Dear Friends,

It isn’t every day one has the privilege of working with Takács Quartet, arguably one of the most important string quartets in the world.  It happened by chance and there’s a fun story.  My friend Clarice Assad called me out of the blue a few months after our album Confessions earned a GRAMMY® nomination.  Clarice had written the title tracks on the album, which Laura Strickling sang magnificently.  “Bob,” Clarice said, “I have an idea….”  I have learned that anytime Clarice has an idea, I’m interested.  “I wrote a piece for Takács Quartet and bandoneón virtuoso Julien Labro.  It’s a wild piece. The five of them have been performing it all over the world on tour, and I think you would like it.  Actually, I know you would like it.  Julien also wrote a companion piece, and the third work is by Bryce Dessner.  I think you know Bryce; he lives in Paris. What a trio!” I responded that it sounded wonderful.  “I want you to record these three works, plus another piece I have in mind for violin and piano.  When can we do it?” 

Hence began one of Yarlung’s most adventurous (and I hope you will agree, successful) collaborations in the label’s nineteen year history.  It was important to me that we record natively in 256fs DSD as well as on our analog tape format.  The liveliness and precision of this playing warranted as transparent a sound as we could deliver, and DSD did not disappoint! More on this toward the end of this note.  

Julien served as the catalyst for the three commissions for “quintet,” the string quartet plus Julien on bandoneon, the German “walking church organ” made famous in Europe and North America by the great Argentine reinventor of the Tango, Astor Piazzolla.  Julien and Takács musicians Ed, Harumi, András and Richard came up with a short list of composers for this project organized under the auspices of Music Accord.  Two of the finest composers on this list were Clarice Assad and Bryce Dessner.  

Julien had not met Clarice at the time, but he knew and loved Clarice’s musical trajectory, including her chamber music, larger orchestra works, her performances with her illustrious father (Sergio Assad, the Brazilian guitar virtuoso) and her collaborations with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.  

During our recording sessions, Julien remarked several times how “hands on” Clarice had been during the composing process, calling repeatedly to run ideas past him, ask advice and brainstorm technical solutions for the vast landscape of music she envisioned for the five instruments.  Even before he heard the results, Julien predicted that Clash would be a winner.  

Julien had met Bryce Dessner several years earlier from a collaboration with Bryce and members of Eighth Blackbird on the movie score for The Two Popes.  Julien knew Bryce was a successful American rock musician and guitarist based in Paris, but also recognized Dessner’s stature in the classical new music world and wanted very much to ask Bryce to write a piece for him and Takács. Julien hoped and anticipated that Bryce’s piece would explore a radically different musical language from that which Clarice would pursue in Clash. Circles, our opening track on the album, was Dessner’s fabulous result.  

Julien had not initially intended to write a piece for himself and the quartet, but Takács pushed him a little.  At their request, Julien shared Meditation No. 1.  After reading the score Harumi and Ed thought the contrasting nature of the work would fit in beautifully within the rest of the concert program.  Meditation No. 1, track 3 on our album, continues the trajectory initiated by Astor Piazzolla and Dino Saluzzi when they launched the bandoneón beyond its earlier role in Argentine folk music.   As he prepared for our recording project, Julien told me he enjoyed thinking about the ECM bandoneón recordings released during the 1970s and 80s by Manfred Eicher.  

I’m eager for your thoughts.  Please let me know what you think! Here is a bit more information on the members of our string quartet, currently Edward Dusinberre and Harumi Rhodes, violins; András Fejér, cello; Richard O’Neill, viola. 

This album helps honor and celebrate the upcoming 50^th Anniversary of the extraordinary Takács Quartet, formed in the 1970s at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér.  András remains cellist to this day. Takács would become one of the highest-ranked and best-loved string quartets in history. The group received its first international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The Quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982. 

J and Helen Schlichting enabled Yarlung to commission Constellation, a three movement work for violin and piano, performed together in this recording on track 5.  Clarice wrote for Harumi on violin and for herself on piano.  The work celebrates Clarice’s nuclear family of four.  Clarice directs that the movements can be played in any order.  In our case, Harumi and Clarice perform Celestial first, in which Clarice envisions Stella, her as yet unborn daughter, still in the womb when Clarice composed it.  (Stella was very much with us at the time of this recording.)  Clarice’s instinct told her something of what beautiful Stella would be like. She arrived peacefully and possessed a sense of calm that Clarice confessed she had never encountered before.  Estrellita (Little Star) comes next, a movement Clarice wrote as a children’s song for Antonia, Clarice’s older daughter and little fireball of energy.  “Antonia is like a shooting star, with bright eyes and a personality that fills our entire universe with excitement and bright colors.”  This performance ends with Solais (Sunshine) a movement which pays homage and celebrates Clarice’s partner, evoking a sense of eternal, lasting love. It emanates warmth as this slow pulsating force sustains us, the revolving celestial bodies dancing around it in awe and gratitude.  Thank you Harumi and Clarice for painting such a happy domestic musical picture for us, and thank you J and Helen for your generous commission.  

Luminous, track two on our album, explodes with Clarice’s interpretation of the life-affirming power of Brazilian jazz. The percussive piano introduction launches the listener into the joyous syncopated rhythms and arching melodic lines associated with the genre. Luminous alternates duple and triplet sections in rondo form to drive the musical dialogue to a breathless and ecstatic conclusion, a celebration of life and music.  Clarice, performing both voice and piano in this version, wrote Luminous as part of her Pendulum Suite.  

Cravo e Canela (Clove and Cinnamon) follows on track 4. This is a song by Milton Nascimento, one of Brazil’s most celebrated songwriters. Ronaldo Bastos wrote the Portuguese lyrics and the two created a classic Brazilian song that captures the essence of romance and the vivid colors of Brazil’s cultural tapestry. Clarice’s arrangement and performance breathes fresh energy into the song through her improvisation and innovative vocal techniques. (Clarice didn’t want to leave all the extended techniques on this album to her instrument-playing friends.)  This was fun to record, as I think you will understand when you listen. 

Bryce Dessner’s Circles for String Quartet and Bandoneón opens our album on track 1.  Bryce wrote that he was “fortunate to meet the wonderful bandoneón and accordion player Julien Labro a few years ago while I was composing the music for the Fernando Mereilles film, The Two Popes. I wrote a lot of music for Julien to play in the movie and was completely blown away by his exceptional musicianship and virtuosity. He seems to literally be able to do and play anything. So when Julien reached out and offered a chance to compose for him and the equally wonderful Takács Quartet, I was very happy.” 

Bryce wrote Circles during the many months of Covid-19 lockdown in France. “This piece was an expression of the creative process slowly starting to turn again and come alive despite my isolation, each individual voice searching for a line and searching for one another and eventually creating a dance pattern together, weaving in and out of their evolving collective rhythm and individualist polyphony. This theme of the individual versus the collective voice is something I have been exploring a lot in my recent work.”  

Clarice’s Clash, our final track on the album, is the hardest to describe.  Perhaps also the hardest to play, but I will leave that to the musicians to decide. Clarice has been increasingly interested in tensions within the social fabric of our society, especially as exacerbated by incendiary politicians, climate change, mass migration and refugee issues.  Indeed her latest opera, Isolda/Tristão, which premiered in São Paulo this past September, adjusts the story line we know from Wagner and the narrative of his 11^th century predecessors to focus on refugees caught between the borders of two countries, and perhaps the borders between two states of existence.  

