artist: STEPHEN VITIELLO with EIGHTH BLACKBIRD
title: untitled
label: Magic If / IEA
country: USA
format: CD
title: untitled
label: Magic If / IEA
country: USA
format: CD
A collaboration between American sound artist Stephen Vitiello and the Grammy award
winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird.
Molly Alicia Barth, flutes
Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets
Matt Albert, violin & viola
Nicholas Photinos, cello
Matthew Duvall, percussion
Lisa Kaplan, piano
Stephen Vitiello, mixing, processing & field recordings
"This project started with a commission from Eighth Blackbird and Ben Broening to create a
multi-channel composition for the University Of Richmond's Third Practice Electroacoustic
Music Festival. I wrote out a set of instructions for each musician and recorded them
separately from the rest of the group. The first sessions with Molly, Michael, Nick and Lisa. I
started to work with their sounds, layering, processing, adding and eliminating elements until
I found something that felt musical and spatial.
The instructions were simple:, play a pattern of 3 notes, play the sound of an animal, etc.
interpretation was wide open. molly played the sound of a charging baby boar on her flute.
lisa played a short pattern on the piano that i used over and over again. following the
premiere of 'rush,' i did another session with matthew and matt. this resulted in 'one violin.'
from there i just kept on going with the sounds i had recorded to produce the rest of the
record." (Stephen Vitiello)
Comes in professional Eco-Wallet packaging.
winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird.
Molly Alicia Barth, flutes
Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets
Matt Albert, violin & viola
Nicholas Photinos, cello
Matthew Duvall, percussion
Lisa Kaplan, piano
Stephen Vitiello, mixing, processing & field recordings
"This project started with a commission from Eighth Blackbird and Ben Broening to create a
multi-channel composition for the University Of Richmond's Third Practice Electroacoustic
Music Festival. I wrote out a set of instructions for each musician and recorded them
separately from the rest of the group. The first sessions with Molly, Michael, Nick and Lisa. I
started to work with their sounds, layering, processing, adding and eliminating elements until
I found something that felt musical and spatial.
The instructions were simple:, play a pattern of 3 notes, play the sound of an animal, etc.
interpretation was wide open. molly played the sound of a charging baby boar on her flute.
lisa played a short pattern on the piano that i used over and over again. following the
premiere of 'rush,' i did another session with matthew and matt. this resulted in 'one violin.'
from there i just kept on going with the sounds i had recorded to produce the rest of the
record." (Stephen Vitiello)
Comes in professional Eco-Wallet packaging.
"Sound artist Vitiello's work, rich in concept, marked by process, tends to get overshadowed
by lesser experimentalists worth half his salt. Masterminding broad-based drone and
environmental creations years before they became virtually de rigueur amongst fringe artists
and their music, Vitiello's methodologies at least yield tangible results. Neither too academic
nor pretentious, he's crafted some remarkable sounds sourced from a number of unlikely
situations. Early albums such as The Light Of Falling Cars and Chairs Not Stairs utilized
conventional synthesizers and samplers (not to mention guitars) to achieve their ends: though
beautifully realized, and reasonably unique, mostly recorded for films and installations, they
nevertheless represented Vitiello's muse-in-progress. More significantly, he recorded sounds
on a floor near the top of one of the World Trade Center towers in 2001 that not only capture
the building's own innate character but remain vivid aural memories rendered more poignant
by what would transpire later that year.
Collaborating (in a manner of speaking) with the chamber music collective known as Eighth
Blackbird, Vitiello applies his trusty mixer and processors to fragments of sounds provided by
the sextet, to which are added his indomitable soupçon of field recordings, the sum total
further combined, dissected and reintegrated into the sonic matrix. Vitiello's genius lies in
making qualitative decisions as to what should and shouldn't be messed with; granted, he
generally tweaks the sounds in some kind of fashion, but when left somewhat 'au natural',
subtly altered, does the fundamental pleasures of his constructs bear fruit. On 'Post 3P', flutes
are evident but their decay is smeared across a stereo field of drones like a hastily daubed-on
glob of jelly; glittering reverberations of percussion and strangely fluttering, gasping sounds
blur the picture further, suggesting what might arise should AMM zap the prams of your
average contemporary lap-topper. 'One Violin' appears on face obvious enough, but Vitiello
becomes restless, letting the strings surge and congeal with a baroque gait, except for a
yawning curtain of glitchy aftereffects that transform the proceeding stateliness into
something quite otherworldly.
It's hard to say if this latest recording represents Vitiello at the top of his game; there's enough
mutational imperatives going on here that should satisfy those curious enough about how you
might redesign 'chamber music' for the existent century. The closing 'Rush & Lullaby (2)' is a
case-in-point: again, one easily recognizes a plucked string here, a mournful chord there, a
stalled bleat and errant squeak, but Vitiello skillfully weaves the puzzle pieces together so
well it practically augurs in a post-post-modern classical (21st century?) ideal, moistening the
often parched realms of that venerable genre; not a bad thing by any means."
(Darren Bergstein - Squid's Ear)
by lesser experimentalists worth half his salt. Masterminding broad-based drone and
environmental creations years before they became virtually de rigueur amongst fringe artists
and their music, Vitiello's methodologies at least yield tangible results. Neither too academic
nor pretentious, he's crafted some remarkable sounds sourced from a number of unlikely
situations. Early albums such as The Light Of Falling Cars and Chairs Not Stairs utilized
conventional synthesizers and samplers (not to mention guitars) to achieve their ends: though
beautifully realized, and reasonably unique, mostly recorded for films and installations, they
nevertheless represented Vitiello's muse-in-progress. More significantly, he recorded sounds
on a floor near the top of one of the World Trade Center towers in 2001 that not only capture
the building's own innate character but remain vivid aural memories rendered more poignant
by what would transpire later that year.
Collaborating (in a manner of speaking) with the chamber music collective known as Eighth
Blackbird, Vitiello applies his trusty mixer and processors to fragments of sounds provided by
the sextet, to which are added his indomitable soupçon of field recordings, the sum total
further combined, dissected and reintegrated into the sonic matrix. Vitiello's genius lies in
making qualitative decisions as to what should and shouldn't be messed with; granted, he
generally tweaks the sounds in some kind of fashion, but when left somewhat 'au natural',
subtly altered, does the fundamental pleasures of his constructs bear fruit. On 'Post 3P', flutes
are evident but their decay is smeared across a stereo field of drones like a hastily daubed-on
glob of jelly; glittering reverberations of percussion and strangely fluttering, gasping sounds
blur the picture further, suggesting what might arise should AMM zap the prams of your
average contemporary lap-topper. 'One Violin' appears on face obvious enough, but Vitiello
becomes restless, letting the strings surge and congeal with a baroque gait, except for a
yawning curtain of glitchy aftereffects that transform the proceeding stateliness into
something quite otherworldly.
It's hard to say if this latest recording represents Vitiello at the top of his game; there's enough
mutational imperatives going on here that should satisfy those curious enough about how you
might redesign 'chamber music' for the existent century. The closing 'Rush & Lullaby (2)' is a
case-in-point: again, one easily recognizes a plucked string here, a mournful chord there, a
stalled bleat and errant squeak, but Vitiello skillfully weaves the puzzle pieces together so
well it practically augurs in a post-post-modern classical (21st century?) ideal, moistening the
often parched realms of that venerable genre; not a bad thing by any means."
(Darren Bergstein - Squid's Ear)