The Squid's Ear Magazine


Gentile, Kate | International Contemporary Ensemble: b i o m e i.i (Obliquity)

Composed for and recorded with the International Contemporary Ensemble, NY drummer Kate Gentile's 13-movement composition biome ii integrates improvisation into a chamber music ensemble, each movement describing fictional flora or fauna from a biome of creatures as quirky and fascinating as the music Gentile has developed for this idiosyncratic and exceptional symphony.
 

Price: $14.95



Quantity:

In Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 3.00 units


EU & UK Customers:
Discogs.com can handle your VAT payments
So please order through Discogs

Sample The Album:





product information:

Personnel:



Isabel Lepanto Gleicher-flute, piccolo

Jennifer Curtis-violin

Joshua Rubin-clarinet, bass clarinet

Rebekah Heller-bassoon

Ross Karre-vibraphone, percussion

CORY SMYTHE-piano

Kate Gentile-drums, percussion


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




Includes a 6-page foldout color booklet with drawing & descriptions to accompany each movement, track listings and credits.

UPC: 843563162323

Label: Obliquity
Catalog ID: Obliquity 01
Squidco Product Code: 33482

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2023
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded at Oktaven Audio, in Mount Vernon, New York, on April 14th and 15th, 2021, by Ryan Streber.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Drummer, composer, bandleader and side woman Kate Gentile is relatively new on the scene but it's already clear that whatever style of music she takes on, it's always in the vanguard of that style. More than that, she invents styles of her own. So to say that her latest release b i o m e i.i (from Gentile's and Matt Mitchell's Obliquity Records) is ambitious only describes the norm for her. What makes b i o m e i.i particularly special is how it reveals how far Gentile's artistic reach goes. It's really, really far.

Largely stepping away from a diverse world of cutting-edge jazz and into the esoteric world of creative chamber music, Gentile brings over to this idiom her craft of integrating improvisation into meticulous scores and blurring the distinction between either.

As they follow Gentile in the billing, it might be easy to assume that International Contemporary Ensemble is Gentile's backing band but no, it's a true partnership. The International Contemporary Ensemble has spent some twenty years working with composers emerging and established to provide a conduit for their challenging and provocative works. They commissioned Gentile to provide a set of pieces, with Gentile also becoming part of the band as its drummer and a second percussionist.

Gentile joins International Contemporary Ensemble members Cory Smythe (piano), Isabel Lepanto Gleicher (flute, piccolo), Joshua Rubin (clarinet, bass clarinet), Rebekah Heller (bassoon) and Ross Karre (vibraphone & percussion).

There's a fairly hefty 13 tracks in all, but even if you don't read the liner notes you soon realize that b i o m e i.i is actually a symphony with thirteen, interconnected movements.

It's a seven-piece band but plays like a full symphonic orchestra. The music moves as a large mass, going in many directions at once at the micro level but overall moving in the same direction on a macro level. The intense detail in these compositions guarantees you will still uncover things you hadn't caught before on the hundredth listen. Smythe may have described all this more succinctly when he remarked that Gentile had "managed to turn the Ensemble into a menagerie of oozing, flapping sonic symbionts."

While some movements - such as the first two - make full use of this pocket orchestra at once, there are plenty of moments where the ensemble is temporarily reduced to one-on-one or two-on-one situations, such as the novel drums-flute-clarinet showdown of "chorp."

"vlimb" dispenses with tonal instruments altogether, as it's a fascinating drums/percussion display. Some sections, such as "moons" and most of "shorm," conversely do away with drums and percussion, underscoring Gentile's intent to make a wide-scope composer's record that showcases her talents well beyond the trap kit, not some drummer-centric project.

"nionine" is chock full of surprises. A bassoon cast against exotic percussion with chimes-like timbres that practically makes a melody on its own. Other members join in and execute a dense Tim Berne-like pattern, settling into free-chamber dramatics. "drode" moves in an unpredictable, dramatic fashion. Things come to a head when Gentile solos ferociously but as a combatant arrayed against the ICE, it's much more purposeful.

In building such a sophisticated New Music oeuvre, Kate Gentile has thrust herself to the forefront of creative improvised music, alongside forbears of a prior generation like Berne or the generation before that one, like Roscoe Mitchell or Carla Bley. If she's capable of a major statement like b i o m e i.i, there's nothing she's incapable of."-S. Victor Aaron, Something Else Reviews



"With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble - as a commissioner and performer at the highest level - amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced.

