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Glass Triangle (Zeena Parkins / Rasmussen / Sawyer): Blue and Sun-lights (Relative Pitch)

Recorded after a three-day series of concerts at New York City's venue The Stone, the trio of Zeena Parkins on electric harp & objects, Mette Rasmussen on saxophone, objects & voice and Ryan Sawyer on drums & objects brought their dynamic and far-ranging approach to collective free improv into Brooklyn's Figure 8 studio to capture these 10 extraordinary recordings.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Zeena Parkins-electric harp, objects

Mette Rasmussen-saxophone, objects, voice

Ryan Sawyer-drums, objects


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UPC: 5904224871680

Label: Relative Pitch
Catalog ID: RPR1152
Squidco Product Code: 33272

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2023
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Figure 8 Recording, in Brooklyn, New York, by Vishal Nyak.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Not too long ago, harpist Zeena Parkins, alto-saxophonist Mette Rasmussen and drummer Ryan Sawyer gathered at a studio in Brooklyn to record their second record as Glass Triangle. Parkins describes the scenario as strange, a three-hour, early-morning session during which they had to work around another band's recording set-up. "It shouldn't have yielded results," she says. "But magically it did!"

Granted, they had just spent three evenings sharpening their connection with a run at the Stone. If Blue and Sun-Lights is infused with magic - in this case, magic flows from a combination of skill, chemistry, luck and the x-factor of cosmic inspiration - it comes as no surprise.

Glass Triangle borrows its name from the work of sculptor Josiah McElheny and is fittingly sparklingly tactile. Blue and Sun-Lights refers to a hallucinogenic film by McElheny and Jeff Preiss, and like the first record, it is richly textured. The listener might feel an impossible urge to reach out and touch, to drag fingers through dense ripples of sound, or run hands over sharp, shining edges. Where Glass Triangle immediately tossed the listener into the free jazz deep-end, Blue and Sun-Lights takes a moment to draw a few slow, percussive breaths.

On opener "Earth O," Sawyer's snare shudders and Rasmussen's sax sighs, as Parkins' electric harp (which can sound like so many things) begins to interject, weaving voltaic jabs into a staticky futuristic landscape. From there, these three very different voices push and pull at one-another, moving from lively, good natured argument to harmonious agreement and back again. In their own far-out, forward-facing way, they build a narrative tension that evokes the most thrilling mid-century film composers.

The pleasures here are myriad, sometimes clear and prismatic, sometimes heavily, bruisingly physical. Each listen, like magic, reveals something beautiful, surprising and new."-Margaret Welsh


Artist Biographies

"Multi-instrumentalist/composer/improviser, Zeena Parkins, pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance, reimagines the instrument as a "sound machine of limitless capacity." Parkins has built three versions of her one-of-a-kind electric harp and has extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of electronic processing.

Inspired and connected to visual arts, dance, film, and history, Zeena follows a unique path in creating her compositional works. Through blending and morphing of both real and imagined instruments, crafting, recombining, and layering mangled, sliced, massaged or possibly disengaged sounds, drawing from extra-musical sources for unusual scoring and formal constructions as well as utilizing multi-speaker environments, Zeena remains in process with sound as material and music, engaged in translations of sonic states in the concert hall, the black box theater, the dance studio, the recording studio, the classroom, the cinema, the skyscraper, the ocean and the gallery. Zeena has a particularly strong commitment to making scores for dance and continues to re-evaluate the nature and issues of the body's imprint on sound and sound/music's imprint on movement.

Parkins's compositions have been commissioned by NeXtWorks Ensemble, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Roulette Intermedium, The Eclipse Quartet, William Winant, Bang on a Can, The Whitney Museum, The Tate Modern, Montalvo Arts Center, The Donaueschinger Musiktage and Sudwestrundfunk/SWR.

Parkins has released four solo records featuring her electric and acoustic harp playing and has released her compositions and band projects on six Tzadik recordings, with a new Tzadik CD with Ikue Mori and Phantom Orchard Orchestra, Trouble in Paradise, to be released in November 2012. As a sought-after collaborator Zeena has worked with: Fred Frith, Björk, Ikue Mori, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Maja Ratkje, Hild Sofie Tafjord, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Chris Cutler, Elliott Sharp, Nels Cline, Alex Cline, William Winant, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Matmos, Yasunao Tone, So Percussion, Bobby Previte, Carla Kilhstedt, Tin Hat, James Fei, Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo and Thurston Moore.

Awards: The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship, NYFA Music Fellowship, Meet the Composer Commission, NYSCA Composer Commission, Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant, American Music Center, BAFTA award for best interactive media with visual artist Mandy McIntosh and sound artist Kaffe Matthews, Peter S. Reed Fellowship, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Commissions, Arts International, Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention for Phantom Orchard in the Digital Music category.

Curatorial: Guest curator for The Music Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria, co-curator of the Movement Research Festival: Sidewinder, in NYC and curator for a month + a week of shows at The Stone in NYC

Residencies: Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, Oxford University, Harvestworks, Steim, Paf: Performing Arts Forum, Wooda Arts Residency, Montalvo Arts Center, RPI/iEAR and The Watermill Center.

Teaching: Zeena has given lectures at Oxford and Princeton Universities and has taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Bard and Mills College. Currently, Zeena is a Distinguished Visiting Professor, at Mills College Graduate Music Department."

-Zeena Parkins Website (http://www.zeenaparkins.com/about.html)
7/1/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Mette Rasmussen is a Danish saxophone player based in Trondheim, Norway. She works in the field of improvised music, drawing from a wide range of influences, spanning free jazz to textural soundwork. Rasmussen works on exploring the natural rawness of her instrument - experimenting on what the saxophone is capable of in sound and expression, with and without preparations. Much in demand, she has performed with the likes of Alan Silva, Chris Corsano, Ståle Liavik Solberg, and with her Trio Riot group with Sam Andreae and David Meier."

-Cafe Oto (https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/artists/mette-rasmussen/)
7/1/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Ryan Sawyer is a drummer and percussionist from the USA. He has played with several artists and bands like, Tv On The Radio, At The Drive-In, Scarlet Johanson, Massive Attack, Boredoms (77 & 88 Boadrum), The Mekons, Thurston Moore, among others.He currently is playing with, Stars Like Fleas, Tall Firs, and Eye Contact."

-Discogs (https://www.discogs.com/artist/300910-Ryan-Sawyer)
7/1/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Earth O 06:11

2. Triangular Globe 02:35

3. mosquito mind 06:37

4. [Moth] Territory - Full Length Mirror 06:44

5. Seraph 03:35

6. beaming_becoming chrystal 06:16

7. Spine 03:45

8. Glass Spell 02:36

9. doo wap BREAK BREAK 02:23

10. Earth OO 10:49

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
Objects and Home-made Instruments
Electro-Acoustic
Trio Recordings
Parkins, Zeena
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
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