ok, so here's one which was prepared earlier... i found it here, just recently (and a long time after it was originally posted - i've very much lost touch with most of the music blogs which are still active, especially those which came into being during the last two or three years).
the reason i've prepared my own version - of the 2000 concert, not the 2006 sextet (which i posted myself back on c#9 - probably a different rip, but it's long gone anyway, so those of you who didn't get it, download it now!) - is because, as the poster says, his file includes a number of "gaps". these dropouts are pretty numerous: i've removed at least thirty of them, and i don't know about anyone else, but i find these very irritating when listening to a performance. it's easy enough to overlook one or two, but after a while it becomes a sort of mental torture - you know that there will be another one along sometime soon, you just don't know when... hence, i edited them all out; and in all but one case, have restored seamless playback in so doing. (that one exception is detailed below, at the bottom.)
here is the file,
this is a superb concert, an example of gtm, second (i think) species. the original poster lists the piece as comp. 224, which seems unlikely to me. this concert did indeed take place in august 2000, and by that time b. was further through the opus numbers than that; needing always to keep moving forwards at the time, he would probably not have gone back to an earlier piece. the opus numbers within the 220-range were being laid down in 1998; in may 2000, the composer was already working through the 240s. by august of that year... well, i don't know which piece was played in lisbon, and i could be wrong in my assumptions... but if it is indeed a premiere (as listed), then i find it hard to believe that it's #224. doesn't really matter that much, though.
the instrumentation is an augmented version of the ninetet which played a short residency at yoshi's, oakland, in 1997. that group featured six reedmen, plus guitar, bass, drums; this one is stacked even more heavily in favour of the saxes with seven. seven! naturally, the leader makes his presence felt throughout the piece. as for the others: james fei and jackson moore are still there (here i am reliant on the original poster's info, of course, but there's no particular reason to doubt it); steve lehman is in the group by this point - he would become very important to b's expanded ensembles later, of course - and seth misterka and scott rosenberg can both be found on other recordings from round about this time. brian glick is unfamiliar to me, as is the bassist, seth dellinger (though a quick internet search reveals that there is indeed a bassist of that name). kevins o'neil and norton were both in the ninetet as well, and feature prominently in b's work of this period. the guitar and percussion add crucial tonal variety at many points throughout the set, but of course it's those stacked reeds which really dominate proceedings. i recommend headphones for this one, since it's otherwise quite hard to distinguish them all.
as the original poster suggests, the ending itself is truncated, although by the end of the recording we are clearly very close to the finish; it's not at all unusual for a gtm performance to end "in midair" as it were, giving an illusion of an endless piece - but experience suggests that the leader would immediately name the band members and offer his thanks on behalf of the ensemble; this is the bit which is most obviously missing, but we must have 99% of the performance here.
thanks to the original poster for making this excellent recording available. [i would have left a comment on his blog, however belatedly - but his is one of those which only accept comments after moderation, and i don't like to waste time and effort on comments which may never appear..!]
NB - the one exception mentioned above occurs at 9.25 in the second file. this was the only instance where removing the dropout did not result in seamless playback: a tiny fragment is actually lost, so that taking out the gap made for jarring listening. hence, i reinserted a small silence (0.2 secs to be precise!), this being my best compromise.
stay tuned, spread the word, keep the faith... etc etc :)
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