The Ensemble's 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble's programming since its founding in 2001, and the group's recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music's present.

The International Contemporary Ensemble strives to cultivate a mosaic musical ecosystem that honors the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, and performing the works of living artists. The Ensemble is a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators who are committed to creating collaborations built on equity, belonging, and cultural responsiveness. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble continues to build new digital and live collaborative environments that strengthen artist agency and musical connections around the world.

We at the International Contemporary Ensemble believe that as a collective committed to advancing experimental music, it is our responsibility to challenge our biases and practices around who performs, or has their works performed, on the world's stages. We acknowledge that Western European classical music has excluded individuals based on wealth, race, sex, pedigree, background, gender-identity, disability, and sexual orientation. We are actively making changes to all entry points to our organization to ensure that Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color are represented throughout the organization and on the world's stages, and that our operations and decision-making structures support building spaces of belonging for everyone involved in the process of developing new music.

Acclaimed as "America's foremost new-music group" (The New Yorker) and "America's leading performers of new work" (New York Times), the Ensemble has become a leading force in new music throughout the last 20 years, having premiered over 1,000 works and having been a vehicle for the workshop and performance of thousands of works by student composers across the U.S. The Ensemble's composer-collaborators-many who were unknown at the time of their first Ensemble collaboration-have fundamentally shaped its creative ethos and have continued to highly visible and influential careers, including MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey; long-time Ensemble collaborator, founding member, and 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winner Du Yun; and the Ensemble's founder, 2012 MacArthur Fellow, and first-ever flutist to win Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Prize, Claire Chase.

A recipient of the American Music Center's Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the International Contemporary Ensemble was also named Musical America's Ensemble of the Year in 2014. The group has served as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival (2008-2020), Ojai Music Festival (2015-17), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2010-2015). In addition, the Ensemble has presented and performed at festivals in the U.S. such as Big Ears Festival and Opera Omaha's ONE Festival, as well as abroad, including GMEM-Centre National de Création Musicale (CNCM) de Marseille, Vértice at Cultura UNAM, Warsaw Autumn, International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and Cité de la Musique in Paris. Other performance stages have included the Park Avenue Armory, ice floes at Greenland's Diskotek Sessions, Brooklyn warehouses, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and boats on the Amazon River. [...]"


Includes a 6-page foldout color booklet with drawing & descriptions to accompany each movement, track listings and credits.

Get additional information at Something Else!

Artist Biographies

"Isabel Lepanto Gleicher is a flutist, composer, visual artist, and educator. The New York Times has called her "excellent", and a "rising talent and stand out performer" by Miller Theatre, where she was a featured Pop-Up Concerts soloist. John Zorn writes "Isabel's display of virtuosity and her beautiful attitude and stunning musicality inspired me". Isabel is an artist member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wild Up, new music sinfonietta Ensemble Echappe, the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, and hip-hop band ShoutHouse. Isabel is a founding member of Song Sessions Collective, which consists of four improvisers using acoustic and electronic instruments, as well as an LED light installation to perform an ever-changing work based on the structure of whales songs.

Isabel regularly performs with San Francisco based conductorless orchestra One Found Sound, as well as New York City based Talea Ensemble, Argento New Music Ensemble, and Contemporaneous. She also performs at festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Big Ears, Opera Omaha's One Festival, TIME:SPANS Festival, SONIC MATTER, Sacrum Profanum Festival, MATA, and Prototype Festival. Isabel has appeared on the Guggenheim Museum Works and Process Series, Music of the Americas Society Composer Portrait Series, Park Avenue Armory Martin Creed The Back Door exhibit, the Clark Institute of Art Celebration of Helen Frankenthaler and the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual event An Afternoon of Music and Art. You can hear Isabel featured on several recordings ranging a variety of genres: Wild Up's latest Grammy nominated album Julius Eastman Vol. 2: Joy Boy, and Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine. As well as composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Aequa, Ilaria Kaila and Aizuri String Quartet album The Bells Bow Down, synth driven post-rock band Infinity Shred's Shred Offline, and Indie rock band San Fermin's The Cormorant and Jackrabbit.

