New York, NY (Top40 Charts) String Noise, the intrepid violin duo of Conrad Harris and
Pauline Kim Harris, celebrates its tenth anniversary in grand style with the simultaneous release of three new recordings on Friday, March 26.
Alien Stories, on the Infrequent Seams label, features pieces by five
Black composer/ improvisers, co-commissioned by String Noise:
Jessie Cox, Jonathan Finlayson, Anaïs Maviel, Charles Overton, and Lester St. Louis. Their boldly imaginative works, rich in sonic adventure, make for a kaleidoscopic and captivating listen.
Giga Concerto, on New Focus, presents the duo in collaboration with drummer Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Composer Eric Lyon has interleaved the movements of his playful title work with arrangements for two violins and drums of Brahms' Fünf Lieder Op. 105, giving String Noise a chance to display Brahmsian warmth along with postmodern wit.
A Lunch Between Order and Chaos, a limited-run cassette/digital release on Chaikin Records, spotlights String Noise's virtuosity in challenging unison pieces by Tyondai Braxton, Caleb Burhans, Philip Glass,
David Lang, Paul Reller, and Greg Saunier. Recorded "in various closets in New York City," this unsettlingly intimate recording serves up String Noise's intense, focused sound in unadulterated form.
Together, the three new releases form a multifaceted portrait of this "trailblazing duo" (Time Out NY) known for its versatility, iconoclastic outlook, and technical mastery.
String Noise will present a free online release extravaganza on Friday, March 26 (4 - 6 pm Eastern Time), streamed on YouTube. Writer and WFMU DJ Kurt Gottschalk will host the two-hour event, with music videos, a live performance by String Noise, artist interviews, audio tracks, cocktail recipes, and a fifteen-minute documentary on the making of Giga Concerto. For information and tickets, visit Eventbrite.
String Noise made their debut in 2011 at Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic. Since then, the duo has premiered some 50 new works by John Zorn, Du Yun,
David Lang, Alvin Lucier, Catherine Lamb, Christian Wolff,
Annie Gosfield, Alex Mincek, Phill Niblock, John King and many others, along with arrangements of songs by Bad Brains,
Black Flag, Deerhoof, Violent Femmes, and other punk icons. While
Pauline and Conrad, partners in life as well as in music, both enjoy flourishing careers of their own, their work as String Noise has had an outsize impact on New York's new-music scene.
Says Pauline, "Going on 10 years now, we are blown away by all the incredible people we've come to know...they've shaped us into what we are today. These three albums encapsulate the very essence of String Noise. They speak to the community we are so lucky to be part of - a collective force of nature. Even the artwork and design of each album were done by friends and creative collaborators." Further details on the recordings follow.
Alien Stories took shape during last summer's
Black Lives Matter protests. It brings together a circle of
Black improviser/composers who have collaborated with String Noise in various formats. The
Spring 2020 season of Carnegie Hill Concerts, which
Pauline co-curates, was canceled due to the pandemic. In its place, String Noise was granted the opportunity to co-commission these five new works.
The album opens with Alien Stories by
Jessie Cox, a New York-based composer and drummer whose credits include commissions and performances by LA Phil, JACK Quartet, Steve Schick, Claire Chase, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Either/Or. Says Cox, "I've thought a lot about aliens during COVID. Viruses are aliens... DNA works in the same way: music is like a genetic code... Any new musical creation is a gene-editing, or engineering process. This genetic engineering, or re-coding, is a way to create possible futures, and redefine the past and the present."
Composer/multi-instrumentalist Lester St. Louis has been commissioned by JACK Quartet, Mahan Esfahani, RAGE THORMBONES, and Jennifer Koh. In his work Archive01 [Absolute Recoil], he aims to "provide a non-mimetic, interactive performance in real time. Working with people who understand the terms being developed makes for substantial growth, but the introduction of people outside of that one's group generates new avenues of exploration. Absolute Recoil is a means to ask a performer to be generative, intuitive and responsive."
Anaïs Maviel is a vocalist, percussionist, composer, and writer working at the crossroads of music, visual art, dance, theater, and performance art. Her piece, La Púyala Muntá, poses the question, "How does dance give music its reason to be? How does rhythm reflect our sinuous harmonic and melodic inquiries?... I had to let go of the aesthetic pre-conceptions, embrace a certain humor, and explore music with embodied joy, connecting the classical canon with oral traditions and conceptual, intuitive thinking."
Charles Overton was the first harpist to be accepted to Berklee Global Jazz Institute; equally at home in an orchestra or a jazz club, he now serves on the faculty of the
Boston Conservatory at Berklee. "Only Time Will Tell explores various connections in my musical experiences," notes Overton. "Time plays a crucial role in the music we create. In writing music for the present moment, the overall arc of this piece grew out of this great uncertainty we feel right now, both personally and in our greater communities at large."
Composer/trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson has performed and recorded with artists such as Steve Lehman, Mary Halvorson,
Craig Taborn, and Henry Threadgill. Regarding Yet to Be, he says, "The initial idea for this composition... began [through] improvisation on the trumpet while quarantining in the woods. The challenging part was translating my ideas to the violin and not using them within an improvisational framework. The piece is in many ways a reflection of me watching from a distance as things unfold."
The works on Alien Stories were co-commissioned by String Noise and Carnegie Hill Concerts. It was recorded at Harvestworks in NYC by
Kevin Ramsay and mastered by Elliott Sharp. The album art is by noted
Black artist Edwin Bethea.
