Jascha Narveson
The sound of the Rhodes is gorgeous on this recording, and the re-tuning makes for some excitingly jangly beating patterns as the different octave-tunings rub up against each other. Beautiful recording of a beautiful interpretation of a beautiful piece on a beautiful instrument in a beautiful tuning.
Lathe cut transparent record with a screen-printed tuning lattice showing through the grooves. Single-sided 10-inch, with album notes screen-printed on Side B. Funds raised by this record will greatly support our series of live concerts in Santa Cruz and elsewhere – thank you!
Edition of 25, signed & numbered.
Includes unlimited streaming of Larry Polansky: Piano Study #5
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A release single of Larry Polansky's framework for improvising on a folk tune, for Fender Rhodes in a just intonation tuning system, available digitally and through a screen-printed single-sided transparent lathe cut record. (Estimated delivery: July 2017.) The first of three singles planned through the year.
Edition of 25 signed/numbered copies.
-- Larry Polansky --
Piano Study #5
(for Just Fender Rhodes)
Piano Study #5 is one of my earliest pieces, written for Fender Rhodes in a non-octave repeating, 13-limit just intonation. It is an improvisation in which the “prime-tonality” of the harmonic fabric slowly evolves. The score comprises the tuning, and simple instructions for moving a folk tune through the harmonic possibilities of the tuning system from lower to higher primes and back again.
Piano Study #5 has a somewhat unusual history, nicely bookended by tonight’s performance. I wrote this piece in 1975 while an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz. I borrowed a Fender Rhodes from fellow student Paul Sparrow, an oscilloscope from the electronic music studio, and purchased a monochord from Lou Harrison and Bill Colvig, my first meeting with those lifelong friends. I performed the piece on a concert of 20th Century American Music (1976) for piano, organized by fellow student Steve Key, and then again on my senior recital (1977) in the old Music Department concert hall (now in the Theater Department). Subsequent performances were at Roulette in NYC in 1979 (on a piano loaned to me by Dick Higgins and Philip Corner), and finally at Mills College in 1981. The score was published in Xenharmonikon in 1977, and a short essay about it in 1/1: The Journal of the Just Intonation Network, in 1985.
The difficulty of playing the piece (I’m a guitarist, not a pianist), tuning the piano, and the experience of carrying a Fender Rhodes up and down five flights of stairs to my NYC loft on Leonard Street and five or six blocks more to Roulette on Franklin St., discouraged me from continuing to perform the after that. I finally recorded it (with Tom Erbe, engineer) on my CD entitled Change (2002, Artifact CDs), and sold my Fender Rhodes. In the original performances, I had used the tune “Rally Round the Flag,” but on the Artifact recording I used “When de Whale Get Strike,” in memory of Bill Colvig . This song is a Bahaman lament for a fallen friend recorded by Alan Lomax (1935) and later transcribed by Ruth Crawford Seeger (1941).
It seemed to me possible, when writing the piece some 40 years ago, that anyone with a Fender Rhodes, a deep knowledge of tuning theory and the ability to improvise could perform Piano Study #5. However, to the best of my knowledge, Andrew Smith is the first to do so. Andrew’s advanced skills as a pianist and improviser, his understanding of tuning (and thus the idea behind the piece), and his own compositional creativity revivify this old work in a way that I had only dreamed of. I am extremely fortunate that he has done so, even recording it for the Indexical label (with David Dunn, engineer). Astonishingly, Andrew even seems to enjoy, or at least pretends to enjoy, schlepping the Fender Rhodes.
Larry Polansky
2/27/16
credits
released May 26, 2017
Andrew C. Smith, Fender Rhodes
Larry Polansky, composition
David Dunn, engineer
Mustafa Walker, design
John Walsh, tuning lattice art
Indexical is a composer-run record label and concert producer, focusing on new classical & experimental music. We release studio albums and selected live recordings from our concerts.
supported by 13 fans who also own “Larry Polansky: Piano Study #5”
“With Julius, he was based in repetition, but here was a spirit of openness and improvisation. His scores, if they were written out that way, were often like jazz scores. He loved multiplying instruments – four pianos, ten cellos – so there was a real feeling of the presence of the instrument, not just using an instrument in some kind of equation, as a means to an end.” ~ Mary Jane Leach
Enough said. pt
supported by 13 fans who also own “Larry Polansky: Piano Study #5”
Absolutely love this recording. I listen to it at work. I listen to it in the car on the way home from work. I listen to it while falling asleep. Curtis’ cello is so amazing. Just got the vinyl in the mail from Discogs the other day! Can’t wait to play on my hi-fi system! Dave Sewall
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Composer and bass player Håkon Thelin aims to cut to the essence of the double bass by focusing on technique with these contemporary pieces. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 11, 2023