Private Dances (New Albion 137)
Contains:
Private Dances
Hovenweep
Time Does Not Exist
The Day Revisited
On Reading Emerson
Performers: Sarah Cahill, The Da Capo Chamber Players, Bernard Gann
"Gann's methods may be cerebral, but his results are immediately appealing. Part of the reason may be that while his complexity is primarily rhythmic, his harmonic language is unconventionally but recognizably tonal. In Private Dances, the complexity of the rhythmic structures sounds natural, never undermining the dance-like character of the movements, and it might not even be apparent to someone who hadn't read the program notes. Each of the remaining pieces, for piano or chamber ensemble, is strikingly atmospheric. With a title taken from Freud, Time Does Not Exist for piano spins gestures of gossamer delicacy into an ethereal, dream-like soundscape. In The Day Revisited, winds and strings tuned to 29-note scale play against... keyboard samplers, and the effect is mesmerizing and mysteriously disorienting.... - Stephen Eddins, AllMusic.com
"Gann brilliantly deconstructs familiar genres like ragtime, boogie-woogie, bop and Tex-Mex and reassembles the pieces in ways that are both achingly familiar and completely new, popular and avant garde, steady and revolutionary, experimental and polished. The combination of microtonal tunings and populist roots gives his music a sound that is simultaneously fresh and nostalgic and completely unlike that of anyone else writing today." - Jerry Bowles, Sequenza21
"Fans of Frank Zappa's Jazz From Hell should check this acoustic masterpiece out. - Art Gumm, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter
"In one 25-minute exhalation, Long Night never strays very far from its quiet, resigned opening. As it progresses, single notes gather together and build into entrancing patterns. Brief lines begin only to be folded into others, then reappear on another of the three pianos. Many of these phrases bounce slowly from piano to piano, slightly out of synch with each other and overlapping like little, cushioned waves. Even when he starts up a section with more of a pulse it's way over on the subtle side. By the end, all of these slow-moving lines are crossing over, above and around each other, making a soothing mix. Bay-Area pianist and new-music heroine Sarah Cahill gives a thoughtful reading to the piece, never hurrying, always relaxed and placing the notes into the air ever so slightly, often sounding like she's off in Keith Jarrett-improvisation-land. The gorgeous sonics make clear which piano she's playing, and if this is a long night, let it go on and on." -- Marc Geelhoed, TimeOut Chicago
"Pianist Susan Cahill performs the three looping parts of the drifting, 25-minute Long Night (for three pianos) by composer, author, and critic Kyle Gann with elegance and control. Ruminative and impressionistic, the pianos sometimes play independently and at other times synchronize with one another. Heavily influenced during the compositional process by German philosopher Martin Heidegger, specifically his rejection of the idea of personality as a unified, linear consciousness, Gann's work likewise presents a series of moods in 'overlapping discontinuity.' Occasionally the pianos cluster into dense pools while at other times singular lines briefly rise to the surface." -- Ron Schepper, Signal to Noise (summer '05), Textura (May '05)
"I played this piece maybe five times in a row last evening. Every time when it was over, I turned it back on . . . the gentle sounds just filled the early evening beautifully. The sun was disappearing and the night was slowly coming, with a nice spring air filling and mixing the room with this music." -- Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly (The Netherlands)
"Even when the ambience seems to be delicate on the first listen, that's only an illusion. There is depth and gorgeous hidden treasures . . . each piano is heard in crystalline fashion. The repetitiveness of the piece itself is hauntingly mesmerizing and draws you in immediately." -- Tom Sekowski, Gaz-Eta (Poland)
"Pianist Sarah Cahill plays all the three different overlapping manual loops that form the tranquilising architecture of Kyle Gann's "Long Night". Although the music is absolutely not intricate (it works wonders as a source of relaxation while you're immersed in different activities wasn't that the very concept of "ambient music"?), the cross between the casual intersections of modulating chords and the Satiesque peacefulness of Cahill's keyboard painting, with its beautiful natural resonance, is complex enough to substantiate the creative effort and imagination Gann has put into the work. The thin air moves in and around this mature evocation of events definitively entrapped in a past from where they can no longer return; just being able to have a peek at them through this ancient looking glass brings long nights of aural fascination. -- Massimo Ricci, Paris Transatlantic
"Because just intonation sounds out of tune to listeners accustomed to Western musical practice, they may need a few minutes to adjust their ears to Gann's tunings. But the effort is worth it - beneath the piece's shiny surfaces is real gold, the kind that makes us want to listen again and again.... Surely those are triads, and yet not quite major or minor ones, but somewhere in between. Rhythms that initially seem to be quarter and eighth notes refuse to come out squarely on the beat. The pulse seems steady at first, until you try to tap. Do we have one foot too many or too few?.... Custer and Sitting Bull... is as disturbing as any musical-political work in recent memory, for its riveting emotional portrayal of Custer, Sitting Bull, and the events surrounding them." Noah Creshevsky, Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter
"Here we have a wonderfully inventive, two-movement work with a grand architecture, sweeping gestures, and a direct appeal to a tradition.... The piece incorporates fiendishly difficult rhythmic relations derived from the music of Conlon Nancarrow, a poetic ambience related to the Southwestern 'desert music' of Peter Garland, and a harmonic practice that is able to accept Native American hymn tunes (as Ives did the Protestant music of his upbringing; this sonata's second movement made me think of 'Thoreau' from the Concord Sonata).... The tornado of a 41/16 passacaglia that ends the first movement is a wonder to behold.... a major contribution to the piano literature." Robert Carl, Fanfare Magazine
"Kyle Gann's Native American homage 'Hesapa ki Lakhota ki Thawapi' ('The Black Hills Belong to the Sioux') is almost too gorgeous for its own good, but is saved from new age vacuousness by an underlying sadness and an intriguing structural complexity...." Bill Tilland, Option
Nude Rolling Down an Escalator (New World 80633-2)
Contains:
Texarkana
Nude Rolling Down an Escalator
Petty Larceny
Bud Ran Back Out
Cosmic Boogie-Woogie
Despotic Waltz
Folk Dance for Henry Cowell
The Waiting
Tango da Chiesa
Unquiet Night
Long Night performed by pianist Sarah Cahill (Cold Blue CB0019)
Custer's Ghost: The Electronic Music of Kyle Gann (Monroe Street msm 60104)
Contains:
Fractured Paradise
How Miraculous Things Happen
Superparticular Woman
So Many Little Dyings
Ghost Town
Custer and Sitting Bull
Other Places by pianist Lois Svard (Lovely Music LCD 3052)
Contains:
Desert Sonata by Kyle Gann
Variations on the Orange Cycle by Elodie Lauten
Trapani Stream by Jerry Hunt
Pick It Up by the Relache Ensemble (Monroe Street msm 60102)
Contains:
Hesapa ki Lakhota ki Thawapi by Kyle Gann
HRT by Michael Nyman,
Octeto Malandro by Arturo Marquez
Paramell VI by Stephen Montague
Ten Years of Essential Music (Monroe Street msm 60101)
Contains:
Snake Dance No. 2 by Kyle Gann
works by Johanna M. Beyer, Robert Ashley, Peter Garland, John Kennedy, Christian Wolff, Malcolm Goldstein, and Charles Wood
Century XXI (New Tone nt6730)
Contains:
Ghost Town by Kyle Gann
works by Carl Stone, Ben Neill, Mikel Rouse, Nicolas Collins
