Featuring:
The Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 6 may be the most geographically & historically wide ranging Echoes CD yet. This volume includes musicians from Armenia to Japan, music that dates back nearly two millennia & compositions written the moment they were recorded for this CD. There is music that appears here & here only, including new works from Jeff Pearce, Mark Hunton, Rasa, Ian Boddy & Coyote Oldman. But whether new music or new arrangements, you have a front row couch for Mizuyo Komiya & her 25-string koto in Tokyo, a pillow on the floor of Suzanne Teng's Topanga Canyon home & a corner in a 6x6 soundbooth with Michael Mandrell. They are all Echoes Living Rooms, so make yourself at home. Although Jeff Pearce often sounds like multiple guitar players & synthesizer, he makes all his music on one electric guitar played in real time, transforming himself into an ambient orchestra through a sophisticated system of looping & sound processing. Suzanne Teng's home is full of flutes from all over the world & she played a few of them in this living room concert, with percussionist Gilbert Levy, Dave Stringer on tamboura, harmonium, & zither & bassist Ian Walker. Mizuyo Komiya plays a double-sized, 25-string version, plucking out fragile melodies & feather light vibrato. In Tokyo, Mizuyo gave us a special, solo performance of her music. Guitarist William Coulter & cellist Barry Phillips explore traditional music from Celtic airs to Shaker hymns & set them in a modern chamber music. "Rain Into Snow" features Shelley Phillips on oboe & Celtic harp, Deby Benton Grosjean on violin & Lars Johannesson playing flute. Ambient guitarist Michael Brook & Armenian doudouk player Djivan Gasparyan laid into trancy grooves & sinuous melodies at the 1999 WOMAD festival near Seattle. Djivan sat impassively, until he put his doudouk to his lips; then his whole body transformed as he merged with his instrument, blowing his poignant, melancholy melodies. Mark Hunton plays the cedar flutes associated with Native Americans, but he doesn't play Native American music. Inspired by his travels through the Himalayas, Mark writes dynamic pieces for Native flute, percussion, synthesizers & electric guitar. Guitarist Michael Mandrell has played with the world fusion group, Taos & in 1999 released a solo album, THE GREAT SPIRAL DANCE. In the cramped Echoes soundbooth, Michael unfolded the expansive vistas of his compositions. Rasa is a Sanskrit word loosely translated as "essence." On their debut, DEVOTION, Hans Christian teams up with singer Kim Waters, setting Indian devotional music to ecstatic rhythms laced with Hans' cello, sarangi & nycklleharpe, a Swedish keyed-fiddle. Ian Boddy is one of the most forward thinking of post-Tangerine Dream synthesists. Resolutely wired, Ian has been on the British electronic music scene for two decades & exults in the timbres he can create. David Lynch, the director of Eraserhead, Elephant Man & the TV series Twin Peaks brought a dark, ominous tone to Hildegardvon Bingen's music on the album, LUX VIVENS. He created surreal arrangements around Jocelyn Montgomery's vocals. Michael Graham Allen & Barry Stramp are Coyote Oldman & they play Native American flutes, Incan pan-pipes & classical bass flute with melodies that ebb, flow & morph through each other. Stramp adds electronic effects, creating shadow echoes & subliminal melodies like a pipe organ blowing across a virtual canyon. Tim Story and Hans Joachim Roedelious team up on electric keyboards with violist Jovanina Pagano, for one of Tim's haunting melodies. Preston Reed was one of several firebrand acoustic guitarists who first came to renown in the 1980s, deploying a style of intricate finger-picking & dazzling two handed tapping. He's recorded over a dozen albums, & his latest album, HANDWRITTEN NOTES is produced by guitarist & Windham Hill Records founder, Will Ackerman. William Watson grew up in Mississippi, steeped in both gospel music & the classics. He's turned those roots into his own music on a pair of CDs, FIELDS & BURNHAM WOODS. More Echoes Living Room Concerts discs! |
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