RECORDINGS
Jeff Myers - Requiem
feat. Rachel Calloway and JACK Quartet
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Requiem, the highly-anticipated debut album from composer Jeff Myers, gently and beautifully addresses one of the most difficult aspects of our humanity. This is an essential, welcome, and modern take on the universal experience of death and loss. Through his unique combination of lyric vocal lines, microtonality, and just intonation, Myers achieves a rapturous space of solace that feels suspended in time. Tempering his traditionally “brilliant and powerful” (The Classical Voice of New England) style with a tender intimacy, Myers builds a mysterious and compelling sound world that is immediately gripping and deeply cathartic. The main work on the album, Requiem Aeternam, unfurls in two parts: I. Grieving and II. Dying. It interweaves a secular exploration of death by diverse poets such as Rumi, Petrarch, Frida Schanz, and Oscar Wilde with a traditional Filipino lullaby and Christian liturgical texts.
Written as a response to the sudden death of Myers’ sister-in-law in 2010, this music provides an earthly path for integration and emotional processing outside the containers of any strictly religious context. Poignant, healing, and transcendent, the work is a modern masterpiece, expertly brought to life by the GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet and renowned vocalist Rachel Calloway.
The final track on the album, dopamine, is an early collaboration between Myers and the JACK Quartet from 2009. In this fascinating tapestry of color, the re-tuned quartet plays almost entirely in harmonics to create a kind of meta-instrument that offers a both resonance and bite, driven to glorious capitulation.
This compelling album combines material that is at once personal and universal with the intimacy of one of the world’s leading string quartets, and a voice of “penetrating clarity… [and] considerable depth of expression.” (The New York Times) The result is a highly charged and exciting encapsulation of Myers’ style and potential.
Written as a response to the sudden death of Myers’ sister-in-law in 2010, this music provides an earthly path for integration and emotional processing outside the containers of any strictly religious context. Poignant, healing, and transcendent, the work is a modern masterpiece, expertly brought to life by the GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet and renowned vocalist Rachel Calloway.
The final track on the album, dopamine, is an early collaboration between Myers and the JACK Quartet from 2009. In this fascinating tapestry of color, the re-tuned quartet plays almost entirely in harmonics to create a kind of meta-instrument that offers a both resonance and bite, driven to glorious capitulation.
This compelling album combines material that is at once personal and universal with the intimacy of one of the world’s leading string quartets, and a voice of “penetrating clarity… [and] considerable depth of expression.” (The New York Times) The result is a highly charged and exciting encapsulation of Myers’ style and potential.
The Angry Birds of Kauai
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Wizard Island for septet
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TAG for 2 violins and electronic drone
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Turtle and Rat
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The Age of Assassins
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Five Parametric Etudes
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