Absolute Bird

Description

Double CD with 44 page book. File Under Contemporary, Classical, Popular, Experimental. This is an extraordinary and important work, breathtaking in its apparent simplicity but raised on a lifetime of study, thought and contrariness. All 41 tracks are, in one way or another, built around transcriptions or recordings of the Australian pied butcherbird - mining every possible variation. Each composition pairs a bird, or other environmental sounds, with one or several instruments: standard, soprano, bass and contrabass recorders, violin, vibraphone, bassoon, viola, flute, cello, bass clarinet, vocal ensemble, bass or string quartet - all seamlessly linked together. As with Berio's cadenzas, virtuosic and extended techniques are standard, and long stretches of each CD side are programmed for continuous and highly contrasted listening. The featured soloists are all recognized virtuosi. This is an important release because although it's clearly music, and clearly composed, it's also birdsong - and we're not sure, culturally, whether we think that's music or not. Then there are the categorically non-musical sounds that play a central and continuous role. It's a CD that will attract attention in experimental and contemporary circles precisely because it puts these elements together in a new and provocative way. There's a story here. The recording quality is excellent, the performers, human and otherwise, virtuosic (without making a fuss about it) and the sweep quietly vast. Both CDs come in the inner covers of a very strong and substantial hard-cover book containing 48 full-colour pages of notes, reflections, explanations and photographs. The American violinist, composer, researcher and author Hollis Taylor - born in America, resident in Australia - has been researching birdsong in academia for over decade, leaving a trail of papers, books and lectures behind her. With a performing path that winds through the Oregon Symphony (youngest member), winning the Oregon State old-time fiddle Championship, playing Jazz, East European folk music and improvisations, fielding orchestra commissions and - alongside fellow violinist and polymath Jon Rose - playing most of Australia's great fences, she has become an leading authority on the lyrebird, the bowerbird and the pied butcherbird, all of whose songs, transcribed, re-composed or straight from the bird's mouth, have populated her recent compositional work - along with the traffic, frogs, insects and other mammals that make up the soundscapes in which she moves. Her book Is Birdsong Music? Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird was also released in 2017. Taylor was concertmaster/soloist with the Wolf Trap Festival Orchestra, Washington, D.C., and toured for two decades with Grammy/Emmy award winner Mason Williams. She performed and composed music for six feature films, including Gus Van Sant's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (on-screen) and My Own Private Idaho. Her book/DVD Post Impressions: A Travel Book for Tragic Intellectuals documents several epic recording trips she took with her partner, violinist Jon Rose, bowing outback fences. She won first prize in composition from APRA (Australia) and the National League of American PEN Women. Her compositions include a violin concerto for Monica Huggett funded by major grants from American Composers Forum and Meet the Composer. She is the author of six books of American fiddle transcriptions and arrangements and contributes regularly in-depth articles, interviews, and music criticism to Strings, Stringendo, and Fiddler magazines.