Noah Creshevsky - Weird Music For Connaisseurs . . .
This is music beyond comparison, artist and genre wise, except perhaps Vincent Bergeron (aka Berger Rond) and the vocal equilibrist David Moss:
"Imagine all the world's instruments, musicians and hemispheres lashed together into a giant mega-calliope, super-jukebox, or fantasmo-sampler. As called to action by a hyper-caffeinated virtuoso, it might sound something like these works by Noah Creshevsky."
--Arved Ashby, Gramophone.
Noah Creshevsky
Born January 31, 1945 Rochester, New York
- Trained in composition by Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Luciano Berio at Juilliard, Noah Creshevsky is the former director of the Center for Computer Music and Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. His musical vocabulary consists largely of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental music which are edited but rarely subjected to electronic processing. The result is a music that obscures the boundaries of real and imaginary ensembles though the fusion of opposites: music and noise, comprehensible and incomprehensible vocal sources, human and superhuman vocal and instrumental capacities. Creshevsky's work has been supported by grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and ASCAP. It has been published by Alexander Broude and the University of Michigan Press, released on records and compact discs, and performed and broadcast internationally. Formerly director of the Center for Computer Music and professor of music at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, he has served on the faculties of the Juilliard School and Hunter College, and been a visiting professor at Princeton University.
- "I have been composing electronic music for more than thirty years. Common to all of my music is the use of expanded sonic palettes. My goal has been to create a body of work using a novel but natural, versatile, and expressive musical language. My focus on extended musical palettes mirrors the belief that individuals and societies are improved through broad inclusion. Much of my musical vocabulary consists of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental music which are deconstructed into minute fragments, subjected to a variety of electronic processes, and finally reassembled in ways that bear little or no discernible relationship to their original sources. The result is a sound at once nearly human and tangentially electronic, but never fully one or the other. Allusions to Middle Eastern, Asian, and Western sacred, secular, popular, and classical instrumental and vocal music seek to produce hypothetical performers of indeterminate identity--simultaneously male and female, Western and non-Western, ancient and modern, familiar and unfamiliar."
--Noah Creshevsky
- To be continued . . .
"Imagine all the world's instruments, musicians and hemispheres lashed together into a giant mega-calliope, super-jukebox, or fantasmo-sampler. As called to action by a hyper-caffeinated virtuoso, it might sound something like these works by Noah Creshevsky."
--Arved Ashby, Gramophone.
Noah Creshevsky
Born January 31, 1945 Rochester, New York
- Trained in composition by Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Luciano Berio at Juilliard, Noah Creshevsky is the former director of the Center for Computer Music and Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. His musical vocabulary consists largely of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental music which are edited but rarely subjected to electronic processing. The result is a music that obscures the boundaries of real and imaginary ensembles though the fusion of opposites: music and noise, comprehensible and incomprehensible vocal sources, human and superhuman vocal and instrumental capacities. Creshevsky's work has been supported by grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and ASCAP. It has been published by Alexander Broude and the University of Michigan Press, released on records and compact discs, and performed and broadcast internationally. Formerly director of the Center for Computer Music and professor of music at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, he has served on the faculties of the Juilliard School and Hunter College, and been a visiting professor at Princeton University.
- "I have been composing electronic music for more than thirty years. Common to all of my music is the use of expanded sonic palettes. My goal has been to create a body of work using a novel but natural, versatile, and expressive musical language. My focus on extended musical palettes mirrors the belief that individuals and societies are improved through broad inclusion. Much of my musical vocabulary consists of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental music which are deconstructed into minute fragments, subjected to a variety of electronic processes, and finally reassembled in ways that bear little or no discernible relationship to their original sources. The result is a sound at once nearly human and tangentially electronic, but never fully one or the other. Allusions to Middle Eastern, Asian, and Western sacred, secular, popular, and classical instrumental and vocal music seek to produce hypothetical performers of indeterminate identity--simultaneously male and female, Western and non-Western, ancient and modern, familiar and unfamiliar."
--Noah Creshevsky
- To be continued . . .
