Album Release: Sound Vespers
To my dear friends in IHS land, Hello! I’m excited about my new CD (my 16th recording…I think) Sound Vespers, a new work for six brass (cornet, three trumpets, horn, trombone), one percussionist/tuba, and two electronics/field recording artists. It is now available on CD and for download at my Bandcamp page, www.tomvarner.bandcamp.com, or you can contact me on Facebook for a CD as well. The CD has six tracks, and there are also 2 extra (long!) tracks only on Bandcamp. Here are some excerpts from my liner notes:
For several years now, I have been fortunate to present a series of annual concerts at Seattle’s Good Shepherd Center Chapel Space, inspired by the idea of “combining forces” from within our local improvised-music community and members of the Seattle Phonographers Union, a group that presents improvised multi-laptop field recording sound collaborations. When I first heard an example of Steve Peters’ close-mike recordings of termites munching on an old Portuguese church pew, I was hooked, and I immediately had the idea of combining “live” improvisers with field recording/electronics artists. Of course, the Phonographers are also “live” and improvising as well, just like the other instrumentalists.
For our first concert in February 2015, I thought of multiple brass ensembles in a church and those wonderful, strange field recording sounds, and giving our concert the name Gabrieli and the Holy Termites. For me, it was magical, especially because all the improvisers, whether on brass, percussion, or laptops, knew when to play, when to not play, when to blend in, when to clash, when to truly leave silence, and when to blast that silence with something new.
Almost all the other concerts that we’ve done since have been in late August (2016 to 2022), and they have had a meditative, transitional “summer is over, fall is coming, day-changing-to-night” feel. The beautiful light in the Chapel Space would slowly change to dark as the concerts ended, forming a kind of reflective “sound creation vespers service for all”—or, Sound Vespers.
By 2019, I realized that I really should record one of these events, but instead of simply “live in the Chapel,” I would try to record in Seattle’s Jack Straw Foundation recording studio, with everyone miked up-close. We would have the chance to be more creative in the mixing, with reverb and panning, as well as with “close ups,” and, I thought we might experiment with one or two of the takes. Steve Barsotti recorded a “brass only” take, and with reverb treatments turned it into something else entirely for Brass Band in Marianas Trench. Steve did some other treatments on Sewing Machine Water Train, but all the other tracks are simply “as they were.”
And those sounds! I gave up at a certain point trying to figure out “what was what.” That’s not the point. There were sounds from microphones stuck into the sand at low tide, tap dancers practicing overhead in a parking garage, factories, unknown animals, crackling ice, heartbeats, slabs of quartz for a kitchen counter, along with assorted hand percussion, muted trumpets, low brass long-tones, and a lots of brass player air sounds. During the mixing, I told Steve Barsotti, “I loved those weird crickets at the end of that take!” And Steve answered “Tom, that was not crickets…that was my old Chicago radiator.”
Other than my suggestion that duos begin certain takes, there was no “structure” planned—the forms took care of themselves with such experienced improvisers. Each take had a different focus, each one creating something new. As percussionist Greg Campbell told me last week, “Tom, you had your two big ingredients: beauty and crunch!”
This project would not be successful if it were not for the incredible and unique players: Greg Kelley, Samantha Boshnack, Jim Knodle, Ray Larsen, Haley Freedlund, Greg Campbell, Steve Peters, and Steve Barsotti—all were so human and expressive in their own ways, and I was blessed to be playing with them in the studio that day. And, they “got it,” with no rehearsal, no explanation, we just laid down the tracks. There were no out-takes.
It has been a rough three years for so many of us. I hope these Vespers can bring you some beauty, humor, reflection, and joy.
Tom Varner, August 25, 2022.