Isabel believes that classical music is an open ended canon and focusing on new work is crucial to the continued evolution of the art form. She has had the opportunity to premiere works by Steve Reich, Missy Mazzoli, Du Yun, Dai Fujikura, Jon Batiste, and Augusta Read Thomas, among many others. Isabel has curated solo sets of original music for the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, Experimental Sound Studio, International Contemporary Ensemble's Tues@7, ChamberQUEERantine Virtual Festival, and George Mason University's Mason Arts at Home, as well as contributing to Metropolis ensemble's live-streaming perpetual sonic installation Flame Keepers. Isabel is a queer woman who has spent her entire life butting heads with the stereotypes and expectations of a female flute player, both in her appearance and musical aesthetic. She strives to create a home for artists who have been othered by the music community. By commissioning and collaborating with female identifying artists and artists of color as well as celebrating the underrepresented history of POC artists in classical music, she hopes to be a part of changing the expectation of what a classical musician looks like. This representation is the next step in our continued evolution as musicians and members of a larger community.

Active as an educator Isabel has worked with the Bridge Arts Ensemble in the Adirondacks and the American Composers Orchestra at Brooklyn's Fort Hamilton High School. She held a one year position with New York Philharmonic Education as a teaching artist, teaching 3rd grade. Isabel has conducted flute and chamber music master classes, and workshops in experimental music at the Florida International University, Florida State University, University of Kansas, DePauw University, University of Nebraska, SUNY Purchase, University of Massachusetts and at the Texas Flute Festival. She has also collaborated with many composition departments, performing young student composers' pieces from the Third Street Music School Settlement, Face the Music, Luna Composition Lab, the Music Advancement Program at the Juilliard School and the Very Young Composers program at the New York Philharmonic. Isabel, alongside her colleagues in the International Contemporary Ensemble, is guest faculty at the Walden School Music Camp. Isabel holds an MM in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, an MM from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. Her primary teachers have included Tara Helen O'Connor, Ransom Wilson and Tanya Dusevic Witek."

-Isabel Lepanto Gleicher Website (https://isabellepantogleicher.com/about)
11/20/2024

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

"The New York Times described violinist Jennifer Curtis's second solo concert in Carnegie Hall as "one of the gutsiest and most individual recital programs." She was celebrated as "an artist of keen intelligence and taste, well worth watching out for."

Curtis navigates with personality and truth in every piece she performs. Jennifer is a long-time member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and founder of the group Tres Americas Ensemble. She has appeared as a soloist with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Venezuela and the Knights Chamber Orchestra; performed in Romania in honor of George Enescu; given world premieres at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York; collaborated with composer John Adams at the Library of Congress; and appeared at El Festival de las Artes Esénias in Peru and festivals worldwide.

An educator with a focus on music as humanitarian aid, Jennifer has also collaborated with musical shaman of the Andes, improvised for live radio from the interior of the Amazon jungle, and taught and collaborated with Kurdish refugees in Turkey.

Jennifer currently teaches part-time violin at Duke University. She plays on a 1777 Vincenzo Panormo."

-Jennifer Curtis Website (https://www.jennifercurtisviolin.com/about)
11/20/2024

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

"Joshua Nathan Rubin is a founding clarinetist, board member, and served as the co-Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICEensemble) from 2014-2018, where he oversaw the creative direction of more than one hundred concerts per season in the United States and abroad. As a clarinetist, the New York Times has praised him as, "incapable of playing an inexpressive note."

Joshua has worked closely with many of the prominent composers of our time, including George Crumb, Matana Roberts, Alvin Lucier, David Lang, Chaya Czernowin, Du Yun, Christian Wolff, George Lewis, Steven Schick, Kaija Saariaho, Craig Taborn, Pauline Oliveros, Okkyung Lee, Nathan Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, John Zorn, and Mario Davidovsky. His interest in electronic music throughout his career has led him work on making these technologies easier to use for both composers and performers. Joshua can be heard on recordings from the Nonesuch, Kairos, New Focus, Mode, Cedille, Naxos, Bridge, New Amsterdam, and Tzadik labels. His album There Never is No Light, available on the Tundra label, highlights music that uses technology to capture the human engagement of the performer and the listener.

[...]

His clarinet studies were mentored by Lawrence McDonald, Mark Nuccio, and Steven Cohen. He served on the faculty of the Banff Music Centre's Ensemble Evolution summer program from 2016-2019. Rubin is on the faculty of soundSCAPE Festival and Ensemble Evolution. He is also on the faculty of the College of the Performing Arts at The New School.

