| "Quiet Music" is a double CD package containing music written by Ellery Eskelin (with one exception) and developed on several tours of Europe and the United States. For this recording Eskelin chose to work in one of France's most prestigious recording facilities, Studios la Buissonne located in the south of France near Avignon. Eskelin had worked with engineer Gerard de Haro some years previously on a project led by drummer Daniel Humair and was impressed enough with the engineer's work and reputation of the studio that he took two days during the band's spring 2006 European tour to record the fourteen pieces of music that are presented here. The sound is stunningly clear, warm and deep.
Eskelin's compositions for this recording range from trio pieces that explore his fondness for musical non-sequiturs to quartet pieces with Jessica Constable exploring novel methods of organizing improvised musical thought to a number of double keyboard quintet pieces with the addition of Philippe Gelda that open up completely new vistas for this band. "Quiet Music" also includes a composition written by French composer and early music specialist Olivier Marcaud entitled "la Berceuse d'Angela". It originally appears on a collection of children's lullabies from around the world. In this version Philippe Gelda and Jessica Constable deliver gorgeously pristine, almost medieval sounding vocals suspended over the band's otherworldly improvised textures.
The six panel package is designed by Scott Friedlander using source material from a variety of colorful artworks of Eskelin's seven year old son Rami Wade Eskelin. Per Ellery, on Sound Samples:
A short excerpt of each composition, while offering a glimpse inside the sound of a piece, fails to deliver the true context in which the sound was created. I thought about offering longer samples but I quickly realized that anything short of the entire composition was simply insufficient. I then thought about offering one or two or even three compositions in their entirety and immediately realized that this would also be very misleading in as as much as the project covers an almost epic swath of territory. There is no one, two or three compositions that sum up the entire project. |