Elodie Lauten - Piano Works Revisited

Elodie Lauten - Piano Works Revisited

Digital

$8.00

Elodie Lauten - Piano Works Revisited

$8.00

Elodie Lauten 1980s 1990s Piano Archival Compilation Reissue

Description

2CD collection of piano works by postminimalist composer Elodie Lauten, most of which is available for the first time ever on CD. The albums Piano Works (1983) and Concerto for Piano and Orchestral Memory (1984), both reissued here in their entirety with remastered sound, incorporate found and prerecorded sounds into lyrical, minimalist piano works in a highly personal, even baroque, style. They are deeply meditative and expansive but do not require the epic lengths enjoyed by Glass, Reich, Riley. Pop-song length seems to be the standard on these albums, and yet the deep sensitivity of the work is never betrayed by brevity. Contemporary luminaries Arthur Russell and Peter Zummo contribute to the Concerto.

Also included in this set is Lauten's performance of her later masterpiece Variations on the Orange Cycle (1991), which was included in Chamber Music America's Century List, and other previously unreleased tracks.

Liner Notes

Elodie Lauten "Piano Works Revisited", Notes by John Schaefer and Elodie Lauten

March 10, 2010

Track List

DIGITAL TRACK LIST

Piano Works

Cat Counterpoint (3:26)
Revelation (5:55)
Adamantine Sonata (2:55)
Alien Heart (6:34)
Imaginary Husband (5:01)Concerto for Piano and Orchestral Memory
Allegro Vivace (4:34)
Andante (Dedicated to the Impossible) (9:22)
Orchestral Memory (5:59)
Con Spirito (5:01)
Moderato (5:52)
Tempo di Habanera (4:51)
Andante Cantabile (5:18)
Orchestral Memory Exit (0:55)
Tango (Vocal Version) (4:07) (Bonus Track)
Variations on the Orange Cycle (36:02)
Sonate Modale (1985, Live at Music Gallery, Toronto) (24:59)

Credits

PIANO WORKS 1983, Cat Collectors LP CKG 7000
Elodie Lauten: piano, sequencer, sound loops

CONCERTO FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRAL MEMORY (1984)
Cat Collectors LP CKG 777
Elodie Lauten: piano, sequencer, Fairtight CMI, processed tapes
Arthur Russell: cello
Peter Zummo: trombone
Voirabh: violin
Ron Lawrence: viola
Studio: Battery Sound
Engineer: Mark Freedman

TANGO (VOCAL VERSION, 1985)
unreleased
[solo piano version, 1986, Tellus #16 cassette]

VARIATIONS ON THE ORANGE CYCLE (1991)
2006, Piano Soundlracks, 4Tay
Elodie Lauten: solo piano

SONATE MODALE (1985, live at Music Gallery, Toronto)
unreleased
Elodie Lauten: piano, processed tapes

All selections remastered by Tom Gordon at Imirage Sound Lab

Press

Elodie Lauten made important works for the stage, like The Death of Don Juan, and also the keyboard, where her music has a touch of both Riley and Young in its mix of repeated ideas and improvisation. Variations on the Orange Cycle began as an improvisation, recorded and transcribed for others to play. It’s meditative, bluesy, and reins in free passages with the insistent call of a single, repeated note.

George Grella, Bandcamp DailyLink

I was sitting somewhere in a dangerous world, wondering what would happen to the girl at the piano. She changed my mind with mantras that shifted slowly from one troubled mood to the next, the new one only slightly – but subtly – different from the last.

Gregory Sandow, Village Voice

her [Lauten's] assembled “orchestral memory” (which consists of a combination of sequencers and processed tapes with a real time performance by Peter Zummo on trombone and a trio of string players, among them the late, lamented split-personality—minimalist and disco—composer Arthur Russell on cello) offers a fascinating compositional model for composers who want to explore the powerful us-versus-them paradigm of the concerto form. Overall this collection of Lauten’s piano works is a wonderful portal back into an era when the Downtown New York scene promulgated a music that combined so-called compositional rigor with the energy of the nascent punk rock and new wave scenes.

New Music BoxLink

About Elodie Lauten

Elodie Lauten was born in Paris in 1950, moved to the US in 1972, and tragically died all too young on June 3, 2014. The daughter of the jazz pianist and drummer Errol Parker, she studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire at age seven, and started composing at age twelve. In New York in 1973, she responded to an ad in the Village Voice, and ended up as lead singer for a band called Flaming Youth. She shaved her head, long before that was a common fashion statement. Flaming Youth's guitarist Denise Filiu was living at the time with the famous poet Allen Ginsburg, who also took Elodie in and gave her a Farfisa organ so she could accompany him when he sang and chanted. She studied with La Monte Young, whose Well-Tuned Piano her keyboard music occasionally brings to mind. Despite these radical beginnings, Elodie poured the creative energy of her later years into the forms of opera and oratorio, beginning in 1985 with The Death of Don Juan, and including such large works as Deus ex Machina, Orfreo, and Waking in New York, this last based on Ginsburg poems that he had selected for her. Just before her death she was awarded the Robert Rauschenberg Award, the money from which she used to stage a new performance of Waking in New York. She was too ill to attend it, and died the next day.

– Kyle Gann, from Elodie Lauten as Postminimalist Improviser

Elodie Lauten Artist Page