Extinction is the second release for the new Extinction label. Like its companion Light Years, Extinction presents a mind-blowing spectrum, testament to one of the most spectacular creative journeys in music. Aydin Esen, despite international fame, has until now largely flown below official radar. With Extinction, his most astonishing and audacious works have been unleashed.
Extinction opens with a monumental piano improvisation, “Es." Piano, of course, is Aydin Esen's terra firma, the instrument he has been associated with since his childhood days as a prodigy. Elements of his inimitable style are all here, including a sweetness and delicacy of touch and phrasing paired with a wild sort of exuberance, a nearly trans-human technical command. It is a glorious tribute to the jazz world the composer made an early name in, while displaying a piano radicalism immediately recognizable--a one-of-a- kind voice.
The swarm of ideas in this spontaneous composition, conceived and played in real time, whet the palate for what will follow, a series of written compositions, products of years, even decades, of unremitting thought.
Extinction brings us to new worlds, allows us to experience them in all of their beautiful strangeness. The scope of such worlds runs from the molecular scale, (as in the insistent and ominous piece “Strain"), to the planetary, (check out the abrupt and scorching, “Surface Incident"), to the infinite and transcendental ("Ananke").
But Extinction is not a collection of pieces, an assortment of compositions. It is an end-to-end statement, a perfect work of art, from which nothing may be added or subtracted without adversely affecting the whole. It should be allowed to unwrap on its own terms.
Aydin Esen today is a sort of universal musician, one who has reached a condition of such mastery, there are no musical worlds closed to his interrogation. Alone among the arts, only music grants us access to the crystal, the exploding star, the joyous and also heart-rending condition of human life.
This music is a gift.
Richard Harth
Executive Director, Extinction
