I was extremely flattered to learn last week from my esteemed record company that American Voices is being considered for a Grammy nomination in two categories—Best Performance by a Soloist (without Orchestra) and Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Keeril Makan‘s Voice Within Voice. Voting members of the Academy have to cast their ballots by today. Hopefully, it will be an honor to be nominated.
This past July, I had the great honor of playing a concert on the Ocean Grove Summer Stars series with the phenomenal accordionist Lidia Kaminska and everyone’s favorite tech-blogging pianist Hugh Sung. We weren’t quite sure in the beginning how the unusual combination of instruments was going to work out, but I think it’s fair to say that after our first rehearsal we were all pleasantly surprised with the result. Though Lidia and I both played a couple of solo works (and a nice Bach transcription as a duo), the bulk of our program featured arrangements of Piazzolla that Lidia did especially for the group. And since we had Mr. Technology with us, we got some nice video of the concert. And a bit of shameless commerce, a few live recordings from our performance can be downloaded at Amie Street. Enjoy!
American Voices continues to garner some good press. Here’s the latest review courtesy of All Music. And a nice little excerpt:
Brian Sacawa’s American Voices makes an excellent case for Sacawa’s skill as a player, but it also provides insight to the wide variety of options that composers are making available to artists of his caliber and specially developed talents. Rest assured, with players like Brian Sacawa on the scene, guys like John Harle should be running scared.
This past Sunday was the last day of Artscape, the largest free art and music festival in the United States, and the Pramus skate shop decided go guerilla and have an unsanctioned, impromptu concert on the sidewalk in front of the shop at the corner of Mt Royal Ave and Calvert St. As pictured above, Hybrid Groove Project was on the front lines, turning heads and making them nod. It was a nice end to the weekend’s festivities, which also saw HGP perform on John Berndt’s exciting and super-ambitious Exotic Hypnotic series (the events of which have been blogged wonderfully by new Baltimore transplant, composer and audio guy Devin Hurd, over at Hurd Audio).
Oh, and HGP isn’t the only thing on the streets—American Voices is now officially released.
The first review of American Voices has appeared on the august website Sequenza21. Here’s a sample: “American Voices is, without doubt, a CD you need. The performances by Mr. Sacawa are amazing and the music selected is equally so. This is music that every sax player you know needs to perform and that every music listener you know needs to hear.” Stop, stop! I’m blushing. Okay, go on!
I returned to my apartment today to find four large boxes deposited on my doorstep. And within these boxes I was delighted to find many, many copies of American Voices. And let me tell you, it’s about time. I remember taking introductory Ph.D musicology courses with Richard Crawford at the University of Michigan. We’d constantly write, and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. You get the idea. And finally after one rewrite, I remember Prof Crawford saying that as hard as it is to do, there comes a point when you just have push the damn thing away from you, throw up your hands, and say, “I’m done.” That’s kind of how this went.
Okay, now the basics: The CD is available directly from the Innova website until the official street release date of July 24, at which time you’ll be able to get it from Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, or in record stores. Of course, you could also come to the recital and “unofficial” CD release party I’ve got coming up on April 25 to pick up a copy. There’ll be all sorts of celebrities there. Finally, there are many people to thank for making this CD a reality and you should know about them. So read the liner notes.
American Voices is currently in production. Official announcements to follow. Stay tuned.
Nostalgia reigns recently on SLN. Look for the American Voices CD release on Innova in about 2 months. Glass. Hyla. Gordon. Theofanidis. Spangler. Hurst. Makan.
Last Friday’s performance of Unsilent Night in Baltimore lives on! Among the throngs of participants and supporters was one of Mobtown’s most renowned experimental percussionists, Bob Wagner, who came to the event packing a recording device and a microphone on the end of a very long boomstand. Bob herocially braved frigid fingers and tired arms to document the event in sound. Bob writes:
The mic I used is a Sennheiser hypercardiod, so there is very little side sound. (Actually I was hoping for a bit more traffic and city noises.) The sound of the boomboxes is very primary. Also, the recording is a mono two track recording- both sides are identical. I did almost no editing . . . [The recording] is slightly normalized. No other effects.
Download the complete performance here.
Update: Photos from the performance are can be viewed here.
There's more where that came from. Music, videos, and albums by Brian all inside.