Clash is not program music and does not tell a specific story or illuminate a specific argument.  But it does embody some of these same social struggles as expressed by the string quartet and bandoneón as these five instruments explore states of discord.  “I started writing Clash in 2020 and finished in 2021, a turbulent period for many of us, made more painful by our world-wide health crisis and its subsequent social distancing, the potential collapse of our economy, riots and political turmoil, all stressful occurrences.” Clarice experimented with rhythmic ideas she took from human speech, especially argumentative speech, and contrasts those with patterns evolving out of human conflict resolution.  Challenging as the work may sound at first, its beauty emerges as the stronger and unifying force, giving us hope for the future.  As with all the music in this album, this too was recorded in one take.

As Yarlung fans know, we record complete takes of movements and don’t like to surgically correct or “improve” the music created by our artists.  This proves especially fraught when musicians tackle new and extremely challenging repertoire.  Indeed, when musicians learn that Yarlung is serious about releasing “real” music as they in fact play it, many run away as fast as they can.  By contrast, Clarice, Julien and the members of Takács Quartet said they relished the approach, challenging as it might be.  I greatly appreciate their achievement and the results. 

I still remember the expression on Baird Dodge’s face when he and Color Field Quartet came to record the James Matheson String Quartet in Samueli Theater with us, which you can also hear on NativeDSD. 

Baird knew the drill but wasn’t sure he believed me. The first eighteen-minute movement was basically unplayable in a single take, even by Baird and his extraordinary Color Field Quartet.  After about eight attempts, we cheated by recording the final coda, separated in the score by a nice fat fermata that follows the first part of the movement.  The plan was to then record the first 17 or so minutes and treat the coda as a separate movement from an editing perspective.  The musicians captured a perfect coda, and then we returned to the opening.  I did ask that they keep playing through the coda to the end, however.  That next take, which included the entire first movement, was the best performance of all parts of the moment, including the coda.  That is the take you hear on the Matheson recording.  

Harumi also recorded Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne in one take.  Like the Matheson Quartet, it is hard to play perfectly enough to release on record, especially considering the harmonics, extended techniques and musical soundscape created by the composer.  Nonetheless, I was not surprised that Harumi’s first take was indeed perfect.  Saariaho wrote Nocturne in 1994 in preparation for her violin concerto Graal théâtre.  She dedicated Nocturne to Witold Lutosławski.  We knew that Saariaho was struggling with terminal brain cancer and she died on June 2^nd, 2023.  We loved her and miss her. Harumi, Clarice, Julien, Ed, Richard and András join me in dedicating this album to Kaija Saariaho, her husband Jean-Baptiste Barrière, and their wonderful family.  

Fellow recording engineer and equipment designer Arian Jansen and I used SonoruS Holographic Imaging technology in the analog domain to refine the stereo image, Yarlung’s SonoruS ATR12 to record Agfa-formula 468 analog tape, the Merging Technologies HAPI to record 256fs DSD in stereo and surround sound and the SonoruS ADC to record PCM.  We used our friend Ted Ancona’s AKG C24 microphone previously owned by Frank Sinatra, and Yarlung Audio vacuum tube microphone amplification designed and built for us by Elliot Midwood.  

Thank you and enjoy!

–Bob Attiyeh, producer

The post Message from the Producer: Bob Attiyeh talks about Takács Quartet appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

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  Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra
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A Work that Holds a Special Place

Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra” has long been one of my favorite symphonic compositions. I like the music, the story behind the commission, and the many extraordinary recordings available of this remarkable work. Live performances that stick happily in my memory include several with Esa-Pekka Salonen and one conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, all with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Walt Disney Concert Hall. This is an ensemble that prides itself in extraordinary performances of new music. The unique sound of LA Phil strings may have something to do with this well-deserved reputation.

I have a personal confession to make. Before Yarlung Records was born, we used to gather with friends to listen to multiple recordings of the same work over long multi-course dinners and sometimes with exotic speakers or amplifiers to share with our friends. We haven’t had time to do this since and I miss these evenings. They enabled us to “learn” the works more fully, scores in hand, as we listened to multiple conductors, performers and recording techniques. These evenings have included The Immolation Scene (eight different recordings of that one), Winterreise, Rite of Spring, and so on. We even had one dinner where we listened to superb jazz renditions of Black Coffee, including of course Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Julie London and Ella Fitzgerald.

We never pretended to expertise during these evenings, but we did have heated conversations and a great deal of fun. Our very first of these evenings celebrated Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, and if memory serves, we played analog tape, vinyl and digital media with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on RCA Living Stereo from 1956, Eugene Ormandy’s 1964 recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra (engineered by Tom Frost and Bejun Mehta of all people), Erich Leinsdorf’s 1962 RCA recording of the Boston Symphony, Charles Dutoit’s Montreal recording in 1988 on London, and best of all, Antal Dorati’s London Symphony Orchestra Mercury recording in 1962 recorded by Wilma Cozart and her husband Robert Fine on 35mm magnetic film. Each of these recordings has something to recommend it, though I remember ending the evening with the firm conviction that Dorati’s rendition with the LSO felt the closest to what Bartok would have wanted and was musically the most satisfying. Additionally, the recording quality of one of Mercury’s finest examples of their craft helped glue us firmly to our seats (remember the Maxell tape advertisements of yesteryear? That’s what it felt like).

Rising to the Occassion

Hunger for new releases of this major work mean that I am intrigued when a label, conductor and orchestra dare to take the challenge. I too recorded this piece years ago in an unreleased test recording with Yarlung’s Special Advisor Sir Neville Marriner. We didn’t rise to the occasion in enough important ways or you would have heard it. The engineer Everett Porter at Pentatone (erstwhile Phillips) rose to the occasion last July recording the young and always thoughtful Karina Canellakis conducting her Radio Filharmonish Orkest, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Muziekcentrum van de Omroep, in Hilversum. After only two years and a few months at the helm, Maestra Canellakis demonstrates complete ownership of the sound, musical intention and success of this ensemble. I know Karina from her concerts with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra where she always shines, with or without her violin.

Serge Koussevitzky commissioned Bartok to write his Concerto for Orchestra for the Boston Symphony in 1943, when the hospitalised Bartok had only a short time left to live. He was terminally ill with leukemia and Bartok knew it. The composer was too ill to walk during much of the writing, but the commission gave him a much welcome boost of energy and optimism and his health improved a little for the six or seven weeks that he took to complete the first version of the piece. Concerto for Orchestra is not program music (except Bartok’s ubiquitous folk tunes, short quotations from Merry Widow (via Shostakovich 7) in the fourth movement and in a few other contested places) but I think of all music as program music for the unconscious mind, and clearly Bartok’s health and imminent death figure prominently in the drama of the writing (hence Dorati’s representation of rage, determination and defiance).

Taking a different (and effective) tact, Karina guides her orchestra to sneak into the piece, hinting at the anguish, hope and defiance to come. It feels to me as if she conjures a reflection or memory of an earlier frame of mind before acknowledging the bleak present. She doesn’t rush the second section of this first movement where the strings and timpani announce their stentorian theme before the orchestra picks up speed and begins to explore this vast psychological landscape. To my ear, Karina portrays Bartok’s sorrow and acknowledgment that his painful end is near, foreshadowing this upcoming transition. In this orchestra’s hands, our Pentatone recording deftly portrays the violent reality periodically breaking through the philosophical attitude.

Karina’s Elegy, movement 3, may be the most coherent and engaging rendition I have ever heard. Her tempos, slower and more deliberate than many of the best recordings and performances, convey an intuitive sense that reveals the tragedy (as Esa-Pekka used to say) “without wallowing.”

Canellakis summons a lyricism, almost a romanticism, in Bartok’s sometimes tongue-in-cheek 4th movement, a welcome respite.

