This
is simply a superior musical endeavor featuring a rare musical
vision performed at the highest level.
- Javier Antonio Quiñones
Ortiz, All About Jazz New York 2005
Many
observers have theorized that jazz, taken to the brink by the
rhythmic fury and apocalyptic questing of John Coltrane's late-'60s
bands, played itself into a corner with nowhere left to go.
This elegant and fiery band just may have found a way back out,
a sonic opening, if you will.
- John Chacona - Erie Times-News, October, 2006
new
CD muhheankuntuk
The
current sound of sonic openings under
pressure emerges through the interaction & collaboration
of two independent cutting edge musical developments. Brought together through
the insightful ears of master bassist, Hilliard Greene
are the expansive sonic visions of composer, saxophonist & ensemble
founder patrick brennan in tandem with virtuoso
percussion conceptualist & composer, David
Pleasant.
brennan's
musical approach integrates & interfaces long duration composition (idiomatic
usages, specific language as well as "compositions" in conventional
parlance) with the instantaneous ensemble composition referred to as improvisation.
The music itself grows primarily out of the terms, sounds, practices & attitudes
of Afro-indigenous North American music (jazz in particular); & -- while
informed by the formal thoroughness & theories of Pan-European art music
(no less evident than the unique disciplines and technical demands of African/African
American classical culture) -- works most emphatically with variable experiences
of time, narrative & texture, rhythm supplying the most profuse of resources,
inspirationally, organizationally & expressively. This has yielded music
of formal depth & resilience that shares the aesthetics of kineticized sonic
space with pan-African & much dance rooted popular music.
David
Pleasant's
Densemetrix! is an innovative
musical worldview. The approach is inspired by the unique disciplines and technical
demands of Gullah-Geechee culture (the oldest classical African based culture
in America). The poly-rhythmic and poly-metric forms at its core drive Pleasant’s
expansive structures in temporal and spatial arrangement. As dancer, composer,
poet and choreographer for major dance companies and choreographers, he has
developed a discipline that harmonizes rhythm as a non-speculative experience.
The concept engages the asymmetric/fractal reality of time/motion as specific
platforms for improvisation and poly-tonal composition: it offers unique challenges
to western assumptions about syncopation, meter and rhythm.
sonic
openings under pressure
was initially founded in 1979 in New York City by patrick brennan as a vehicle
for his compositions for improvisers. The ensemble has varied in scale from
3 to as many as 12 musicians; & has always been powerfully shaped by the
character of its participants. The current trio formation, thanks to Pleasant’s
collaboration, emphasizes the contributions of both composers & affords
an unusually potent confluence of two distinctive & important musical initiatives.
