Program notes: Tunings for "Horse Sings From Cloud" and "Rattlesnake Mountain" are organically microtonal, courtesy of M T Music, Mount Tremper, New York. An early version of the score reads, “Sustain a tone or sound until any desire to change it disappears. When there is no longer any desire to change the tone or sound, then change it.”
Yma Sumac (1922 – 2008) was a Peruvian coloratura soprano. She was one of the most famous exponents of exotica music during the 1950s. She became an international success based on her extreme vocal range. In “Chuncho”, she sings a range of over four and a half octaves. The song “Chuncho” (the forest creatures) is about the mysterious sound of the nature. Yma Sumac was wandered through the forest of the upper Amazon,listening to their waking life,and calling to their creatures in imitative cries.That is the music of “Chuncho”,the wild,unearthly sound of monkeys,jackals and especially a fantastic host of colorful and chattering birds. Yma Sumac ‘s singing is climaxed by her phenomenal “double voiced “thrill. - youtube notes Most of her Exotica-styled songs were accompanied and composed by Moises Vivanco, to whom she was married from 1942 until 1965.
Griffin (1936-2005) was out of Detroit, playing principal with the Detroit Symphony and had an active solo/touring and recording career. What we know of him now is that he probably would have preferred using the pronouns him & his, guy instead of gal, in his renderring of this tune. The tune originally written in 1967 for Keely Smith, the song was rediscovered in late 1969 by Bones Howe, the producer for the 5th Dimension
Scottish poet, singer, teacher, painter, bicyclist, graffitti artist....From Pukekos.org (see link for full article)...With the aid of a tape recorder, he began to record stories, improvising them as he recorded. Poetry then followed, with Cutler taking his inspiration from jazz. "I would go to a jazz concert and just let the music come through me and write nonsense poems, so that one was listening to the noise of the words rather than the meaning," he later recounted. "I wouldn't allow my intellect to get in the way. After six years I found certain sounds more to my taste than others and I gradually began to use actual words.
Sam is based in LA and I like some of of his music very much, esp the album he did with his girlfriend's little sister in his living room -- improvising together. Long New Yorker article (see link) to put aside and read later (perhaps).
Olith Ratego was born Musa Odhiambo omondi, in Asere Ugenya, Siaya District (Kenya). The middle child in a family of three, his interest in music was awakened by his mother who was a singer of “Dodo”, a traditional style of luo music. Thuon Mok Loga is a gospel work featuring Olith Ratego singing and also playing the nyatiti (lyre). Sosa describes his iinterest in producing this album was to demonstrate the oneness of humanity. He pulls in other singer/collaborators from East Africa who are featured performers.
Alto Saxophone – Roy Nathanson, Bass – Brad Jones, Flute & tenor – Sean Sonderegger, Human Beatbox – Napoleon Maddox,Keyboards, Sampler – Hugo Dwyer, Organ & vibes – Bill Ware, Trombone – Curtis Fowlkes, Trumpet – Gabriel Nathanson, Tuba – Marcus Rojas. Born 17 May 1951, Brooklyn, NY. Saxophonist & actor. Also co-founder (with Curtis Fowlkes) principal composer & leader of The Jazz Passengers.
Violinist and composer, occasionally also credited as percussionist, born 24 May 1933 in Houston, Texas, USA. Died December 6, 2016. . Worked with artists like Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders during the 1960s. Was a founding member of fusion group The Fourth Way in the early 1970s. He has also toured with Stevie Wonder
British artist based in London. For this cut, she's working with Chantal Adams. Klein started making music almost by accident. Acting on an interest in field recording, she would layer sounds recorded on her phone then distort them beyond recognition. Since then she’s inadvertently gatecrashed the experimental electronic music scene with her fiercely weird sound and her unusual artwork. Only recently has she been willing to call herself a musician. - Crack magazine
I esp love Goode's interpretations of Beethoven late piano sonatas. Manfred Clynes, who worked in developing a system for analyzing the relationship between music & emotions, reached a conclusion that listening to Beethoven's late quartets would make you strong. While not Beethoven, Brahms achieves his own effect, and the two are buried alongside each other in the "musician's section" of Vienna's Central Cemetery Goode was born in East Bronx and now teaches at The New School.
Guitarist and zither player, born June 2, 1923 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Privately issued in 1975, the one and only full-length created by Ernest Hood is a nostalgic scrapbook of scenes from mid-20th century rural America, particularly focusing on memories of childhood. The album's eight pieces are collages of small-town field recordings interspersed with pleasant, wistful synthesizer melodies, along with sprawling zither arrangements. Hood, a former big-band jazz guitarist who took up the zither after falling victim to polio, was a co-founder of Portland, Oregon community radio station KBOO, and he would routinely capture neighborhood sounds to incorporate into his radio programs, such as kids playing after school, or chirping crickets, barking dogs, and train whistles. The album was largely composed with zithers and the Roland SH-3A synthesizer, with field recordings taken of his neighborhood in Portland. - allmusic. Click link for more
This compilation of arrangements by Satō Masahiko pays tribute to one of the best known composers of Americana. Playing drums in Sato's group is Akira Ishikawa who I invited (for the first time)in to the margin. Wiki tells us about the song...Ken Emerson, author of the book Doo-Dah! (1998), indicates that Foster's fictional Joe was inspired by a servant in the home of Foster's father-in-law, Dr. McDowell of Pittsburgh.
Lightfoot passed away just over a year ago, on May 1, 2023. RIP (obit linked) This song from his debut album is rendered by Lee Harvey Osmond, stylized as LeE HARVeY OsMOND -- a Canadian psychedelic folk project fronted by musician Tom Wilson. Playing bass is Sean Dean
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The Dwarfs of East Agouza is a trio composed of Maurice Louca (Alif, Bikya) on Organ/Synth/percussion, Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush, Shalabi Effect) on electic gtr, and Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls, The Invisible Hands, Alvarius B. on bass/alto sax/alto voicebass/alto sax/alto voice. Hailing from Cairo formed in 2012 while living in the same apartment building in Cairo's Agouza district. The trio soon set out on crafting their sound built on instrumental improvisational loops of percussion as well as taking influence from Krautrock and free jazz among other sounds. Joining them here on percussion is Pierre Guy Blanchard. - discogs.cpm"
