The Ascendant Just Constellations Roomful of Teeth

THE ASCENDANT — JUST CONSTELLATIONS

ROOMFUL OF TEETH

Announcing two new recordings from the GRAMMY-winning Roomful of Teeth, a singular vocal ensemble that serves as “a kind of lab experiment for the human voice” capable of creating “vocal effects that most singers would never attempt.” (New Yorker)

Just Constellations composed by Michael Harrison and The Ascendant by Wally Gunn will be released by New Amsterdam Records August 21, 2020.

“It's like Roomful of Teeth on different sides of the planet,” describes artistic director Brad Wells regarding the simultaneous release of a propulsively rhythmic The Ascendant from composer Wally Gunn alongside the immense resonance of Michael Harrison’s Just Constellations.

"Wally is an example of a composer who is like a stream that smooths stones,” describes Wells of the hyper-deliberate sounds in The Ascendant. “Nothing feels halfway developed with Wally. It's all been so deeply considered."

Listeners and critics will recognize three of the six songs in The Ascendant from Roomful’s release Render—picked as a top album of 2015 by WNYC’s New Sounds’ host John Schaefer. This marks the first opportunity to hear the work as a whole. The music, which features lyrics from poems written by Maria Zajkowski, seems deceptively uncomplicated on the surface.

"The way he reduces his ideas down to their essences makes them extremely satisfying,” explains Wells. “He develops grooves that feel earthy and physical,” describes Wells. “His music also feels great in the voice. The lines are beautiful to sing."

When Gunn began writing The Ascendant he admits he was in a rut, so he looked toward music that really drew him in for guidance. It turns out that what drew him in was highly emotive music that made him feel deeply. As he began sketching, he was drawn to a few ideas.

“One was exploring how voices can create rhythm and momentum by moving in counterpoint, in hockets, echoes, canons, rounds, and ostinati,” he says. “When I hear voices moving in counterpoint like this—in all different cultures, eras, and genres, but especially in the Renaissance and Baroque era of Western music—it always thrills me.”

It’s a song cycle he began composing in 2012 that remains incredibly special to Gunn, not only for the deeply collaborative process of working with both Roomful of Teeth and the poet Maria Zajkowski, but also for a compositional discovery he made for himself.

"I stumbled upon something that feels like an authentic compositional voice, a combination of polyphonic patterns and processes, blended with the angularity and clarity of rock music harmonies and forms,” he says. “Something about this combination felt like the beginning of a new chapter for me.”

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The Ascendant

Tracklisting:

1. The Beginning And (5:08)
2. The Fence Is Gone (4:49)
3. Through The Night Wave (4:46)
4. What We Began (4:33)
5. Are We Death (5:49)
6. Surviving Death (7:08)

Total Time: 32:13

Michael Harrison’s Just Constellations was described as “glacially beautiful” by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, who wrote about a separate performance of this recording at The Tank, an unlikely contemporary music performance venue in Rangley, Colorado. Harrison describes it as “an amazing monumental old water tank with a reverb that lasts longer than any that I have ever heard, including the Taj Mahal.”

“The beginning sparks for Just Constellations might easily have happened years ago when I learned to play and tune the piano for La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano,” explains Harrison. He’s referring to a nebulous masterpiece of minimalism for solo piano that takes up to six hours to play and requires hours upon hours of meticulous instrument tuning.

“I was also singing and studying classical Indian vocal music, which relies on just intonation tunings. Over the years, I often imagined how the sustained harmonies I produced on the piano might translate to the voice, but this could only be achieved with an ensemble of voices.”

Those ideas became a reality when Roomful commissioned Harrison, who could now tailor a piece written in just intonation to eight individual voices.

“Every time I had a new draft, we would rehearse it and they would give me feedback,” as he describes it. “ Then, I would revise the score, and we would do the same thing a few days later with a new draft. I was in composer heaven!”

There’s a beautiful contrast in these two EPs, with The Ascendant providing a close mic, highly produced studio sound as Roomful performs as if a band riffing with tight grooves and tight text, alongside a studio drummer (Jason Treuting of SO Percussion). That all takes a 180 in Just Constellations, where there are no words at all, only syllables.

“It's all long tones. It's the singers as bells, or the singers as drones or as pure pitch,” says Wells about a composition perfectly suited for the deep resonance of The Tank. “Michael found an organic way to compose for the group.”

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Just Constellations

Tracklisting:

I. The Opening Constellation - Summer (8:03)
II. The Romantic Constellation - Autumn (6:22)
III. The Magic Constellation - Winter (Based on a theme by La Monte Young) (3:26)
IV. The Acoustic Constellation - Spring (2:58)

Total Time: 20:49