Joshua holds degrees in Biology and Clarinet from Oberlin College and Conservatory, and a Master's degree from the Mannes School of Music.

His passion for technology in arts led Joshua to develop LUIGI, management software that is available to ensembles and other arts organizations who value transparency and collective management, as well as his ongoing work to make electronic music technologies easier to use for performers and composers. He maintains an artistic presence in New York and Los Angeles."

-International Contemporary Ensemble (https://iceorg.org/joshua-rubin)
11/20/2024

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

"Rebekah Heller is a multi-hyphenate artist: a bassoonist of both highly notated and improvised music, a conductor, composer, educator, curator, arts leader, organizer, and thought partner.

With a conservatory education and early career focused on western classical orchestral traditions, and over a decade of experience in the fields of new music, non-profit organizing, and performing arts education, Heller is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between classical and experimental music practices. She is committed to centering conversations about anti-racism, decolonization, and uprooting patriarchal and white supremacist structures and mindsets across the music industry.

As a solo artist, Heller is known for creating immersive environments - using custom lights, commissioned clothing, and playing from memory - to facilitate electric connections with her audiences.

Called "an impressive solo bassoonist" by The New Yorker, Heller made her solo debut with the New York Philharmonic in September 2018, and has been a soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the Nagoya Philharmonic, and the New World Symphony. She has been a featured soloist at the TIME:SPANS Festival, on Miller Theater's Portrait Concert Series, at the experimental music hub, The Stone, and she will make her solo debut at the Born Creative Festival in Tokyo in July of 2023.

A curious and unceasing advocate for the bassoon as a solo instrument, Heller has worked side-by-side with composers over the last decade to forge an exciting new repertoire of works for solo bassoon and bassoon with electronics. Many of these compositions can be found on her solo albums: 100 names, which was called "pensive and potent" by The New York Times, and METAFAGOTE, which ArtMusicLounge insists is "here to explode...any preconceived notions you may have had about bassoon music."

As a conductor, Heller is thrilled to share her decades' worth of experience interpreting contemporary music, and her gift of translating a composer's vision into clear and emotionally charged performances.

In response to her 2022 New World Symphony conducting debut, the South Florida Classical Review wrote, "Heller's crisp direction, sans baton, guided the players through the score's intricacies, marshaling their energetic reading."

As bassoonist (since 2008) and former Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Heller has collaborated with hundreds of composers worldwide to make countless groundbreaking new chamber pieces come to life. Through her many roles in the ensemble, she has been deeply involved in the act of collaborative curation for over a decade. Recognizing that conscientious curation cannot happen in a vacuum, she and her colleagues have always curated with racial, gender, and social justice at the core.

Inspired by groundbreaking artists and close collaborators George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, and Matana Roberts (among others), Heller has taken her musical practice off the page - becoming an exciting force in the improvised music community. As a composer, she has written for herself, her duo with vocalist and composer Fay Victor, and has several new chamber music commissions on the way.

A passionate and committed educator, Heller is invited to give classes, lectures, and workshops across the globe.

She gives lectures on topics as wide-ranging as collaborative practices, conscientious curation, contemporary bassoon techniques, and composing for the bassoon, as well as intensive seminars on non-traditional career paths and how to create and sustain community-centered spaces in music. She has given classes at The Juilliard School, The Manhattan School of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory, The Peabody Institute, Ensemble Connect, the Chicago Civic Orchestra and The New World Symphony, among many others. Heller often participates in mentorship programs for female-identifying, trans, and non-binary composers and performers, most recently serving as a mentor in the Blueprint Program - a partnership between The Juilliard School and National Sawdust for young composers.

Heller joined the faculty of the College of Performing Arts (CoPA) and The Mannes School of Music at The New School in the fall of 2019. She leads a bassoon studio, co-chairs the wind department, and teaches classes in contemporary repertoire and experimental music practices. She recently led a week-long intensive online program for young artists called "Finding Your Path" and served as part of the team that developed a new cross-disciplinary and holistic core curriculum for The New School's CoPA.

A graduate of the Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music and the University of Texas at Austin, Heller was also a member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and The New World Symphony. She served a one-year appointment as Principal Bassoonist of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra before moving to New York City to join the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Heller lives in Manhattan."