Comments
- Some words:
- "Active in electronic composition since 1971, Noah Creshevsky delights in presenting extreme and unpredictable juxtapositions in which the integration of electronic and acoustic sources and processes creates virtual "superperformers" by using the sounds of traditional instruments pushed past human capacities. Creshevsky uses the term Hyperrealism to describe his electroacoustic language constructed from found sounds, handled in ways that are exaggerated or intense.
Creshevsky's first full length CD on Pogus (and hopefully not his last) works his sampling wizardry on performances by Sherman Friedland (clarinet); Lisa Barnard Kelley and Tomomi Adachi (voices); piano improvisations by Stuart Isacoff; Gary Heidt (voice and guitar); Rich Gross (lap steel/banjo); Orin Buck (bass); Juho Laitinen (cello).
As always his music needs to be heard to be believed. A truly singular voice."
- Pogus Productions 2012
- "A split cd of works by Noah Creshevsky (4 tracks) and If, Bwana (3 tracks). While on the face of it this may seem a somewhat odd pairing, the pieces recorded here comment on and highlight each other . . ."
- Hyperrealism is an electroacoustic musical language constructed from sounds that are recognizable parts of our shared environment ("realism"), handled in ways that are exaggerated or excessive ("hyper"). Hyperrealist music exists in two basic genres. The first uses the sounds of traditional instruments that are pushed beyond the capacities of human performers in order to create superperformers--hypothetical virtuosos who transcend the limitations of individual performance capabilities (e.g., Mari Kimura Redux, Intrada, Favorite Encores). Hyperrealism of the second genre aims to integrate vast and diverse sonic elements to produce an expressive and versatile musical language. Its vocabulary is an inclusive, limitless sonic compendium, free of ethnic and national particularity (e.g., Shadow of a Doubt). Hyperrealism celebrates bounty, either by the extravagant treatment of limited sound palettes or by the assembling and manipulating of substantially extended palettes.
Al Margolis has been working under the musical pseudonym If, Bwana since New Year's Day 1984. There are often collaborators in this projectboth knowingly and unknowingly. Both are represented on this recording. Xyloxings was a concept-based work that in the end had the concept discarded for compositional considerations. Lisa Barnard's vocals were recorded with her direct knowledge. Scraping Scrafide uses a portion of Tony Scafide's piano part from a prior work of mine3 Out of 4 Ain't Badand processes it. Cicada #4: Barnard Mix is part of my "discipline" seriesan open set of worksand uses Barnard's vocals from other sessions to create one of many possible versions of this work."
- Pogus Productions 2008
- "Reissue of 8 pieces from 1971 to 1992, mainly tape collage, using instrumental (incl. disco dance music or rock music), vocal, and concrete sounds. "In Other Words" features the voice of John Cage. Noah is a Julliard-educated composer with a sense of humor and fine taste in vests." Noah Creshevsky - Strategic Defence Initiative @ Youtube
released February 2, 2018
'Reanimator' is a collection of Noah’s work spanning over three decades, including the new composition “Belle de Jour”. Other pieces like 1980’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” — a blend of kung fu movie sounds, bell samples, and pitch-shifted abstract sound design — are clear precursors to the flourishing post-90s computer music movement, while “Lisa Barnard Redux” and “Tomomi Adachi Précis” — collaborations with vocalists Lisa Barnard and Tomomi Adachi — also combine a modern classical sensibility and exhilarating computer collage.
Megan Berti, mezzo-soprano
Monique Buzzarte, trombone
Dorota Czerner, voice
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Also, please consider gifting it to any friends of yours (use the 'send as gift' button (there's a nominal $1 Bandcamp fee for this option)
"Noah Creshevsky has been composing electronic music since 1969. Much of his musical vocabulary consists of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental music, which are edited but rarely subjected to electronic processing. By obscuring the boundaries of real and imaginary ensembles through the fusion of opposites - music and noise, comprehensible and incomprehensible vocal sources, human and superhuman vocal and instrumental capacities - Creshevsky's music is at once nearly corporeal and tangentially electronic, but never fully one or the other."