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Gravity and Air

by Andrew McKenna Lee

supported by
Sven Shah
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Sven Shah When first seeing this album, I thought it was going to be a classical guitar recital, but it is far more than that. Mesmerizing! This is a fantastic exercise in working from tradition, but not being stuck in it. Favorite track: Scordatura Suite: II. Gravity and Air.
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    CD comes in a 6-panel digipak containing a color photo, track listing, credits, thanks, and a panel of historical quotes about how great and/or terrible the guitar is. Cover art by Bruce Zeines, Brooklyn, NY.

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about

"Gravity and Air" spotlights composer Andrew McKenna Lee as a virtuoso performer, playing three of his large-scale works for solo classical guitar. The album presents Lee as a composer “continually finding new ways to work the guitar’s rougher, more sensual textures into classical frameworks” (Wondering Sound). “Five Refractions of a Prelude by Bach” takes J.S. Bach’s "Prelude for Lute, BWV 999" and “refracts” it into a set of highly elaborate fantasies that map directly onto critical structural and harmonic elements of Bach’s prelude. The "Scordatura Suite" is a collection of three pieces for solo guitar, each in a different tuning: ”Arabescata,” ”Dizzying Array,” and the stunning title track, ”Gravity and Air.”

Together, these pieces tackle what Lee considers the central challenge of classical guitar composition: how to create a body of resonant sound from a quiet instrument whose notes decay quickly. Lee rejects the time-honored solution of relying heavily on open strings, which in his view lead to “tired chords and sonorities,” preferring to use grace notes, turns, trills, harmonics, arpeggios, and other ornaments to create “a feeling of contained chaos being directed along a carefully and clearly directed path.” His “highly engaging” (The Silent Ballet) playing on Gravity and Air has been said to “tend as much toward elegant restraint as it does to aggressive exuberance” (textura). The album also includes a fifteen-minute chamber work, “the dark out of the nighttime,” scored for guitar, flute, viola, and harp, a nocturnal essay in plucked and sustained sonorities. Lee is joined in this piece by janus (Amanda Baker, flute; Nuiko Wadden, harp; and Beth Meyers, viola).

credits

released January 27, 2009

Andrew McKenna Lee, guitar
Amanda Baker, flute
Beth Meyer, viola
Nuiko Wadden, harp

Recorded by Andrew McKenna Lee and Michael Hammond at Princeton University, and with Alex Kass at St. Peter's Church, New York, NY, in 2008.

Mixed by Andrew McKenna Lee at Still Sound Audio, Brooklyn, NY.

Mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering, Chicago, IL

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Andrew McKenna Lee Brooklyn, New York

Composer and guitarist Andrew McKenna Lee has been commissioned and performed by organizations such as the Brentano Quartet, eighth blackbird, American Composers Orchestra, the New Jersey and Albany Symphonies, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As a guitarist, he has given concerts featuring his original compositions in venues such as Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. ... more

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