-Rebekah Heller Website (http://www.rebekahheller.com/about)
11/20/2024

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

"Ross Karre is a percussionist and temporal artist based in New York City. His primary focus is on combining media, including classical percussion performance, electronics, theater, moving image, visual art, and lighting design. He designs integrated, moving images that emerge from an aesthetic foundation in American experimental music as well as that of the European avant garde. Ross is a percussionist and the co-artistic director for the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

His projection design has been presented in such prestigious venues as the BBC Scotland (Glasgow Concert Halls), The Park Avenue Armory, Miller Theatre (NYC), and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and the Kennedy Center. As a percussionist, he has worked closely with European masters such as Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin, Olga Neuwirth, and Harrison Birtwistle. Karre has been a percussionist and staff member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) since 2011 and also performs regularly with Third Coast Percussion (Chicago), red fish blue fish, and the National Gallery of Art new music ensemble.

Using his background as a percussionist, production manager, and projection designer, Ross is active as a production coordinator and designer of several intermedia operas and staged works by Ashley Fure, Pauline Oliveros, Suzanne Farrin, and many more. He has collaborated as a producer/designer on the world's largest scale productions at the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Festival, Ojai Festival, and Lincoln Center.

As a teacher, Ross is a regular guest lecturer and clinician on topics ranging from contemporary percussion and media to arts administration and professional development. He has been invited to return to his alma maters of Oberlin Conservatory, UCSD, and Interlochen Arts Academy as well as the Eastman School, Bard College, the Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshops, and dozens more. Ross has organized several unique university residencies for the International Contemporary Ensemble at RPI, Kent State, MacAlester, the University of Michigan and other institutions in South America and Europe.

As a traveling artist, Ross has presented work at nearly every major festival in Europe and the United States including those in Lucerne, Darmstadt, Holland Festival, Ojai Festival, Mostly Mozart, Aspekte Festival (Austria), Eight Bridges (Cologne), Rotterdam, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Banff (Canada), Mona Foma (Tasmania), Far North (Greenland), and the Park Avenue Armory.

In 2011, Ross commenced two major archiving projects which seek to document and distribute recorded performances of hundreds of artist-clients all of the world. The rKAD media collective and metafields​.org have become vital parts of the contemporary music scene by preserving and proliferating the important works of emerging and established artists."

-Ross Karre Website (https://rosskarre.com/about/)
11/20/2024

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

"Pianist Cory Smythe works actively in new, classical, and improvised music. He has performed widely, making appearances as soloist and chamber musician at the Darmstadt International Festival for New Music, the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City, the Green Mill jazz club in Chicago, and the Mostly Mozart festival at Lincoln Center. In recent seasons, Smythe has played alongside violinist Hilary Hahn in concerts throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. A Washington Post review of the duo's performance at the Kennedy Center praised Smythe for "...the ferocity and finesse of his technique." Their Grammy-winning album, In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, documents Hahn's diverse collection of newly commissioned encores for violin and piano.

As a core member of the new music group the International Contemporary Ensemble, Smythe has given numerous premieres, collaborated in the development of new pieces, and worked closely with composers John Zorn, Philippe Hurel, Dai Fujikura, George Lewis, and Alvin Lucier among many others. ICE's 2013 release on Mode Records features Smythe as the piano soloist in Iannis Xenakis's 'Palimpsest'. Smythe has also been a featured guest and soloist with many new music ensembles throughout the United States, including Milwaukee's Present Music, the Boston-based Firebird Ensemble, Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. He performs regularly in collaboration with many of the leading concert artists of his generation, appearing this last season with the cellist Joshua Roman, violinist Karen Gomyo, the Imani Winds, and members of the Providence and Rubens string quartets.

An innovative improviser, Smythe performs as a soloist and in collaboration with a wide array of jazz and creative artists, among them, most recently, Peter Evans, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, and Anthony Braxton. This season will see the release of recordings featuring Smythe in projects led by Tyshawn Sorey and Nate Wooley. Smythe's own album, Pluripotent - described by celebrated jazz pianist Jason Moran as "hands down one of the best solo recordings I've ever heard" - is available for free download at corysmythe.bandcamp.com.

Smythe holds degrees in classical piano performance from the music schools at Indiana University and the University of Southern California, where he studied with Luba Edlina-Dubinsky and Dr. Stewart Gordon, respectively. He currently resides in New York City."

