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| Out May 3 on Pyroclastic – violinist/composer Modney's Ascending Primes w. Anna Webber, Nate Wooley, Cory Smythe, Kate Gentile and more Acclaimed violinist/composer Modney convenes collaborators from the forefront of contemporary jazz and classical music for an adventurous new album Ascending Primes, due out May 3, 2024 via Pyroclastic Records, debuts daring new compositions pursuing transcendence and ecstatic space The album's multiple prime-numbered ensembles feature Anna Webber, Nate Wooley, Ben LaMar Gay, Cory Smythe, Charmaine Lee, Dan Peck, Kate Gentile and members of Wet Ink Ensemble and International Contemporary Ensemble "Modney has consistently demonstrated jaw-dropping technical skill and deep, exploratory impulses… one of today's most intrepid experimentalists." – Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily "[Modney is] a wildly skilled and imaginative musician… get ready to be wowed…" – Allan Cronin, New Music Buff Album release concert Saturday, May 18 at Tenri Cultural Institute, NYC Hailed as a "new-music luminary" by The New York Times and "one of today's most intrepid experimentalists" by Bandcamp Daily, violinist/composer Modney is a key figure among a cohort of dauntless musicians exploring the everblurrier boundaries between notated and improvised music. With Ascending Primes, his latest and most audacious album to date, Modney – formerly known as Josh Modney, violinist and Executive Director of the composer-performer collective Wet Ink Ensemble and a member of the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble – stakes his claim at the forefront of contemporary creative music. Due out May 3, 2024 via Pyroclastic Records, Ascending Primes is a strikingly original collection of music that boldly and imaginatively bridges complex composition and daring improvisation, the cerebral and the visceral. Built on the foundation of Modney's interests in tuning systems and exploring extremes of harmonicity and dissonance, the album convenes several prime-numbered ensembles, each made up of the composer's peers in the uncategorizable terrain between modern jazz and classical practices. In various combinations, Ascending Primes features such acclaimed composer-performers as saxophonist Anna Webber, trumpeter Nate Wooley, cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, pianist Cory Smythe, vocalist and electronic musician Charmaine Lee, electronic musician Sam Pluta, horn player David Byrd-Marrow, tuba player Dan Peck, drummer Kate Gentile, and fellow string players Gabriela Díaz, Erica Dicker, Eddy Kwon, Kyle Armbrust, Joanna Mattrey, Mariel Roberts and Lester St. Louis. "Over the past decade, the New York scene has grown into a special incubator for adventurous music, " Modney says. "There is now a thriving overlap between musicians trained in jazz and classical music who are committed to innovative sound-making and who have found common ground." Modney himself is a prime example, having arrived in New York City over a decade ago with an interest in melding his classical training and virtuosity with new modes of improvisation. He is a member of two of the most revered ensembles working in those areas today, the International Contemporary Ensemble and the Wet Ink Ensemble. "My path to becoming a composer was through finding my voice and my creativity as an improviser, " he explains. "I'm very interested in that line between these different modes of creativity, the liminal spaces between improvisation and composition where you become overwhelmed by the music." The music of Ascending Primes is rooted in Just Intonation – a tuning practice based on whole number ratios, rather than the octave-dividing Equal Temperament system more familiar from the piano keyboard. The five ensembles on the album grow in size by prime number intervals – from Modney alone, on the stark and dynamic opener "Ascender, " to the 11member undectet of the three-movement "Event Horizon." All of the pieces were devised with the distinctive practices and techniques of Modney's innovative collaborators in mind, leading to a wholly unique soundworld. Like the seventeen Ellsworth Kelly postcard collages featured throughout the album design, Modney's music employs radical juxtaposition, overlaying organic, cultural, and elemental materials to create a supercharged new space. While the structure of the music has a mathematical basis, the results are far from an intellectual exercise, instead alternating moments of transcendent beauty, arresting violence, dense textures, and abrasive elegance. Modney's music erases distinctions between the written and the spontaneous, relying on the brilliantly-honed instincts of his chosen collaborators to breathe life into his compositions in search of the ecstatic. "The music that I've been drawn to over the course of my life is simultaneously head-based and heart-based, " Modney explains. "Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring, ' for instance, is a very detailed piece that is also highly visceral. Gérard Grisey's 'Les Espaces Acoustiques' is spectral music that has a mathematical foundation, but it also hits you right in the guts." "Ascender" debuts a new practice for Modney, the use of distortion pedal (controlled via volume pedal) to alter and expand the sonic palette of the violin, adding transformative properties of richly consonant harmony and sheer noise. The piece is self-contained, yet also serves as a kind of overture for the album as a whole: in a sense, the pieces all devise ways to orchestrate Modney's expansive voice for a full ensemble, inspiring vigorous improvisational flights. The atmospheric, entrancing "Lynx" features a trio with Modney's fellow Wet Ink Ensemble members Mariel Roberts and Sam Pluta, while "Everything Around It Moves" mines bracing new sensation from the familiar piano quintet context. The four-movement "Fragmentation and the Single Form" forefronts Charmaine Lee's voice and Ben LaMar Gay's cornet with a jazz-fluent rhythm section, while again distorting Modney's violin for a gripping, tension-fueled experience. Finally, the undectet of "Event Horizon" is a nebulous vortex of coruscating harmonies. "My choices on Ascending Primes were driven by a desire to work with people I really admire, " Modney says, "each of whom has their own amazing solo practice. As the pieces get bigger, they serve more and more as scaffolding for us all to play together and to be creative. I'm fortunate to have found myself among a critical mass of adventurous practitioners from jazz and classical spheres who are all interested in this ecstatic musical space." Modney Modney is a foremost interpreter of adventurous contemporary music and has cultivated a holistic artistic practice as a violinist, composer, solo improviser, bandleader, writer, and collaborator. Modney’s debut solo record, Engage (New Focus), was lauded by The New York Times as “…a highlight of 2018…one of the most intriguing programs of the year…radical in its execution”. The triple-disc album features music written for Modney by Kate Soper, Eric Wubbels, Taylor Brook, and Sam Pluta alongside groundbreaking interpretations of works by Anthony Braxton and J.S. Bach. The third disc is devoted to Modney’s own solo works “…where [he] pushes the boundaries of his instrument and his body without any kind of treatments, alternate tunings, or editing… powerful testimony to sound-seeking by one of today’s most intrepid experimentalists.” Modney’s followup album of quartet compositions in 2022, Near To Each (Carrier Records), featuring Ingrid Laubrock (sax), Cory Smythe (piano), Mariel Roberts (cello), and Modney on violin, was lauded by KLANG as "wonderfully composed… remarkably performed… a quartet that is playing individually and collectively at the height of their powers." Modney has received awards from The Shifting Foundation and Millay Arts. Modney is the violinist and Executive Director of the composer-performer collective Wet Ink Ensemble, and a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble. www.modney.art Pyroclastic Records Pianist-composer Kris Davis founded Pyroclastic Records in 2016. By supporting artists in the dissemination of their work, Pyroclastic empowers emerging and established artists to continue challenging conventional genre-labeling within their fields. Pyroclastic also seeks to galvanize and grow a creative community, providing opportunities, supporting diversity and expanding the audience for noncommercial art. Its albums often feature artwork by prominent visual artists—Ellsworth Kelly, Julian Charriére, Dike Blair, Raymond Pettibon and Gabriel de la Mora among recent examples. 2024 Pyroclastic projects include albums from Ches Smith, David Leon, Modney, Brandon Seabrook, Patricia Brennan and Kris Davis. write your comments about the article :: © 2024 Jazz News :: home page |