As Bartok returns to sonata form in movement 5, Karina demonstrates exquisite control of often unwieldy dynamics and welcome speed. As in the most engaging interpretations of this work, the Netherland’s orchestra shines and demonstrates complete virtuosic ability to represent this piece in all its glory. Moreover, Karina highlights the movement’s brief periods of transcendent string writing as respites between the fasten-your-seatbelt overwhelming periods of mayhem and drama.

Pentatone achieves both richness and brilliance in the capture of this performance, and a carefully portrayed soundstage in both stereo and surround sound versions. The sometimes screechy quality to the strings which Bartok clearly wants, comes across as powerful and attention grabbing without being unpleasant to your ear or damaging to your tweeters. The occasional congestion in the album’s capture of bass frequencies is not distracting and may even accentuate the lugubrious moments in a musical and complementary way.

Thank you Karina, Everett, Pentatone and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic for a proud excellent addition to the recorded library of what is perhaps Bartok’s finest work.

The post Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Best wishes to you and may this be as safe and peaceful a summer as possible.  I am blessed to spend my working days in music.  Spending time with talented musicians and listening to the magical results they create for us serves as a helpful antidote to the many struggles we face in the world today.  I am always grateful for their gifts and solace.  This new album is no exception.  Paul Livingstone and Pete Jacobson mined the Hindustani musical tradition deeply for Sangam, synthesizing the classical raga tradition as Paul learned from his friend and teacher Ravi Shankar, with inventive incorporation of ideas more recently expressed in the world of European and American jazz.  Pete Jacobson joins Paul on cello instead of veena or violin.  I like the results! 

We recorded this album for you in Taos, New Mexico, at the foothills of the famous Taos Mountain, from which Paul and Pete drew additional inspiration.  We recorded in the Imhof Studio, a large and airy adobe space, where we also recorded Sacred Trance Music from Taos Mountain.  

We used the natural acoustics of the recording hall to give you natural reverb and decay, “filtered” as it is by the beautiful affect soft adobe has on sound reflections.  And using SonoruS Holographic Imaging technology, we present the album in an enveloping soundstage, where the sitar surrounds you in a warm embrace.  I am so thankful to Arian Jansen for developing this technology, which works entirely in the analog domain before the music reaches our Merging Technologies Hapi.  This works best if your system is perfectly phase coherent.  If you would like help with fine-tuning your speaker placement to ensure phase coherency, you can use Yarlung’s speaker setup test files, which are introduced here.  Please download the actual circling tones files here.

Paul took special pleasure in knowing that Ted Ancona’s AKG C24 microphone which he graciously allowed us to use for the album used to belong to Frank Sinatra.  We hope to make “ol’ blue eyes” proud.

We hope you enjoy! 

Sincerely,

Bob Attiyeh

The post Synthesizing Classical Raga with European and American Jazz appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Sacred Trance Music from Taos Mountain” invites us into the magical world of Habib Chishti, Sufi master and singer.  Habib, (Patrick Arthur Lee) was born into a Jewish and Catholic home.  He lived primarily in Taos, New Mexico, from 13 years of age.  When one meets Habib today, one sees a huggable bear of a man sharing the infectious twinkle in his eye.  He looks like a wandering ascetic on a Himalayan path, yet well fed.  His all-encompassing affection for humanity and the world helps one appreciate Habib’s multiple religious backgrounds.   

Habib has been practicing Hinduism and Sufism for over forty years, and was recognized as a Shaykh, or teacher, in the Chishti Sufi lineage.  Part of Habib’s mission as a teacher and Shaykh is identifying and sharing the core similarities between religious traditions in order to encourage friendships and collaboration.  Habib lives his life as a seeker of truth, no matter whether he is perceived as Jewish, Catholic, Hindu, Agnostic, or Muslim.   

Track one includes two cycles of the Hanuman Chalisa, a Hindu hymn to the monkey-god Hanuman.  Track two includes two cycles of a Sufi dhikr, or meditative chant, designed to engender a mystical union with God.  I hope you enjoy!

The post Sacred Trance Music from Taos Mountain appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

This is the first recording released by Pacific Chorale under the artistic leadership of Robert Istad, who assumed the directorship two years ago. The album features music by Tarik O’Regan, the Chorale’s composer in residence, and includes the world premiere recording of Facing West on text by Walt Whitman, which received its premiere performance by Pacific Chorale in Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California on May 18, 2019. The recording was made in Samueli Theater on May 20-21, 2019, recorded and mastered by Yarlung Records’ Bob Attiyeh, Arian Jansen, Steve Hoffman and Tom Caulfield. The album was underwritten by executive producer Lenora Meister. The program samples works from the last twenty years of O’Regan’s career, ranging from a 2001 setting of the liturgical Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis to the 2019 premiere of Facing West, performed by a 24-voice ensemble of singers from Pacific Chorale, with Istad conducting. Also featured on several tracks are instrumentalists from Salastina Music Society.

“Tarik O’Regan’s choral writing forever changed my musical perspective,” says Istad. “His music grabbed me with its rhythmic audacity, harmonic daring and unique wit. From that first hearing, I hoped I would be able to collaborate with him in some way. I speak for our singers when I report how much fun we had preparing Tarik’s music and performing it in concert and in this recording.”

O’Regan comments, “Working with Robert Istad and Pacific Chorale over the years has been an especially important experience for me and my music. Rob’s method of building a piece from page to performance (or, in this case, recording) is one based on a bedrock of precision and impeccable technique. It has been a privilege – and a lot of fun, let’s not forget that – to have been part of many different programs through many different seasons with Rob and Pacific Chorale. All Things Common permits a glimpse into our ongoing work together; I hope you enjoy it.”

Working with conductor and Pacific Chorale music director Robert Istad is always a pleasure. When he asked Yarlung to record his debut album with Pacific Chorale performing music by Tarik O’Regan, I knew we were in for a treat. Even though Pacific Chorale normally performs in the much larger Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, I was delighted that we were able to work in the adjacent and more intimate Samueli Theater. I always enjoy making recordings in Samueli, with its magnificent and adjustable acoustics, silent air conditioning and lights, and a theater staff that always treats our Yarlung crew like returning royalty. Tom Caulfield joined us to record our GRAMMY®nominated DSD Album Sibelius Piano Trio in this same concert hall.

About Tarik O’Regan

Tarik O’Regan has written music for a wide variety of ensembles and organizations including Pacific Chorale, Dutch National Ballet, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Sydney Dance Company, Chamber Choir Ireland, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The Phoenix, his opera about the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, commissioned by Houston Grand Opera with a libretto by John Caird, premiered in April 2019. Tarik’s work, widely recorded and published exclusively by Novello, has been nominated for two GRAMMY® awards and both New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer Best Classical Releases of the Year for Threshold of Night; the National Endowment for the Arts Artistic Excellence Award, and a South Bank Sky Arts Award nomination for Heart of Darkness; a Gramophone Award nomination for Scattered Rhymes; and more.