-CORY SMYTHE Website (http://corysmythe.com/bio)
11/20/2024

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

"Kate Gentile is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer interested in forward-thinking creative music, including the synthesis of elements from many kinds of music.

In addition to her quartet with Jeremy Viner, Matt Mitchell and Adam Hopkins on her debut album Mannequins (June 2017, Skirl Records), other projects Kate is a part of include Snark Horse, in which she co-leads and shares compositional duties with pianist Matt Mitchell; Mitchell's projects Phalanx Ambassadors and A Pouting Grimace, Dustin Carlson's septet Air Ceremony, and Davy Lazar's trumpet/drums duo Pluto's Lawyer.

Kate has also worked with Michael Attias, Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Cloud Becomes Your Hand, Marty Ehrlich, Michael Formanek, God Is My Co-Pilot, Helado Negro, Chris Speed, Anna Webber, and John Zorn."

-Kate Gentile Website (http://kategentile.com/about.html)
11/20/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Drobe 04:01

2. Ikbii 03:23

3. Oergn 05:53

4. Bippf 03:08

5. Flibb 03:46

6. Chorp 03:18

7. Nionine 04:40

8. Vlimb 04:08

9. Xooox 04:38

10. Moons 04:03

11. Shorm 04:21

12. Drode 04:58

13. Isth 02:34

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Compositional Forms
Chamber Jazz
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Large Ensembles
Staff Picks & Recommended Items

