The title of this album refers to the rather unlikely combination of instrumental forces involved: the music is for violin and percussion ensemble, with Britain's Madeleine Mitchell and Ensemble Bash joining together to make it happen. There is one established modern work for these forces, Lou Harrison's Concerto for the Violin with Percussion Orchestra, which he quizzically dated 1959-1940. The album took shape as the players performed that work and decided to commission pieces by contemporary composers to go with it. ...
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The title of this album refers to the rather unlikely combination of instrumental forces involved: the music is for violin and percussion ensemble, with Britain's Madeleine Mitchell and Ensemble Bash joining together to make it happen. There is one established modern work for these forces, Lou Harrison's Concerto for the Violin with Percussion Orchestra, which he quizzically dated 1959-1940. The album took shape as the players performed that work and decided to commission pieces by contemporary composers to go with it. Harrison's piece is even more of an east-meets-west affair than his other major works, with the percussion laying down textures strongly evocative of Indonesia's gamelan traditions but then interrupting itself with episodes that lead into long stretches of dissonant but lyrical melody on the violin -- Harrison said he was also influenced by Alban Berg's violin concerto in writing the work, and the whole thing has the intriguing flavor of a composer trying to make sense of the different...
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