About Salastina Music Society

Salastina Music Society performs with smaller or larger chamber orchestra ensembles depending on the music. For this recording, Salastina includes co-directors Maia Jasper White and Kevin Kumar on violins; Meredith Crawford, viola; Charles Tyler, cello; and Eric Shetzen, bass. Meredith Crawford is also known to Southern California music audiences as the principal viola in the Pacific Symphony, and Maia Jasper White as a member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

About Pacific Chorale

Pacific Chorale has delighted national and international audiences with concerts of great choral music performed at the highest musical standards since 1968. Under the artistic leadership of Robert Istad, the organization produces a series of concerts each year at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, where it serves as the sole resident choir. The mission of Pacific Chorale is to inspire our community through artistry and innovation in choral music performances and education programs. Pacific Chorale is recognized for exceptional artistic expression, preserving and performing classical choral music as well as stimulating American-focused programming. Pacific Chorale presents a substantial performance season of its own and is sought regularly to perform with the nation’s leading symphonies. Pacific Chorale has infused an Old World art form with California’s hallmark innovation and cultural independence, developing innovative new concepts in programming, and expanding the traditional concepts of choral repertoire and performance. The organization boasts over 30 world premieres and has released 14 self-produced recordings.
In addition to its long-standing partnership with Pacific Symphony, with whom Pacific Chorale made its Carnegie Hall debut in April 2018, the Chorale has performed with such renowned American ensembles as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the National Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and Musica Angelica. Pacific Chorale has also toured extensively to more than 19 countries in Europe, South America and Asia, and has collaborated with the London Symphony, the Munich Symphony, L’Orchestre Lamoureux and L’Orchestre de St-Louis-en-l’Île of Paris, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the China National Symphony, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the Estonian National Symphony, and the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Argentina. Pacific Chorale also places a significant emphasis on choral music education, offering grades 1-6 after-school programs, a high school student summer camp, and a community-wide singing event at Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

All Things Common: Music of Tarik O’Regan

Artists: Tarik O’Regan, Pacific Chorale, Salastina Music Society, Robert Istad
Executive Producer: Lenora Meister
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh, Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen, Bob Attiyeh, Tom Caulfield

Track Listing:
1. All Things Common (2017)
2. Blessed Are They (2013)
3. Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis (2001)
4. Turn (2016)
5. Facing West (2019)
6. The Ecstasies Above (2006)
7. I Listen to the Stillness of You, from Mass Observation (2016)

Personally, I am very happy with how our singers performed and how the album turned out. I hope you enjoy it also, and I welcome your thoughts. Please let me know what you think.

Bob Attiyeh, Producer & Recording Engineer
Yarlung Records

The post Triumphant and transcendent music by Tarik O’Regan appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts this past January, Washington DC’s Cherry Blossom Festival at Blues Alley on April 15^th and at The Jazz Bakery at Moss Theater on April 26th in Santa Monica, California.

Many thanks to Randy Bellous and Toyota Motor North America for underwriting.

Here’s a video snippet of the Miles Davis album, and here is So What.

Before I tell you a little more about Yuko and Miles Davis, here’s a sneak peek at Yarlung’s upcoming release on NativeDSD. We recorded Lifeline: Music of the Underground Railroad in Samueli Theater, a beautiful concert hall you know from our prior recordings with Sibelius Piano Trio volumes One and Two, and James Matheson. Here is the main YouTube video.

You know Yuko Mabuchi Trio well, including thanks to our very own Brian Moura at NativeDSD, who honored Yuko Mabuchi Trio with a coveted listener’s choice award at PFO in November. Joining the Trio for this concert and recording was JJ Kirkpatrick, the trumpet virtuoso from Sophisticated Lady jazz quartet, also beloved on NativeDSD.

Sophisticated Lady Jazz Quartet album overview

Yuko chose several Miles Davis favorites for her latest release, including Nardis, So What and Blue & Green.  With underwriting support from Steven A. Block, Raulee Marcus and Leslie Lassiter, Yarlung commissioned Missing Miles, which Yuko created in honor of Miles himself.  Missing Miles concluded the concert and we end with it on this album.  Ann Mulally underwrote Ikumi’s Lullaby, an original composition by Yuko.  Ikumi’s Lullaby opened our concert, but it comes as the fourth track on our release. Here is the album booklet.

Thanks to a warm invitation from Dr. Antonio Damasio, we returned to Cammilleri Hall at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC to give this concert and make this recording.

Neville Roberts (The UK’s HiFi Choice) writes “As anticipated, it is superb!  The Lullaby gently relaxes you into the environment of… Cammilleri Hall.  Yuko’s sympathetic rendition of ‘So What’ … was true to him, but with a freshness and energy that Yuko and her team imparted to the performance – wonderful…  a real homage to Miles Davis, but with Yuko’s individuality imprinted on her super compositions.”

Toyota Motor North America joined executive producer Randy Bellous in underwriting this project.  Read more about Yuko’s and Yarlung’s connections with Toyota in our Producer’s Notes.

It is a thrill to work with Yuko, JJ, Del and Bobby.  I look forward to hearing what these young virtuosi create next.

Enjoy!

Yuko Mabuchi, Del Atkins, Bobby Breton, JJ Kirkpatrick—Cooper Bates photography

The post Yuko Mabuchi Plays Miles Davis appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

We don’t edit. What you hear on this album is real. Jung-A performed this recital for our recording team and executive producer as you hear it.”

Bob Attiyeh

We dedicate this album to Simon Woods and his wonderful family (more about that below) and to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which celebrates its 100^th Anniversary Season this year. Please see our album booklet with more photographs here.

This album is the result of a joyful collaboration between many people; I think you will feel this energy when you listen to the recording. Jung-A’s infectious and delightful sense of humor infuses the musical performance, our choices for the repertoire, and warmly colors our memories of this project.

Fellow Yarlung engineers Arian Jansen and Elliot Midwood worked closely with us during rehearsals, set up and the recording itself. Yarlung Executive Producer Jim Mulally joined us for the recital and helped craft the shape of this recording.

Most of Jung-A’s rehearsals in Walt Disney took place overnight, starting at 10pm and ending at 6 or 7am the next morning

Bob Attiyeh

Among the team who put this together, the person I hope this album most heartily celebrates is our organist, Jung-A Lee herself. Jung-A performs all over the world. In fact, she left for Paris for a concert in St. Etienne Cathedral in Meaux during our rehearsal period. It was France’s National Organ Day; Jung-A couldn’t resist, and she returned as fresh from this trip as she had left. In fact, because the Los Angeles Philharmonic was performing and rehearsing daily in WDCH during this part of the season, most of Jung-A’s rehearsals in Walt Disney took place overnight, starting at 10pm and ending at 6 or 7am the next morning. Jung-A joked that her nighttime rehearsals helped her avoid jetlag during her trips to Europe and Asia during this period. This gives you an inkling of Jung-A’s glow and positive spirit.

Jung-A earned her doctorate at Boston University, her master’s at Yale where she earned the Charles Ives prize, and her undergraduate degree at Toronto University. Jung-A served as organ scholar at The Memorial Church, Harvard University, during her time in Boston.

When not performing around the United States or overseas, Jung-A serves as organist at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California and performs regularly with Robert Istad and the Pacific Chorale at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. In fact, it is Rob Istad, with whom Yarlung recorded the choral album Nostos, who originally introduced us to Jung-A.

He must have spent a good thirty hours listening to our first album with me, critiquing, encouraging and suggesting new ideas and changes before the album was finished and ready for pressing.

Bob Attiyeh

We are fortunate at Yarlung. Titans in the music world have given generously of their time, talent and financial support to enable Yarlung to thrive. We maintain that “Yarlung Is Too Small To Fail” in an environment where music doesn’t sell as much as we would like. But in reality, Yarlung succeeds thanks to the talents of our musicians and composers, and thanks to exceptional support and guidance from our executive producers.

Elliot Midwood took me and Yarlung Records under his wing at the beginning. He must have spent a good thirty hours listening to our first album with me, critiquing, encouraging and suggesting new ideas and changes before the album was finished and ready for pressing.

Elliot the philanthropist has not only underwritten many of our most successful albums, but Elliot the engineer has designed some of the recording equipment we use that contributes to that ephemeral quality critics refer to as the “Yarlung Sound.” In Jung-A’s album, and most other Yarlung recordings, Elliot designed the microphone preamplification we use. This critical component takes the whisper coming from our microphones and converts it into the full tonal and dynamic sound (delicate at times and thunderous at others) that we record onto our master tape and into our high resolution digital recorder a HAPI made by our friends at Merging Technologies in Switzerland, without the use of any mixing boards. In this recording, we used Arian Jansen’s analog SonoruS Holographic Imaging processor to incorporate two rear hall microphones into our stereo image captured by an AKG C24 microphone in front.

hile I was holding down as many keys on the organ as my hands and feet could depress to give us peak volumes, it was Elliot on his hands and knees on the stage floor adjusting the levels on his microphone preamps.

Bob Attiyeh

Elliot tailored these vacuum-tube microphone preamplifiers specifically to give me the sound that I hear on stage with our musicians, and that I want you to hear in the finished product. Elliot designed new circuitry and made adjustments to his earlier Messenger preamplifier, which many audiophiles know through Elliot’s company Acoustic Image. Yarlung’s amplifiers grew from these designs and from this approach to sound.

Elliot joined Yarlung recording engineer Arian Jansen and me for our setup for this organ recording in Walt Disney Concert Hall. The three of us adjusted microphone positions, chose cables and set levels. While I was holding down as many keys on the organ as my hands and feet could depress to give us peak volumes, it was Elliot on his hands and knees on the stage floor adjusting the levels on his microphone preamps. We would make a small change in microphone placement and then have to adjust levels all over again.

When I am asked to describe the “Yarlung Sound,” I often talk about transparency. Our goal as engineers is to be like clean windows, through which an audience can see (or in our case hear) our musicians exactly as they sound in performance. But much as we like to pretend otherwise, everything in audio is an illusion. You have two or more speakers in your listening room with you, not Jung-A and the magnificent Walt Disney Concert Hall organ. And since your listening room is undoubtedly smaller than Walt Disney Concert Hall, we want to give you the feeling and visceral experience of sitting on this beautiful stage with us in this 2,265 seat acoustic marvel of an auditorium, with Jung-A at the organ console.

Depending on how various electronic components are designed, every one of them contributes a sound to the recording, and every one of them (microphones, cables, preamplifiers, analog and digital recorders) interacts with one another to complete the picture. No component is truly neutral or transparent, much as we like to maintain otherwise. We want the results of these components to feel neutral to you such that you hear the music as I hear it (and as I envision it) on stage during the recording. Elliot’s preamplifiers are one of the most important elements in this chain.

Elliot and I have been working on these designs for many years. He is the creator and designer. We listen together and I give him feedback and suggest directions we might take. Together, we have developed amplifiers that make us proud. These appreciative notes about Elliot Midwood are as good a place as any to mention that we have launched Yarlung Audio. We will begin with power amplifiers and follow with a preamplifier (both made in California) with bloodlines refined from our experience making these recordings. The power amplifiers are 100W Class A triode monoblocks. I used earlier versions of these power amplifiers at home, which Elliot and I built so I could hear every last detail in the recordings we make. They are extraordinarily revealing and powerful, with a firm grip on the speakers, yet extremely musical. They reproduce the nuances in a jazz trio or a Renaissance vocal ensemble with delicacy. But just wait until you hear them deliver Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 or the Dies irae in Verdi’s Requiem.

The preamplifier (which I have affectionately named “The Midwood”) uses circuits refined from our microphone preamplification, and includes a phonostage which is among the best I have ever heard. We anticipate a limited number of amplifiers and preamplifiers by Yarlung Audio will be available in 2019/20.

Elliot generously serves as executive producer for Yarlung’s DSD release of Jung-A Lee: A Private Organ Recital in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Elliot, thank you for your friendship, your talent, energy, patience and generosity: you make music such a pleasure. 

Thoughts on the repertoire

Woods and Brooks

Our album opens with Adam Knight Gilbert’s witty pastoral romp honoring Simon Woods and his family, written in Renaissance style from about 1518. Virtuosic as well as tongue-in-cheek, Adam’s piece uses the Renaissance technique of soggetto cavato, or “subjects carved from the vowels,” wherein the letters of a person’s name, or a word or phrase, are linked to Renaissance solfège to create the melodic line. Each letter is assigned to a specific pitch. In our case, Adam began with Simon Woods (mi sol ut ut sol sol) Karin Brookes (la mi sol sol re), their daughter Isabel (mi la re) and son Barnaby (la la mi). I loved the piece in rehearsal, and wanted more. Adam kindly added a slower middle section which he derived from Los Angeles Philharmonic (sol la re re mi fa sol mi). Great patrons of the arts (the Medici family in Florence comes to mind) often had pieces written for them in this way, and we thought it was fitting to appreciate our Los Angeles musical royalty similarly. Simon runs the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Karin Brookes serves as executive director of Early Music America. I am proud to say that Jung-A asked me to play the Pajaritos, the pedal that sounds like birds singing, which she added to the score with Adam’s permission. Woods and Brooks was commissioned by Yarlung Artists with generous underwriting from the Horton family.

The Swiss composer Guy Bovet’s Hamburger Totentanz follows next. Jung-A tells me that Mr. Bovet is as funny as he is talented as a composer. He was born in 1942 in Thun, near Bern, Switzerland. Hamburger Totentanz comes from Bovet’s Trois Préludes Hambourgeois, and Bovet manages to include quotations from Offenbach’s Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman, Beethoven’s Für Elise and the sailors’ chorus from Wagner’s Flying Dutchman as if the first two were not enough! The piece was first improvised in Hamburg, by Bovet and his friend the organist Hebert Wulf. They invented Hamburger Totentanz on the spot. Bovet liked what they improvised and later notated his own version of it for solo organ.

Jung-A and I chose Louis Vierne’s (1870-1937) Carrillon de Westminster to follow the Bovet. Not only is it a famous show piece for great organs like the one Manuel Rosales built for Walt Disney Concert Hall, but I have a personal memory of this piece that gives it a special glow. My teacher Ellen Louise Knoblach served as associate organist for the choir in which I sang for many years when I was in high school. For her final Sunday performance, she and Tom Foster chose this piece to be her farewell show piece. You may recognize the famous theme from the Westminster chimes one can hear from the clock tower in the Palace of Westmister in London.

François Couperin’s Elevation: Tierce en taille from Messe pour les couvents reveals the flexibility and multifaceted capacity of the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ. Couperin lived from 1668 to 1733. To my ears, this piece sounds as if Jung-A plays it on a Baroque instrument, including the articulation we associate with those instruments, not the monumental and powerful organ you hear in so much of this recital. Microphone positions and equipment remained the same. Of course, we owe credit for this to Jung-A’s musicality and technique every bit as much as to the organ’s versatility. Jung-A credits John Tuttle, her professor at the University of Toronto, for teaching her this piece as an undergraduate.

Diderich Buxtehude’s Ciacona in C Minor, BuxWV 159 takes me back to one of the earliest organ concerts I remember. My family was living in Denmark, about 6 KM west of Helsingør. We heard this piece in Buxtehude’s own church, on Buxtehude’s own organ (still in existence and recently restored to its original configuration) in the Mariæ Kirke attached to the Carmelite Monastery on Sct. Annagade in Helsingør. Buxtehude served as organist in this church in Helsingør from 1660 to 1668, before his appointment at Lübeck’s Marienkirche in Germany. (It was to Buxtehude’s church in Lübeck that J. S. Bach made his famous pilgrimage in 1705, essentially sneaking out of Arnstadt without permission from his patron. Bach walked more than 400 kilometers from Lübeck to hear the great Danish master and stayed in Lübeck for several months.)