Search for other titles on the label:
Obliquity.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Modney (Modney / Wooley / Gentile / Roberts / Pluta / Symthe / ...)
Ascending Primes [2 CDs]
(Pyroclastic Records)
Exploring tuning systems and the extremes of harmonicity and dissonance through compositions that employ prime numbers of players in solo, trio, quintet, septet, and undectet (11) configurations, violinist Modney takes listeners into transcendent and turbulent spaces spanning improvisation and composition, detailed in a 24-page booklet with collages from Ellsworth Kelly.
Wooley, Nate / Mutual Aid Music
Four Experiments [4 CD BOX SET]
(Pleasure of the Text Records)
Engaging an expanded version of the ensemble from his Mutual Aid Music, trumpeter Nate Wooley provides scores for his players in various configuration that challenge concepts of group composition, instrumental sound and resonance, idealized tones and the human voice, the development of melody and harmony in compositions, &c.; performers include Wooley, Seymore Wright, John McCowen, Gabby Fluke-Mogul, Cory Smythe, Luke Stewart, Eric Wubbels, &c.
exclusiveOr (Peter Evans / Wooley / Muncy / Olencki / Karre / Cimini / Young / Snyder / Pluta)
Modules [VINYL]
(Carrier Records)
The NY electronics duo exclusiveOr (Sam Pluta and Jeff Synder) join forces with the International Contemporary Ensemble and Architeuthis Walks on Land (Katherine Young and Amy Cimini) for this tour-de-force ensemble work, combining composed forms, electro-acoustic improvisation, noise, and lush harmonies, in a fascinatingly detailed album of creative musicianship.
Mitchell, Matt
Phalanx Ambassadors
(Pi Recordings)
The sophisticated compositions of New York pianist Matt Mitchell on piano, also performing on synthesizer, are heard in this quintet with Miles Okazaki on electric & acoustic guitars, Patricia Brennan on vibraphone & marimba, Kim Cass on bass, and Kate Gentile on drums & percussion, a challenging album that rewards through intensity and incredible detail.
Wooley, Nate
Argonautica
(Firehouse 12 Records)
Trumpeter Nate Wooley's major 3-part work makes oblique reference to dodecaphony, ambient tape music, and the minimalist rock of Terry Riley, conceived as a tribute to Wooley's mentor Ron Miles, who performs alongside Devin Gray & Rudy Royston (drums), Cory Smythe & Jozef Dumoulin (piano).
Sorey, Tyshawn Trio
Alloy
(Pi Recordings)
Drummer Tyshawn Sorey's trio with bassist Christopher Tordine and pianist Cory Smythe in an album dedicated to Butch Morris and to his mother; intelligent and pensively restrained through-composed jazz influenced by modern composition as much as the history of the jazz trio.
Other Recommended Releases:
Houle / Gentile / Hawkins
Fatrasies
(Les Disques Victo)
The transatlantic trio of UK pianist Alexander Hawkins, NY drummer Kate Gentile and Canadian reedist Francois Houle are heard in four masterful spontaneous improvisations in their live performance at the 39th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, Houle performing on clarinets (sometimes two at a time) including the early, deep-note basset clarinet.
Modney (Modney / Wooley / Gentile / Roberts / Pluta / Symthe / ...)
Ascending Primes [2 CDs]
(Pyroclastic Records)
Exploring tuning systems and the extremes of harmonicity and dissonance through compositions that employ prime numbers of players in solo, trio, quintet, septet, and undectet (11) configurations, violinist Modney takes listeners into transcendent and turbulent spaces spanning improvisation and composition, detailed in a 24-page booklet with collages from Ellsworth Kelly.
Gentile, Kate (w/ Mitchell / Casss / Viner)
Find Letter X [3 CDs]
(Pi Recordings)
Three CDs in a beautifully constructed fold-out cross with liner notes and recording data from NY drummer Kate Gentile, in a set of 41 studio recordings with her working band of Matt Mitchell on piano & keys, Kim Cass on acoustic & electric bass and Jeremy Viner on reeds, each disc exploring a distinct yet connected approach to her fascinating compositions and group interaction.
Smiley, Andrew / Kate Gentile
Flagrances
(Obliquity)
Two New York Improvisers recording at The Pink Forest studio in Brooklyn present 18 succinct, upbeat and distinctive improvisations on drums and electric guitar, from drummer Kate Gentile (Matt Mitchell, Secret People, Gabriel Zucker & The Delegation, Dave Douglas) and guitarist Andrew Smiley (Little Women, Bloor, Chris Pitsiokis Quartet).
Mitchell, Matt
Oblong Aplomb [2 CDs]d
(Out Of Your Head Records)
Expanding on pianist/composer Matt Mitchell's 2013 duo album Fiction with Ches Smith is this double-duo release over 2 CDs, one CD with Smith performing on drums, gongs, percussion, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tam-tam & timpani, and one CD with drummer/percussionist Kate Gentile, performing Mitchell's fascinatingly convoluted works that integrate composition with improvisation.
Courvoisier, Sylvie / Cory Smythe
The Rite of Spring - Spectre d'un songe
(Pyroclastic Records)
Having presented a solo version of Stravinksy's The Rite of Spring at Opera Bastille in Paris with avant-flamenco dancer Israel Galván, Courvoisier developed a new work for two pianos performed with Cory Smythe, merging composition & improvisation as they invoke impressions of The Rite in tandem with Stravinksy-like reharmonizations of previous Courvoisier works.
Smythe, Cory (w/ Jernberg / Modney / Reid / Evans / Elk / Muncy / Laubrock / Leon / Cox / Crump )
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
(Pyroclastic Records)
After working with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, pianist Corey Smythe assmebled this incredible ensemble that includes Peter Evans (trumpet), Ingrid Laubrock (sax), Stephan Crump (bass), Tomeka Reid (cello), &c., performing works influenced by the Kern/Harbach standard "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", which Smythe then interprets abstractly in 7 solo renderings.
Secret People (Moorgan / Carlson / Gentile)
Secret People
(Out Of Your Head Records)
A determined set of electric jazz from the Brooklyn, NYC trio of Nathaniel Morgan (Buckminster) on alto saxophone, Dustin Carlson on guitar & bass and Kate Gentile on drums & vibraphone, bringing driving rock and experimental music approaches to their improvisations, a uniquely voice and tenacious trio of unorthodox improvisers.
Zorn, John
Les Maudits
(Tzadik)
An outrageous interpretation of Alfred Jarry's fictional character Ubu performed with with the International Contemporary Ensemble and core Downtown New York performers Ikue Mori, Ches Smith and Zorn himself, using Zorn's quick cut approach to composition; presented along with a work inspired by French poet Charles Baudelaire and an elegy to painter Paul Gauguin.
exclusiveOr (Peter Evans / Wooley / Muncy / Olencki / Karre / Cimini / Young / Snyder / Pluta)
Modules
(Carrier Records)
The NY electronics duo exclusiveOr (Sam Pluta and Jeff Synder) join forces with the International Contemporary Ensemble and Architeuthis Walks on Land (Katherine Young and Amy Cimini) for this tour-de-force ensemble work, combining composed forms, electro-acoustic improvisation, noise, and lush harmonies, in a fascinatingly detailed album of creative musicianship.
Douglas, Dave
Showing Up / The Power of the Vote [7" VINYL]
(Greenleaf Music)
2019 Record Store Day release, a 7" from trumpeter Dave Douglas in two different configurations: the lead track from his album "Engage" featuring guitarist Jeff Parker and cellist Tomeka Reid along with Anna Webber, Nick Dunston & Kate Gentile; and a B-Side from 2018's "Uplift" featuring Joe Lovano and Bill Laswell alongside Mary Halvorson, Julian Lage, and Ian Chang.
Crump, Stephan / Ingrid Laubrock / Cory Smythe
Channels
(Intakt)
The NY trio of Stephan Crump on acoustic bass, Ingrid Laubrock on tenor & soprano saxophones, and Cory Smythe on piano follow-up to their "Planktonic Finales" album with this live album recorded at the Unerhort!-Festival in Zurich in 2017, in a lyrically free album of solid compositional structures that result in warmly creative and singular jazz.
Carlson, Dustin (w/ Mitchell / Gentile / Hopkins / Morgan / Trudel / Gouker)
Air Ceremony
(Out Of Your Head Records)
A strong album of modern creative jazz from New York guitarist Dustin Carlson, in a septet with Matt Mitchell on synth, Kate Gentile on drums, Adam Hopkins on bass, Nathaniel Morgan on alto saxophone, Eric Trudel on baritone saxophone, Danny Gouker on trumpet, sophisticated, intricate, lyrical and compelling compositions driving the enthusiasm and exuberance of their "ceremony"!
Sorey, Tyshawn
The Inner Spectrum of Variables [2 CDs]
(Pi Recordings)
New York drummer Tyshawn Sorey's impressive work for double trio is an ambitious chamber jazz composition using multiple harmonic, formal, rhythmic, and modal vocabularies in an exploratory and improvisational framework, inspired by the work of Lawrence D. Butch Morris.
Hauser, Fritz
Pieces For Percussion
(Hat [now] ART)
Ensemble XII performs pieces by percussionist Fritz Hauser that were composed with an attention to detail that is heard in the timbre, texture, density and dynamics of his arrangements.
Braxton, Anthony and the Tri-Centric Orchestra
Trillium E [4 CDs]
(New Braxton House)
Newly Distributed in 2021: Trillium E is the first-ever studio recording of an Anthony Braxton opera, a deluxe 4-disc set of this surreal and witty installment in Braxton's ongoing Trillium cycle, and includes a booklet with libretto, photos, and critical essays.



