Today’s download of the week is "Thursday, At Dusk, In Spokane Washington;"and in addition, an electronic remix.

In 1999 the Seattle Chamber Players commissioned me to write a piece for their quartet. The instrumentation is flute, clarinet, violin, and piano. It was the first chance for me to work with a group of musicians that I have continued to collaborate with ever since.

I entitled the composition "Otis Spann," an homage to the great and soulful blues pianist, half-brother of Muddy Waters, and one of my deepest and most enduring inspirations. I didn’t attempt in any way to emulate the harmonic or rhythmic language of blues music... yikes I hate that. This was not the right instruments or the right players to do that with. Rather, I tried to take inspiration from Spann’s soul, nuance, and touch.

In any event Herb Levy, a grand supporter of contemporary music, and longtime resident of Seattle before he moved to Texas, heard the piece live at the premiere and offered to help me record it for his new label, Periplum.

We recorded it, and we didn’t have enough music for a CD. So I decided to write a solo/feature for each of the four players. The cello piece was solo, the flute and violin pieces both included “tape” - or rather external preset audio in the modern world - and the piece for clarinet was for clarinet and piano. Laurie de Luca and I recorded it and I think it's lovely. Her phrasing and tone just knock me out, and continue to do so to this day.

Well we STILL didn’t have enough music. So I decided to essentially re-mix each piece as a companion piece. Finally we had a CD!

This track came to mind because I was in Minneapolis, and driving a bit around Minnesota last week to begin preparing for a new project, entitled "21 Pianos." The idea of creating music of my own, and then electronically manipulating it has, since I first did so with “Otis Spann,” continued to be a thread in my compositional arsenal. This was the foundation for my collaboration with Yohei Saito and Yukio Suzuki, “55: Music and Dance in Concrete.” It is also ongoing in the above-mentioned piece “21 Pianos,” in which I basically drag a very out of tune piano around the state of Minnesota, record a bunch of pianists, of all levels, and then use the sample library of these recordings to create a new electronic music piece.

This same process is also part of a new collaboration, entitled “Those Who Remain (Pt. 2),” which essentially remixes the recording of my work for Improviser and Orchestra premiered last fall by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra with guitarist Bill Frisell. This is a new collaboration with Yohei and Yukio, and will premiere at the Asian wing of the Seattle Art Museum in January of 2017.

Here are some links for all three projects.

www.waynehorvitz.com/projects/55-music-and-dance-in-concrete-2/
www.waynehorvitz.com/projects/21-pianos/
www.waynehorvitz.com/projects/those-who-remain-part-2/

I hope you enjoy the music.