Buxtehude was born in 1637 or 1639, and died in 1707. Hearing this magnificent and stately piece, it is easy to forget that the Chaconne was a “lurid dance” imported to Europe from the New World and banned by the church in Spain during the Inquisition. Dancing the Chaconne earned one 200 lashes. Jung-A first studied this Chaconne with James Christie at Boston University. Jung-A remembers that Professor Christie taught the articulation of Buxtehude and other earlier Baroque music convincingly. Jung-A learned this piece on the organ in Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and has continued to develop her interpretation since.

We jump several centuries to the Dutch composer Ad Wammes, who was born in 1953 and wrote the scintillating Miroir in 1989. Jung-A writes that Wammes “uses a minimalist style in which the right hand repeats the same pattern from the beginning to the end of the work. I love the transparency and subtle evolving harmonic changes. I first heard this particular work in Los Angeles in the middle of an organ recital. While listening to it, I felt transported into a different realm as the sonority and dimmed lighting fit perfectly with the stained-glass windows surrounding us.”

Next follows Toccata written in 1968 by American composer and organist John Weaver, born in 1937. My fellow recording engineer Arian Jansen and I joked that this track demonstrates plenty of “Telarc Oomph.” Mr. Weaver taught at both Curtis and Juilliard, and now lives in Vermont. Jung-A often plays Weaver’s Toccata in G Major as her opening piece in a concert. She enjoys the fanfare style and triplet figuration throughout the work.

Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) bridges a gap for us between Adam Gilbert’s Renaissance-style Woods and Brooks and the Baroque era we celebrate with Buxtehude, Couperin and Bach. Famous for being the first composer to write a fugue for organ, Sweelinck wrote his famous variations on the tune Mein junges Leben hat ein End during his long tenure at Oude Kerk. Sweelinck was known during his lifetime as the “Orpheus of Amsterdam.” Jung-A reminisces about her 2017 performance of the piece in The Netherlands for organist Diane Bish and some friends on a Tulip Tour: “Playing at St. Stephen’s Church in Nijmegan with such wonderful acoustics was an unforgettable experience.”

Many scholars believe J. S. Bach (1685-1750) wrote his Prelude in B Minor, BWV 544 somewhere between 1727 and 1731 during his time at Thomaskirche in Leipzig, and this Prelude is considered one of his richest and most powerful. I listened to Jung-A perform this work from various places in Walt Disney Concert Hall. In every location, the organ sounded large and powerful, yet clear and surprisingly intimate and immediate. Kudos to Manuel Rosales and to Walt Disney Concert Hall architect Frank Gehry and acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota for making this possible. Jung-A knows many organists who want this particular organ piece to be played at their funerals. “I believe it can be associated with Bach’s B minor mass. This prelude is an excellent example of Bach’s mature work in the genre; I absolutely love it.”

We follow Bach’s Prelude with Yarlung’s commission from Jung-A Lee for her arrangement entitled Fantasia on Blessed Assurance, generously underwritten by Margie Barry in honor of Simon Woods and in happy memory of her husband David. This is the piece in our recording that most impresses our surround sound mastering engineer Tom Caulfield for its sheer power and magnificence. I can still see the rapt faces of our small audience during this recital and recording session. Jung-A wrote a winner, creating this Fantasia upon the hymn tune Blessed Assurance. The text for the hymn was written by the blind poet and prolific writer of hymn texts Frances Jane Crosby, who lived from 1820 to 1915.

Second to last in our program, Jung-A plays one of my favorites in the recital, Olivier Messiaen’s Les Anges, one of nine mediations on the birth of Our Lord, an early cycle Messiaen titled La Nativité du Seigneur. The composer wrote these works in 1935, when he was twenty seven years old, living in Grenoble. Messiaen employs what he interprets as Ancient Greek and Indian rhythms and meters. Messiaen was born in 1908 and died in 1992. The larger cycle La Nativité du Seigneur premiered in 1936 in La Trinité in Paris, shared among three players: Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, Jean Langlais, and Jean-Jacques Grünenwald. Jung-A often performs Les Mages, Les Berges, and Dieu parmi nous as well as Les Anges for concerts at Christmas time. Jung-A enjoys Messiaen’s unique harmonies and theological message and hopes these pieces will be performed more often in North America.

Jung-A ends our program with Dudley Buck’s Concert Variations on the Star Spangled Banner, Op. 23, a Romantic-era work published in 1868. Buck was born in Connecticut in 1839 and died in 1909. Buck defied his family, which anticipated he would enter the family shipping business, and instead studied in Leipzig, at the conservatory founded by Mendelssohn, where his love for and association with Bach’s music and compositional technique was kindled. Jung-A has performed this work in concert often, and it remains one of her audience favorites. Her grateful listeners often wind up in tears. Jung-A performs these variations almost every year on Memorial Day, Independence Day or on September 11th. Buck included a Minor section right before the Finale. Jung-A explains that the harmonic transition works so well that both the Minor section and Finale sections lift up our hearts. In our concert recording, nobody remained dry-eyed during the work’s thunderous conclusion.

Notes on the organ

Manuel Rosales keeps close tabs on the magnificent organ he conceived and voiced for Walt Disney Concert Hall. He never knows when some exciting performance or recording project will happen, so strives to keep the instrument in top shape. Nevertheless, Manuel and his team made sure everything worked flawlessly for us before and during Jung-A’s project. Jung-A is a special organist for Manuel and he wanted her to have a terrific experience. The Walt Disney organ itself occupies a unique place in Manuel’s heart, partly because this commission was such a controversy at the time. Organ builders are a conservative and sometimes cranky bunch, and Manuel remembers great antagonism from his colleagues over the project. He was warned that building the now-famous Walt Disney Concert Hall “French Fries” was supposed to be a career ender for the Rosales company. While the organ community often complains that nothing changes in the world of concert and church organs, and everything always looks the same, once the initial designs became public, Manuel was lambasted for a “satanic creation.” Think of Jung-A’s delightful Hamburger Totentanz when you read this. The success and popularity of this organ have vindicated Manuel’s vision that it was the right visual concept to compliment Frank Gehry’s architectural design.

The organ was a gift from Toyota Motor Sales USA, and includes 6,134 pipes ranging in size from 32 feet to a few inches. These pipes are in 109 ranks, or sets. Frank Gehry and Manuel Rosales collaborated on the visual design. Glatter-Götz Orgelbau in Owingen, Germany, and Rosales Organ Builders in Los Angeles created the mechanical design, construction, tuning and voicing. The organ was shipped from Germany in six ocean-going containers and the unassembled organ itself weighed over 40 metric tons. Installation by the Glatter-Götz staff in WDCH began in April 2003 and was completed in June 2003. Manuel and his Los Angeles team voiced the 6,134 pipes over a period of one year and completed the project in 2004.

The length of the longest pipes is over 32 feet and the largest pipe weighs over 1,000 lbs. The smallest pipe is the size of a small pencil with a speaking length less than 1/4” long. The lowest note has a frequency of 16 cycles per second, which is C below the lowest note on a modern Steinway. The highest note has a fundamental frequency of 10,548 cycles per second, which is an octave and a third higher than the top note of a piano.

The specially-curved wood façade pipes were made by Glatter-Götz Orgelbau of solid, vertical grain Douglas fir to match the interior of Walt Disney Concert Hall. The wood façade pipes are actual speaking pipes consisting of the 32’ Violone and 32’ Basson basses. Behind the façade are metal pipes, which are alloys of tin and lead. Other wood pipes were made in the workshops of Glatter-Götz Orgelbau of solid oak and solid pine. Metal pipes were made in various specialty workshops in Portugal, Germany, England and the United States. The main console is permanently attached at the base of the organ’s woodwork in the “forest of pipes,” at the base of what the detractors call the “French Fries.”   The stage console is moveable and can be plugged in at four different locations including back-stage for testing.

Wind for the organ is supplied by three blowers totaling 14.5 horsepower. Wind pressures range from 4” (102mm) for the Positive to 18” (380mm) for the Llamada horizontal “Tuba” and 32’ Contra Bombarde. The keys on the main console are connected to the pipe valves via a mechanical linkage known as “tracker action.” Both consoles are equipped with electric action, which may be digitally recorded for playback and archival purposes. The organ is equipped with MIDI interface for connection to digital systems, though our recording was very much a product of Jung-A’s directly-employed fingers, feet and skill.

Production notes

STEREO

 Arian Jansen and I used Ted Ancona’s famous “Frank Sinatra” AKG C-24 vacuum tube stereo microphone and two additional mid-hall Ted Ancona Schoeps M222 vacuum tube omnidirectional mono microphones. We used Elliot Midwood vacuum tube mic preamplification and fed these four tracks into our analog SonoruS Holographic Imaging processor. This SHI technology enabled us to produce a two channel mix to reproduce a more three-dimensional listening experience from two speakers. We captured this Holographic Imaging recording using a SonoruS ATR12 analog tape recorder, a SonoruS digital converter for high resolution PCM, and a Merging Technologies HAPI for DSD256. For more information about SonoruS Holographic Imaging please visit yarlungrecords.com/sonorus/

QUATRO SURROUND SOUND (4.0)
into 5 Channels for easy 5.0 and 5.1 playback

This is 4.0 surround sound mastered by NativeDSD’s hero Tom Caulfield, where channel 1 is left front, channel 2 is right front, channel 3 is silent, channel 4 is left rear and channel 5 is right rear for easy playback on standard 5.0 or 5.1 playback systems. We elected to use two front channels (not three) to preserve phase and playback room loading information in Walt Disney Concert Hall as accurately as possible. For the rear channels, we used our two mid-hall Ted Ancona Schoeps M222 vacuum tube microphones. Please visit yarlungrecords.com for links to our DSD 256fs downloads in stereo and surround sound.

COMPLETE TAKES

We believe that the musical intent communicated directly by our musicians is generally superior to a musical arc that I could create in postproduction, so we don’t edit. What you hear on this album is real. Jung-A performed this recital for our recording team and executive producer as you hear it.

Credits

Organ Builder and Technician: Manuel Rosales
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh & Arian Jansen
Microphone Technician: David Bock
Vacuum Tube Microphones: Ancona Audio
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
Stereo Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman & Bob Attiyeh
Surround Sound Mastering Engineer: Tom Caulfield
DSD Executive Producer: Elliot Midwood
Walt Disney Concert Hall production team: Dan Song, Jessie Farber, Leland Alexander
Organ construction photography for Manuel Rosales: Ron Bélanger
Jung-A Lee photography: Shuo Zhai

The post A Private Organ Recital by Jung-A Lee appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Dear friends,

George Klissarov generously sponsored Yarlung’s first DSD releases. His Canadian company, exaSound, makes superb DACs that many of us in the NativeDSD community know and love. They vary from compact units that connect via usb cables to full-on music servers. I use two of these DACs myself. George and I talked about Ciaramella Ensemble several years ago, and he wanted very much that these recordings come out in DSD following the album’s success on vinyl and on compact disc. I promised this would happen, and thankfully, George didn’t pressure me for a release date.

Ciaramella Ensemble recorded this album with me in Alfred Newman Hall on the campus of the University of Southern California in June, 2011. Every track is a single take. No editing. This is one of Yarlung’s classic “super simple” recordings. We used one AKG C24 stereo microphone, microphone amplification by Elliot Midwood, and analog tape vacuum tube recording circuitry designed for me by Len Horowitz. To make these DSD files for you, we played the tapes on the SonoruS ATR10 into my trusty Hapi from Merging Technologies, recording at 256fs.

Ciaramella’s original members met as graduate students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. They first performed together on Christmas Day in 2003 and have since performed in concert halls and in music festivals on three continents. Adam and Rotem Gilbert co-direct the ensemble, and both teach Renaissance and Baroque music at the Thornton School at the University of Southern California.

Officially based in Los Angeles for a few years now, Ciaramella has taken on everything local, from earthquakes to myriad early music performances in Southern California. This is dance music, so jazz fans and lovers of the Polka or Rock and Roll should not be surprised if they wind up tapping their feet. Our species has been dancing for more centuries than we have been using speech. For those of you more specifically interested in early music, here are some of the juicier details for you:

Instruments

The instruments Ciaramella uses are copied from original instruments still extant, or recreated from paintings and treatises. In some instances these new instruments come from research into the shapes and sizes of still existing instrument cases for instruments long missing. Ciaramella used 1/4-comma meantone and tuned to A=465 and A=415.

To the modern concertgoer, shawms remain among the least familiar of early instruments. Ciaramella,” the Italian word for “shawm,” originated in the Greek and Latin words for “reed” (“kalamos” and calamus” respectively). Today’s oboe is a modern version of the shawm. Like the oboe, the shawm is a double reed instrument (higher and louder than the modern oboe) with finger holes instead of keys, and a flared bell.

The modern trombone, or “big trumpet” in Italian, originates in two fifteenth-century instruments, the slide trumpet and the sackbut. In the case of the slide trumpet, the whole instrument moves up and down along the mouthpiece tube, thus altering the pitch. The sackbut has a fixed mouthpiece tube, and adjusts its pitch like the modern trombone, with a slide that changes the length of two tubes joined by the slide on the far side of the instrument from the mouthpiece. In fact, the sackbut is an instrument designed more like its modern descendent than many others. Indeed, a modern trombonist can play a sackbut with only moderate adjustments for embouchure and breath support.

The Renaissance recorder has a wider bore than its Baroque counterpart (which has remained virtually unchanged since Bach’s day). With its tuning and more limited range, it would not function well in the Brandenburg Concertos, but its bore contributes to the distinctive sound of its fatter low register and the complex overtones throughout its range. When listening to takes of this album with Michala Petri, she exclaimed “Wow! That is such a really wonderful tone. And Bob, do you know how hard it is to play these earlier instruments in tune? Adam and Rotem do a great job.” Incidentally, you can hear Michala on multiple recordings released by NativeDSD.

Ciaramella’s Flemish bagpipes differ from modern Scottish Highland bagpipes. The chanter, the pipe with the fingering, closely resembles the chanter from Scotland, and both instruments use the same type of reed. But the Flemish bagpipe has only one drone, as you will hear in Sardanas, or in the duet between Adam Gilbert on bagpipe and Arthur Omura playing the hurdy gurdy in our medley of La Mantovana, Bobbing Joe and Auprès de ma blonde on track 19.

Paul Beekhuizen made Ciaramella’s Flemish bagpipe in G based on Pieter Bruegel’s engraving The Fat Kitchen. Joel Robinson built the bagpipe in A after Pieter Bruegel’s painting The Peasant Dance. The hurdy gurdy is an original nineteenth-century instrument made in the Baroque style, from the collection of Curtis Berak.

Hope you enjoy!