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Turba, Ruben / Minami Saeki
The Gift
(Edition Wandelweiser Records)
Thirteen realizations of sound artist Rubén Turba and violist Minami Saeki's concept for two musicians or more, where each performer chooses five sounds as a "gift" to one of the others, played up to three times during the realization before moving to the next sound; these recordings were made independently in Tokyo & Madrid and then combined without editing.
Lehman, Steve / Orchestre National De Jazz
Ex Machina
(Pi Recordings)
A collaboration between NY saxophonist & composer Steve Lehman and the French Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ), performing compositions by both Lehman and ONJ's artistic director, Frédéric Maurin that blur the boundaries between jazz, experimental and composed forms, using spectral harmonies and real-time interactive electronics developed at IRCAM; powerful!
Sorey, Tyshawn Trio (w/ Aaron Diehl / Matt Brewer)
Continuing
(Pi Recordings)
Drummer Tyshawn Sorey takes his sophisticated piano trio of pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer into deeper territory following their debut album Continuing, here expanding the breadth of their playing in four extended and passionate interpretations of works by Wayne Shorter, Ahmad Jamal, Sorey's mentor Harold Mabern, and the standard "Angel Eyes".
Great Sakata Quintet (Sakata / Schwedt / Eckhardt / Borghini / Lillinger)
Tornado
(Euphorium)
After three Luten and two Brotzmann quintets, pianist Oliver Schwerdt, drummer Christian Lillinger and two double bassists--John Eckhardt and Antonio Borghini--invite Japanese multi-reedist and vocal improviser Akira Sakata to join them in concert at naTo, in Leipzig for a wild concert, releasing a monumental improvisation in a full length CD and a 2nd set on 3" CD.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC