Percussion Archives - NativeDSD Music

UTOPIAS – Radical Interpretations of Iconic Works for Percussion

Sjoerd Staal — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

UTOPIAS – Radical Interpretations of Iconic Works for Percussion

Kjell Tore Innervik performs Morton Feldman’s The King of Denmark and Iannis Xenakis’s Psappha, exploring the intimate performing space with large format recording techniques, engaging the listener in immersive audio. The Xenakis was recorded twice: once from the perspective of an intimate listener, and a second time literally “over-head”, giving a first-persona perspective. The difference not only in microphone technique but also in the performer’s state of mind and how he projects his playing has a profound impact on the listening experience.

Radical Interpretations of Iconic Musical Works for Percussion (2013–2017) was an interdisciplinary artistic research project hosted at the Norwegian Academy of Music (2013–2017) in collaboration with the Oslo Academy of the Arts, the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Westerdals Oslo ACT and 2L through the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme.

The beauty of the Recording Arts is that there is no fixed formula and no blueprint. It all comes out of the music. Every project starts out by digging into the score and talking with the composer, if contemporary, and the musicians. It is not our task as producers and engineers to try to re-create a concert situation with all its commercial limitations. On the contrary, we should make the ideal out of the recording medium and create the strongest illusion, the sonic experience that emotionally moves the listener to a better place.

A utopia, a non-existent place, is a projection where there are no constraints of practicality, nothing to hold you back. Such is our approach to the music on this album. In each piece of music we endeavour, using all the resources at out disposal, to unite the composer, performer, recording artist and listener, and to take them at least some of the way to a utopia. We envisage him or her experiencing a whole series of small-scale moments that offer a projection of the music where there are no constraints, and where the experience aspires to a kind of mini-utopia. It therefore seemed fitting to use the Greek symbol µ, often used as a prefix denoting smallness, in a typographical “subtitle” to this album: µtopias

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Beyond

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

There are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world. It’s a transitive city. Most residents have come here to contribute to its cultural identity and have ended up calling it “home.” Los Angeles is a city where every industry, creative or otherwise, is fueled by the pursuit of personal creative dreaming. It’s clear then how the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ) created a community of composers and made them all local to the group’s music making and to Los Angeles itself, regardless of each composer’s city of origin.
Is it language that makes someone at home in a given place? If so, the compositional languages of Anna Thorvaldsdottir,Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, Daníel Bjarnasson, and Andrew McIntosh appear as interwoven and complex as Los Angeles itself. Their music similarly courses with chiming repetition, spectral near-silence, and the wearing away of time on objects so barely touched that they appear, in moments, as fragile as paper. These composers — from two drastically different continents — are brought together by LAPQ, despite their differences in origin, under one banner: friendship.

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Reich Sextet, Music for Pieces of Wood, Clapping Music

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

All three pieces presented on this disc find their roots in ideas explored in Steve Reich’s earliest acknowledged work, It’s Gonna Rain, a 17-minute composition for magnetic tape composed in 1965. In this seminal work Reich discovered the techniques that became the kernel for his entire body of work to the present day, and some of the defining features of the minimalist aesthetic – repetition, pulse, a pre-occupation with speaking patterns, and variation by a process known as ‘phasing’.

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iFi Stereo DSD 256 Sampler Album

Sjoerd Staal — Wed, 04 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Native DSD music and iF i audio are proud to collaborate on iFi Stereo DSD 256 Sampler Album, celebrating the launch of the flagship iFi Audio Professional series. The first product, the Pro iCan is a professional studio grade headphone amplifier and an audiophile line-stage. The Native DSD music album contains 4 cherry-picked Stereo DSD 256 songs for you to enjoy. Why iFi and Native DSD? It’s because we both bring out the best in each other.

iFi enjoys PCM and DSD, which is why the specially selected Burr-Brown chip was chosen as it keeps each format in its native state as it travels through the dac chipset. Both iFi and NativeDSD Music care passionately about the ultimate in sound quality and when it comes to DSD recordings, Native DSD Music continues to push the boundaries – with DSD256 recorded music. This is why we made this album for you, the listener.

Joachim Eijlander
Josep Colom
Smoke & Mirrors Percussion Ensemble
Thomas Baggerman and Eva Scholten

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Smoke & Mirrors Vanish Vol 2

Sjoerd Staal — Sun, 05 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Producer’s Notes:
Once people have a chance to hear Smoke & Mirrors: Vanish and after they read Jim’s review in The Absolute Sound, this recording won’t be hidden for long! Creating this second album with Smoke & Mirrors percussion ensemble proved a great musical experience and deepened our friendship with these remarkable musicians. Special thanks to Sel Kardan and Richard Beene of The Colburn School and to Maestro Gerard Schwarz for their support and enthusiasm for Smoke & Mirrors. We recorded this album in two
concert halls. The live orchestra concert of Takemitsu’s ethereal and engaging From Me Flows What You Call Time came first in Ambassador Hall on February 4th, 2012, with Gerard Schwarz conducting. Rachmaninov’s Vespers followed in Zipper Hall at The Colburn School on June 3-5, 2013.

Featured in blog post Notes on Recent Finds, No. 9 – Endless Bounty from NativeDSD by music reviewer Rushton Paul.

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Smoke & Mirrors – Vanish

Sjoerd Staal — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Smoke & Mirrors: Vanish

Smoke & Mirrors takes us on many different “trips” as we journey through this album. These are refreshingly fully-developed works, each very different from the others, each with its own story. Yet as a whole, this selection of music illustrates the breadth of contemporary classical music written for percussionists, as well as the flexibility and virtuosity of Smoke & Mirrors. World class and sophisticated as this ensemble is, these musicians retain and communicate the sheer joy I experienced when banging pots and pans as a two- and three-year old. Do you remember your own pleasure making a racket as a kid? Smoke & Mirrors: Katalin La Favre, Jessica Cameron, Joe Beribak, Edward Hong and Derek Tywoniuk have never forgotten it.

Gear used

We chose a single stereo AKG C24 microphone for these tracks. Jon Fisher from Gearworks Pro Audio loaned us these precious microphones. Elliot Midwood designed our microphone preamplification equipment and we recorded directly to RMGI 468 tape for what Yarlung releases as “The SonoruS Series.” Mastering by Steve Hoffman. Bernie Grundman cut our lacquers for vinyl release.

We used the Hapi converter and Pyramix software from Merging Technologies in Switzerland to make these transfers to DSD. Our sincere thanks to George Klissarov and exaSound for making these releases possible.

— Bob Attiyeh, producer

Featured in blog post Notes on Recent Finds, No. 9 – Endless Bounty from NativeDSD by music reviewer Rushton Paul.

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