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| NEW RELEASE: Denman Maroney "Martingale" Denman Maroney announces the streaming of his new album Martingale with Steven Frieder on reeds, Maroney on piano, Ratzo Harris on bass, and Bob Meyer on drums and cymbals. A martingale is a betting strategy, popular in eighteenth century France, in which the gambler doubles the stakes every round, ensuring she is bound to win, if her pockets are deep enough to survive a long losing streak. Tom Stoppard riffs on the idea in the first scene of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. They lose, of course. Martingale is Maroney's first album with Frieder, his third with Harris and Meyer after CRISPR and alt.timers. On Martingale all eleven tracks are compositions by Maroney except Off Centerpiece, which is his arrangement of Centerpiece by Harry Edison and Jon Hendricks. On two tracks, Time's Out and Sea Set Wheat, Maroney plays what he calls hyperpiano, meaning he expands his instrument's sonic palette by playing the keys with one hand and the strings with the other hand using steel cylinders, copper bars, rubber blocks, and plastic CD and cassette cases. John Cage said time is the most important parameter in music, because it is the only one that sound and silence have in common. Maroney agrees. All the tracks on Martingale involve what he calls temporal harmony, meaning layers of time. It differs from polyrhythm in that the layers are relative, not hierarchical; no layer is paramount. There are two such layers in Blind Love, Off Centerpiece, All in the Loop, and Time's Out; three in Curl, New One Two, Peer to Peer, Sea Set Wheat, and Set Sea Sank; four in Primal Sympathy; six in Martingale. The titles Sea Set Wheat and Set Sea Sank are homonyms of the French words for 6:7:8 (Six Sept Huit) and 7:6:5 (Sept Six Cinq), the temporal ratios or layers of time involved. Off Centerpiece is a blues in two keys (B and E) and two layers of time (4:3). Thus, three choruses in B take as long as four choruses in E to complete. (The interval B to E is a perfect fourth, which has a harmonic ratio of 4:3.) In addition, rhythmic palindromes, or what Olivier Messiaen called non-retrogradable rhythms, are used in New One Two, Peer to Peer, Primal Sympathy, and Set Sea Sank. Steven Frieder - reeds Denman Maroney - piano and hyperpiano Ratzo Harris - bass Bob Meyer - drums and cymbals Ryan Streber - recording John Guth - mixing, editing, mastering Sadatsugu Toboé: Cover Art Recorded Feb. 6-7, 2020 at Oktaven Audio, Mt. Vernon NY USA All compositions by Denman Maroney except Off Centerpiece, an arrangement of Centerpiece by Harry Edison and Jon Hendricks Released Mar. 29, 2020, which would have been his sister Mary's 78th birthday write your comments about the article :: © 2020 Jazz News :: home page |