CD of John Hollenbeck and the NDR Bigband - Colouring Hockets (FLEX 003), limited to 500 copies. Artwork, layout, and design by the ever-amazing karlssonwilker
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about
Kenneth Goldsmith's book, Uncreative Writing is a treasure trove of general and specific inspiration! One example in the book is Shigeru Matsui's series of "Pure Poems". Every “Pure Poem” consists of four hundred characters, each a number from one to three. Originally written in Chinese script, which figures the numbers one, two, and three with a single, a double, and triple dash accordingly, later poems are written with roman numerals.
They are beautiful looking and when recited by the poet in Japanese, extremely rhythmic. Many years ago, just for fun, I assigned a music motif to each number and created a piece using the form of Pure Poem 1007-1103 . The Claudia Quintet recorded this little ditty for our 2016 album, Super Petite. I always had a feeling that this piece could work well in a large ensemble environment, so I was very happy to arrange it for the NDR band! In Steve Smith's description of this piece in the liner notes, he writes it "...jigs like a bodhrán on steroids..." While I love that description, I would add that it sounds to me like a drum corps playing an Energizer Bunny commercial! For sure we can agree that it is weird, not JD Vance weird, but old school, cool weird. As an introduction, I thought it would be fun to have the percussion quartet improvise something. Patty Brennan is on timpani, Marcio Doctor on his wondrous battery of hand percussion, Matt Moran on tapan and moi on drumset. We recorded at least 8 versions of this, obviously too many, but we were having fun! JC Sanford, our trusty conductor, was so excited, he wanted us to include at least 4 of these on the record (sorry that did not work out JC but it was a great idea!)
Award-winning composer/
percussionist
John Hollenbeck's entire 20-year catalogue is being re-released digitally here through Flexatonic Records, a U.S. non-profit entity that was formed for his activities.