with his orchestra, Erik continues to establish his own sound with a steady transcendent feel. 

Joining Erik for this recording are Mads Tolling on violin, Dan Feiszli on bass, Jason Lewis on drums, Johnathan Ring on French horn, Jeff Cressman on trombone, and many others.

A Centered Vibe - Erik Jekabson - Breakthrough

The Geometry Of Meditative Cranes

Klangfaden (1983) ᛫ Ensemble Adapter ᛫

Composition, improvisation, instrumentalization, realizations.

Is It Nothing

Zvibes