RICHARD REED PARRY Music for Heart and Breath

Music for Heart and Breath is a series of compositions that use involuntarily moving organs of the human body (specifically the lungs and the heart) as performance parameters. There are no time signatures: the tempos and rhythms are always governed by either the heart rates or the breathing rates of the individual players. In the case of the latter, the performers are instructed to play directly in sync with their own or another player’s individual breathing (playing at the speed of their inhalations, their exhalations or both). To enable the players to hear and play in sync with their own heartbeats, they wear stethoscopes and, naturally, generally play quietly. That, in combination with the natural variation between the performers’ heart rates, results in a delicate musical “pointillism”: starts and stops that are somewhat staggered, melodies that repeatedly align and then fall out of sync with the rising and falling of individual pulses.

The idea is less about “performance” in the traditional musical sense and more about attempting to translate directly into music the quiet internal rhythms of the body, using the naturally varying tempos inherent within each musician to guide and shape the dynamics of the pieces. Music for Heart and Breath requires that the performers let go of their regular approach to musical interpretation and phrasing, replacing it instead with a commitment to following the subtle rhythmic “instructions” of the body.

This kind of performing can yield a subtlety, a spaciousness and a uniquely fragile style of interplay between performers and musical score that always fluctuates and never repeats itself: each piece is a distinct, gentle collision of notes, dynamics, timing and shifting harmonies that, literally, has new life breathed into it every time it is played. (Richard Reed Parry, 2014)

RICHARD REED PARRY Music for Heart and Breath

Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry will issue his new solo album, Music for Heart and Breath, on June 9th through Deutsche Grammophon. It’s his first piece of solo material since 2009′s From Here On Out and follows collaborations with The National, Islands, The Unicorns, and Belle Orchestre, where he plays alongside Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld. Parry had previously debuted the work live, but this marks the first time it’s been properly released. While the LP’s title might imply it’s a record about love and relationships, it’s actually quite literal: “very soft, very quiet music, played utterly in sych with the heart rates and breathing rates of the musicians performing it”, Parry explained in a statement. “Every note you hear is either in synch with the heartbeat of the person playing it, the breathing of the person (or one of the surrounding persons) playing it,” Parry added. “So what you hear when this music plays is played precisely in time with someone’s quiet, internal rhythms. Brought to musical life by a handful of different ensembles. And now, at last, recorded in full, and coming out on Deutsche Grammophon in a few weeks from now. It has been a joy to create this work, and even more of a joy to have it brought to life by such a fantastic cast of musical minds.”

(Michelle Geslani)

André de Ridder / Copenhagen Phil. BRYCE DESSNER St. Carolyn by the Sea - JONNY GREENWOOD Suite from "There Will Be Blood"

Bryce Dessner – who composes “gorgeous, full-hearted music” according to National Public Radio – seamlessly blends aspects of the classical and the popular in his concert works, the compositions simultaneously alive to past and present and the potential of the future. Dessner’s scores, described as “deft” and “vibrant” by The New York Times, draw on elements from Baroque and folk music, late Romanticism and modernism, minimalism and the blues, as well as the inspiration of iconic figures from Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten and Henryk Górecki to Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Such disparate American iconoclasts as John Fahey, La Monte Young and Glenn Branca also figure into this young composer’s sonic world. All these influences – not to mention his globetrotting experiences as a keenly collaborative musician across genres – wind together to inform Dessner’s organic and individual voice as a composer.

The most impressive document to date of Dessner’s art is the Deutsche Grammophon album St. Carolyn by the Sea, which features his debut recordings for the storied Yellow Label. To be released March 3, 2014, St. Carolyn by the Sea includes three luminous Dessner compositions – the title work, Lachrimae and Raphael – performed by the Copenhagen Philharmonic under conductor André de Ridder. The recordings also feature performances on guitar by Dessner and his twin brother, Aaron. Born in 1976 in Ohio and now based in New York City, Dessner first earned wide renown as a co-founding guitarist (along with Aaron) of the Grammy Award-nominated rock band The National. Yet, as WQXR New York has pointed out: “ ‘… Of The National’ is a phrase that often follows Bryce Dessner’s name. It’s not too shabby a suffix, but… listeners may find that title to be inadequate for his talents, if they haven’t already.”

The stage was set for the release of Dessner’s DG debut by the enthusiastic reception for Aheym, a 2013 album by the ever-trailblazing Kronos Quartet devoted to his compositions. In the cross-cultural arts magazine Bomb, veteran avant-garde composer-guitarist Elliot Sharp wrote about Dessner’s compositional method in the title work: “a dramatic opening, dark and insistent, then a breath, then an emerging melodic seed… The seed ultimately grows… to a rousing climax.” The U.K’s Independent singled out the title work, describing it as “an elegant braiding of interlaced lines that pushes the music forward in waves.” WQXR’s contemporary music site Q2 made Aheym an Album of the Week, praising the music as “stunning, nostalgic and beautifully hypnotic.” Pitchfork declared Dessner’s compositions to be “fierce, vivid music.”

St. Carolyn by the Sea presents Dessner’s works alongside a suite by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, one of Dessner’s peers as a rock guitarist and genre-bounding composer. For all his rock success, Dessner was trained as a classical musician. He graduated with a master’s degree in music from Yale University, having studied classical guitar, flute and composition. Settling in New York City, he performed with such contemporary-music ensembles as the Bang on a Can All-Stars, along with co-founding the improvisatory instrumental group Clogs, which was influenced by contemporary takes on early music. He worked with the likes of Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Steve Reich and David Lang, as well as with Philip Glass, Michael Gordon and Nico Muhly. In 2006, Dessner founded the MusicNOW Festival, a celebration of contemporary music that he curates annually to acclaim in his native Cincinnati. He is currently composer-in-residence at Muziekgebouw Frits Philips in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.