"This is an artist dedicated to questioning boundaries, pushing limits, and flirting with failure in all its forms. These things take a toll. But the next shore is already in sight - the last essay in The Complete Syllables Music box outlines a proposal for adapting the system for chamber ensemble." -Eric McDowell, Free Jazz Blog
—
The Complete Syllables Music is the first collected edition of trumpet experimentalist Nate Wooley’s groundbreaking solo compositions. His attempt to sidestep a positive/negative value based musical aesthetic and to expand his own preconceptions of what the trumpet tone should be led him to the construction of a new compositional language, based on adjusting the physical parameters of how one makes sound. This new way of thinking was based on the shape and positioning of the oral cavity necessary to produce the phonetic sounds in speech; using the International Phonetic Alphabet as a new kind of tone-row to create structures on the position of the teeth, tongue, throat and nasal cavity. The result is an approach to the sound of the trumpet that is involved in traditional nor extended technique, but treats virtuosity as a non-issue. The box set features the first two works in this vein, reissued from out of print recordings on the Peira and Mnoád labels and is capped off with the most ambitious, and final solo version of the Syllables pieces, the 150 minute long electro-acoustic masterpiece For Kenneth Gaburo.
credits
released April 3, 2017
Nate Wooley: trumpet,amplifier, tape, analog synthesizers
Recorded Disc 1 Recorded at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY Originally Released on Peira Records October 1, 2011 Recorded, mixed and mastered by Philip White
Disc 2 Recorded at I Beam, Brooklyn, NY Originally Released on Mnóad Records October 7, 2012 Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jeremiah Cymerman
Discs 3 and 4 Recorded at Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Troy, NY Previously Unreleased Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jeff Svatek
supported by 5 fans who also own “The Complete Syllables Music”
I really appreciate that with such a large group of musicians the overall sound and experience of listening is really spacious, never cluttered. The lovely recording helps that a lot, and of course the compositional aspects that make it breathe are superb- it gets more and more fun as I listen again and again. Jasper Skydecker