Ciaramella Ensemble
Adam Knight Gilbert and Rotem Gilbert, directors
Adam Knight Gilbert, shawm, recorder, bagpipe
Rotem Gilbert, shawm, recorder
Doug Milliken, shawm, recorder, bagpipe, dulcian
Aki Nishiguchi, shawm, recorder
Greg lngles, sackbut
Erik Schmalz, sackbut
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, viola da gamba
Jason Yoshida, guitar, theorbo
Arthur Omura, harpsichord, hurdy gurdy
Jose Gurria-Cardenas, percussion

Instruments used in this recording
Treble shawm by Paul Hailperin (2005)
Treble shawm by Bernard Schermer (2000)
Alto shawms by Bob Cronin (2003)
Sackbuts by Rainer Egger (2001, 2002)
Dulcian by Martin Praetorius (2005)
Bagpipe in A by Joel Robinson (2003)
Bagpipe in G by Paul Beekhuizen (1997)
Recorder consort by Bob Marvin (1996, 1999)
Baroque guitar after Antonio Stradivarius by Jack Sanders (2005)
Theorbo by Robert Meadows (1986)
Viola da gamba by Werner Trojer (2010)
Harpsichord by David Way (1986)
Percussion instruments: Brazilian pandeiro, Peruvian cajon, tenor frame drum,caxixis, and guiro Hurdy gurdy
Tuning: A=465; A=415 Temperament: 1/4-comma meantone

The post Ciaramella appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

With tango milongas taking place all over the world, the timing of South America seems fortunate.

Our new album, South America, includes this famous duo. It celebrates South American composers and music on several fronts. We commissioned Coco Trivisonno, one of the last living members of Piazzolla’s ensemble, to arrange Carlos Gardel songs for bandoneon and cello. Marcia Dickstein Vogler joins us on harp, and Anastasia Petanova plays flute.

This recording comes in both Stereo and Surround Sound up to the DSD 256 bit rate it was recorded in, thanks to skillful mastering by Tom Caulfield. Arian Jansen and I recorded the album together in Cammilleri Hall last year.

I love this album. With tango milongas taking place all over the world, the timing of South America seems fortunate. Luxuriate also in the Casals and Bach/Villa Lobos cello choirs, performed all by Antonio Lysy himself in the glorious acoustics of Cammilleri Hall at The Brain and Creativity Institute.

Speaking of Cammilleri Hall, mark your calendars for April 25^th for any of you in Los Angeles next month. Yuko Mabuchi Trio and Yarlung’s trumpet icon JJ Kirkpatrick return for a tribute concert and recording celebrating Miles Davis. To join the concert invitation list, please sign up on the bright blue subscribe button at the bottom of the Yarlung Records website: www.yarlungrecords.com. Mark your calendars!

The post Duo Antonio & Alberto Lysy appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

The Stereo Recording

We recorded the stereo version of Nostos using Ted Ancona’s AKG C-24 stereo microphone with a special new-old-stock RCA 6072 vacuum tube, supplied and calibrated by David Bock, Yarlung’s microphone technician. We chose Elliot Midwood all vacuum tube microphone preamplification and fed our signal into our SonoruS ATR12 analog tape recorder using Agfa 468 tape made by EMTEC and into our Merging Technologies Hapi converter recording DSD256 using Pyramix Software. Yarlung designed our interconnects.

The Sonorus Holographic Imaging Recording

We used the AKG C-24 and added two additional mid-hall Ted Ancona Schoeps M222 vacuum tube microphones, which Yarlung recording engineer Arian Jansen fed into the SonoruS Holographic Imaging processor to create a 2 channel mix that uses a proprietary matrix incorporating phase, timing and EQ information from the four microphones to reproduce a three-dimensional listening experience from two speakers. We decided to push the envelope a bit for this recording, to give the SonoruS files the sonic perspective of the conductor. If your system reproduces phase information carefully, you should hear the singers in a semicircle in front of you from far left to far right. It sounds like what Robert Istad heard while he was conducting the ensemble. For more information please visit yarlungrecords.com/sonorus/ We have included free sample files and a special file to aid in setting up speakers as well. Please let me know what you think.

The Quatro Surround Sound Recording

Our friend and surround sound engineer engineer Tom Caulfield gets all the credit for encouraging Yarlung to release Surround Sound. He has flown in from Boston to record prior Yarlung albums, and has offered to return in the future. For Nostos, Arian Jansen, Cliff Harris and I did our best to follow Tom’s inspiration, and added two Bock 5ZERO7 microphones for the left and right channels. This is 4.0 surround sound, where channel 1 is left front, channel 2 is right front, channel 3 is silent, channel 4 is left rear and channel 5 is right rear for easy playback on standard 5.0 or 5.1 playback systems. We elected to use two front channels to preserve delicate phase and playback room loading information from the configuration of our singers in the Valley Performing Arts Center where we made this recording. As always for NativeDSD, we recorded all three formats in DSD256, and Tom has kindly made them available in all three resolutions of DSD and DXD as well, for people who prefer PCM. Thank you Tom!

Repertoire & Album Title

Conductor Rob Istad planned this recording and the repertoire for their tour carefully. This is church music, from the sacred traditions in Europe, Russia and the Americas. The University Singers gave this concert in four beautiful houses of worship in Västerås, Tallinn, Helsinki and St. Petersburg. Rob wanted to take the best American choral tradition on tour, and take home music by composers from these areas. Rob talked about how important it was to “connect each student to the culture of the places they would visit through the repertoire,” while he also acknowledged that “European audiences expect American choirs to bring music from their own folk tradition.” The University Singers performed this wide-ranging music from memory, and their concerts were effectively and entertainingly staged by Fullerton colleague Jim Taulli. I attended a pre-tour concert in Newport Beach, and I was impressed with how well the staging and music worked together.

connect each student to the culture of the places they would visit through the repertoire

Rob Istad

Herbert Howells’ Requiem and Brahms’ Op. 29 motet served as the foundation stones of the program. The singers performed other works by Howells in 2015, and asked for more. Istad was happy to oblige, especially since he had fallen in love with the Requiem and with its companion work, Hymnus Paradisi when he was a student. Istad wrote his dissertation on the two works. Rob talked with me about his reaction to the Requiem several times, and stressed that even though it is a mass for the dead, it celebrates life through its promise of the peace that comes through faith, contemplation and acceptance. This performance, anything but morbid, emphasizes the Requiem’s transcendence, its reassurance, and its foretelling of eternal light.

Howells’ inclusion of Psalms 23 and 121 in the Requiem encouraged Rob to balance them with Brahms’ setting of Psalm 51 in the Op. 29 motet. Istad elaborated that “Brahms takes the penitential words of the Psalmist and creates an emotional journey from which exhilaration emerges out of supplication.” He also relished how Brahms’ tonal language contrasts sharply with the harmonic structure in the Howells Requiem. Rob looked forward to hearing how the singers would respond to the Brahms, which demands such different vocal production and choral color than does the Howells.

Nostos Tes Mousikes, which can be translated as “The Home Coming of Music,” responds to this vision of travel, struggle, transformation, evolution and return throughout life.

Both composers’ works acknowledge the fleeting nature of life and the grief we must all suffer on our journey, balanced hopefully by spiritual transformation. Both composers wrestle with conflict and doubt but emerge stronger in their optimism for spiritual enlightenment. This became the overarching theme of Rob’s program. He wanted the students and listeners to experience mortality and grief, transfigured ultimately through the promise of enlightenment. Texts and English translations of the music.

Nostos Tes Mousikes, which can be translated as “The Home Coming of Music,” responds to this vision of travel, struggle, transformation, evolution and return throughout life. Nostos also reflects the ensemble’s tour to Russia, Estonia and Finland, some of the countries in which this music was composed.

Collaborations in music, and perhaps in life in general, can be among our most rewarding experiences. At Yarlung, these collaborations and camaraderie are what keep us going. Nostos offers an example of just how fruitful this sort of relationship can be. May great music continue to help all of us in the world as we grapple with challenging times. Music is not magic (well, sometimes it can sound like magic when you download it from NativeDSD) but it is indeed powerful. May its full strength help us heal and enjoy each other as human beings moving forward.

Enjoy!

And happy holidays,

Bob Attiyeh, Yarlung Records

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