Athlantis

Eyvind Kang (Composer), Aldo Sisillo (Conductor), Ensemble di Ottoni di Modena (Performer), Alberto Capelli (Performer), Jessica Kenney (Performer), Mike Patton (Performer)

Product Details

• Performer: Ensemble di Ottoni di Modena, Alberto Capelli, Jessica Kenney, Mike Patton
• Conductor: Aldo Sisillo
• Composer: Eyvind Kang
• Audio CD (July 10, 2007)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Ipecac Recordings
• ASIN: B000QUU4YG
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #211,879 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Track Listings

1. Ministers Of Friday

2. Vespertiliones

3. Andegavenses

4. Rabianara

5. Inquisitio

6. Ros Vespertinus

7. Conciliator

8. Iupitter

9. Repetitio

10. Lamentatio

11. Athlantis

12. Aquilas

Editorial Reviews

UKTribe.net, 8/20/2007

A piece of music to wake, read the newspaper ,think about sumertime in Italy, I have had no great need to go to this land but this cd makes me want to go and sit in church & hear this . this would just sound great in norwich catherdal, along with sunn o))) - I , posted 08/20/07

Product Description

"In Regina, Saskatchewan, our elementary school teacher used to play classical records, and make large diagrams which followed the form of the music- while listening she would point to the place in the diagram, and introduce a lot of us kids to the repertoire that way. I got interested in music, started learning the violin.

As a teenager, I played in the youth orchestra, as well as played bass in some top 40 bands. I listened to a lot of classical music, as well as stuff like Prince, Bad Brains, etc. I moved over to Seattle in the early 90s, where I met the jazz violinist Michael White, who was an enormous influence on me. At Cornish college I went to talks by John Cage, Lou Harrison, Toru Takemitsu, which made a strong impression. In '98 I studied with the great violinist Dr. N. Rajam in Mumbai, which really changed the way I heard music. I'm interested in "sound", and in all the musical traditions that treat of it. I've met a lot of great musicians and learned from them.

I played viola with different bands, like Bill Frisell and Secret Chiefs, and created string arrangements for a lot of other artists, Laurie Anderson, Blonde Redhead, Laura Veirs, the Stares, and many more. It's great to collaborate with musicians, to see how it works, from different points of view, how it sounds, how they do it, what one listens to in sound. I don't believe you can know an objective music with notes, tempos, etc; rather, it's mostly about the process which is intersubjective. At the same time, when the thought of music appears, I bring it out. The CDs that I've recorded, 7 NADEs and Theater of Mineral NADEs, the Story of Iceland, Live Low to the Earth in the Iron Age, Virginal Co-ordinates, are mostly about the thought of music, the idea that you get, when you think of a sound, which triggers a memory, for example, which makes you feel a certain way.

I always love to read Renaissance era literature and philosophy, so writing the choral piece Athlantis was a great chance to interact with one of my favorites, Giordano Bruno. The book that I worked with is called Cantus Circaeus. I went to the Ritman library in Amsterdam and held the original edition in my hands; I went through it page by page. Surprisingly, it was a very small book, sort of like those moleskin notebooks that people carry around these days. While composing, I sometimes felt that I was sharing a kind of joke, or riddle, with Bruno, that we were almost laughing together. I don't know why, but I was compelled to combine his text with some obscure poems from Bishop Marbode of Rennes, and some lines from the Hungarian epic Planctus Destructionis.

The piece is something like an oratorio, with the incredible singers Mike Patton and Jessika Kenney on the main parts. I studied and set the text; I did the ground work and created the musical space. All of the singers, choir and soloists, came in and inhabited it and made it their own."

- Eyvind Kang, 2007

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kang music, August 18, 2007

By	Mr. Richard K. Weems "emperor_weems" (Fair Lawn, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Eyvind Kang is indeed enigmatic. His first release on Tzadik, 7 NADEs, was a blizzard of sound, from noise to jazz to French lyrics. His followup, Theater of Mineral NADEs, was a little more partitioned, but still a great mix of styles, from ancient rhythms to reggae. From there, he has done work with Secret Chiefs 3 (check out Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws, Hurqalya if you want to hear Secret Chiefs 3 at their Kang best), the Bill Frisell quartet, and seems to play any kind of music invented (and then some).

But all in all, Kang seems to be the most modern kind of composer--not one who is trying to revive European traditions or fight entropy and try to revive classical traditions by inventing some new style he can talk about on the lecture circuit, but takes the essences of music around him, whether it be Zornian noise or simple rhythms; this in confirmed in this recording, a cycle of choral and orchestral music that feels more fresh and accesible than many other academic classical music nowadays.

What I love most about Kang is his sense of earnestness, even when doing something as strange as The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order, for any kind of music needs such focused, immediate effort. Mike Patton contributes his voice to this project, though don't expect to hear anything like his Hemophiliac work, and maybe Patton's voice stands out a little too easily from the other choral work here, but Kang clearly has a sense of control here, a sound that is more contemporary than backward-looking.

Maybe not a toe-tapper, but let's face it--if you're a fan of Eyvind Kang, and I'm talking ALL of Eyvind Kang, from Dying Ground to The Story of Iceland to Sweetness of Sickness, you must not be expecting anything terribly familiar. This is Kang music, and I love to sit back and let this guy tell me with every recording what that really means.

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good, October 10, 2009

By	Riley Haas "super_chicken46" (Hamilton, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm mystified when I read a review of something like this that claims it's music for the musicians themselves. That just indicates the poverty of this whole "punk"-influenced reviewing trend we've had going for the last few decades. These people don't know western art music when they hear it. Worse yet, this music was...um...commissioned...you know, by and for other people. Anyway, this is interesting stuff, but it feels a little scattershot and incomplete. I don't know what this festival is like so I have no idea if this music was for a specific program or what. As a stand-alone album, it lacks coherence, but it is musically interesting enough to keep me listening to it again and again.

3.0 out of 5 stars mike patton fans, August 4, 2009

By	T. Touchet "t t" (italy) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

if your a mike patton fanatic like i am this is album featuring patton is very different it's good but i perfer virginal co-ordinates over this one