RARE NOISE
TO RELEASE
INDIGO MIST & INTERSTATIC
IN AUGUST
CUONG VU AND RICHARD KARPEN
JOIN FORCES ON
ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC PROJECT
INDIGO MIST 
Provocative Ellington/Strayhorn Tribute,
That The Days Go By And Never Come Again,
Scheduled for August Release on RareNoiseRecords
AVAILABLE IN STORES AND ONLINE AUGUST 4, 2014
AND THROUGH RARE NOISE RECORDS
ON CD, VINYL AND HI-RES DIGITAL DOWNLOAD
Cuong Vu
|
trumpet
|
Richard Karpen
|
piano
|
Luke Berman
|
bass
|
Ted Poor
|
drums
|
Ivan Artega
|
Live Electronics iPad Performers
|
Shih-Wei Lo
| |
Douglas Niemela
| |
Joshua Parmenter
|
ABOUT THE LABEL - RareNoiseRecords was founded in late 2008 by two Italians, guitarist/arranger/ producer Eraldo Bernocchi and all-round music nut Giacomo Bruzzo. Located
in London, the label was created to present a platform to musicians and
listeners alike who think beyond musical boundaries of genre. For
further information and to listen please go to www.rarenoiserecords.com.
New York, June 18, 2014 - Trumpeter-composer Cuong Vu has
established himself as a distinctive voice on the new music/improvising
scene for his adventurous work over the past 20 years with the likes of
guitarist Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny and Laurie Anderson as well as his
four recordings as leader.
Composer Richard Karpen
has earned accolades for his work in the classical field as well as for
being a cutting edge sonic experimenter of the highest order. Joined by
innovative bassist Luke Bergman (their faculty colleague at the University of Washington) and Vu's longstanding bandmate, drummer Ted Poor, these two kindred spirits push the envelope in a myriad of provocative ways on That The Days Go By And Never Come Again. An extended suite that pays tribute to the indelible composing team of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn in
a most uncompromising fashion, their extraordinary RareNoiseRecords
debut under the collective name of Indigo Mist is unlike any Ellingtonia
you've ever heard."
Says
Vu, "The whole record, to me, is a tone poem that is deeply affected by
their music, even to the point where as we were at the apex of
experimenting, Duke and Billy were always in the room with us and we had
to come to terms with their presence. I feel that we've respectfully
paid homage to them by taking our own connection to them and sprinkled
that all over the record like a mist."
The
unlikely duo of New York-based improviser-bandleader Vu and Seattle
academician Karpen crystallized when they met at the University of
Washington. As Vu explains, "One of the things that I did when I became a
new faculty here was to research my colleagues, mainly just to get to
know about the various interests of the School of Music faculty and get a
feel for how I would move about within that musical community. Once I
started reading about Richard, I was immediately interested because his
work was on the forefront of electro-acoustic music as well as being a
composer from the Western Classical Art Music tradition. Much of
classical music had such an impact on how I interfaced with music while I
was doing my bachelors of music that I've always been interested in
working with a serious composer at some point. Then when I heard his
music I was completely blown away and knew that I had to work with him,
if not to just make music together somehow, then to at least learn from
him."
Adds
Karpen, "It is very unusual for a 'classically' trained composer like
me, with my particular background and continued interest in experimental
music and several decades of very deep involvement in the development
of computer music both as a composer and as a programmer, to be head of
such a School of Music. And it seems to me to be just as unusual for
someone coming from a jazz background like Cuong, who is deeply involved
in breaking through artificial boundaries through many kinds of
experimentation, would be on the a faculty of such a school. The chance
that both of us would be at the same place at the same time, and with
one of us heading this school, seems to be one chance in
millions!
The
provocative tone poem kicks off with a torrent of drums from Ted Poor
entitled "L'Heure bleue." While traversing the kit with power and
precision, Poor's drumming is sonically enhanced to give it the effect
of rolling thunder, gently falling rain or a phalanx of drummers.
Poor
then switches to mallets for the evocative title track as Karpen and Vu
make their entrance into the mysterious soundscape, beginning with
Karpen's sparsely plucked notes from inside the piano and continuing
with Vu's electronically treated trumpet and Luke Bergman's sparse bass
lines. The piece builds to a thunderous crescendo with Karpen's
throbbing bass notes and Cecil Tayloresque cascading in the high
register of the piano. Poor's potent free drumming fuels the track while
Vu's intuitive keening trumpet wails over the top of the fray. This
urgent piece gradually morphs into a haunting treatment of Strayhorn's
"A Flower is a Lovesome Thing" that has Vu remaining close to the melody
as Karpen pushes the harmonic envelope with his probing piano work. It
then flows organically into a thoughtful but uncompromising meditation
on Strayhorn entitled "Billy."
An
element of swing enters the picture on "Duke," which opens with Poor's
hip, syncopated playing on the kit in intimate conversation with Vu's
unaffected trumpet worked, Bergman and Karpen enter the conversation
near the midway mark and extrapolation ensues until they build up to
extreme layers of density and dissonance with Vu reaching into his bag
of extended techniques on the trumpet to match the pitch of the
turbulent proceedings. At their tumultuous peak, Vu and Bergman lay out
and Karpen gradually settles into zen-like repose on the piano, setting
up for a sublime reading of Ellington's gorgeous "In a Sentimental
Mood," which is played beautifully by Vu and underscored with tastefully
restraint by Karpen, Bergman and Poor. This gentle but brief bit of
Ellingtonia then morphs into the more mysterioso excursion "Charles"
(for Mingus), which in turn leads into a highly impressionistic take on
Strayhorn's "Lush Life."
Karpen's
furious, rolling bass notes and aggressive stabs at the keyboard next
come into play on "The Electric Mist," a frenzied improvisation which
has the pianist going toe-to-toe in full-out Cecil Taylor mode with
drummer Poor augmenting his urgent attack with some powerhouse playing
of his own. The piece ends with an electronic barrage that is purely of
the 21st century. The album concludes with a spacious, abstract
rendition of Ellington's "Mood Indigo" that begins with the sounds of a
gong (or singing bowl) and plucked piano strings penetrating the silence
before Bergman and Vu enter with a walking-on-eggshells approach. The
familiar theme of this final nod to Ellington is hinted at throughout
the course of the piece but not truly revealed until near the end of its
eight-minutes in the beautifully warm tones of Vu's trumpet. It's
definitely the most challenging music I've been engaged in our musical
interests and curiosities, I'm at a place in my life right now where
it's crucially important for me to make music that is completely honest
and without any external pressures.
"We're
trying to do something new and different while flipping the whole idea
of playing 'jazz' upside down," says Vu of this Indigo Mist project.
"And by choosing this music as our primary subject matter or subject of
inspiration, we are addressing jazz in a way that I feel is in reverence
and trying to add our own perspective of the greatness what jazz really
means to me along with the greatness of these two masters."
| ||||||||||
| | ||||||||||
|
