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Sean Noonan's A Gambler's Hand Is A Further Step Forward In His Evolving Blend Of Music And Narrative

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Drummer's Latest, Along With Oudist Gordon Grdina's Her Eyes Illuminate, Will Be Released by Songlines on August 14

Songlines Recordings will once again traverse musical boundaries and challenge genre specificity with its two August releases: Sean Noonan's A Gambler's Hand and Gordon Grdina's Haram's Her Eyes Illuminate.

While Noonan's last release for Songlines, Boxing Dreams (2008), featured such unlikely combinations as Irish and West African vocalists singing simultaneously in Gaelic and Bambara against raucous guitar and hyperactive drums, A Gambler's Hand tones things down just a bit. It's a suite of pieces for sometimes amplified string quartet and drums, largely composed, but with improvisational sections, inspired equally by the great string quartet tradition (Beethoven and Bartok in particular), the idea of a third stream uniting jazz and classical forms and approaches, Sean's evolving drum language and varied compositiomal interests, and his inclination to stir diverse elements together into something wildly imaginative that also turns out to be unexpectedly coherent.

The string quartet on A Gambler's Hand is comprised of Tom Swafford and Patti Kilroy on violins, Leanne Darling on viola, and David West on cello.

Boxing Dreams was a conceptual album of sorts, a suite of “boxed" dream fragments drawn from literature and folklore (ancient invocations, cautionary tales, psychedelic nightmares),collected from different cultures and retold from the perspective of a 21st century Irish-American punk/jazz downtown New Yorker who'd fallen in love with storytelling and African music. A Gambler's Hand is the music for an original story of Sean's, a dreamlike tale about an obsessive gambler who eventually finds himself immured inside a wall and lives out his lonely existence there. The music parallels the moods and liminal psychic states of the story's first person narrator, and there's an interesting connection back to a dreamlike real life situation.

“I first developed the story line in my old basement apartment where I could hear a man through the walls. I wasn't sure where the sound was coming from, but soon realized that it was from the apartment next door," says Sean. “I never saw him come outside and I was intrigued by who this person could be. In an absurd moment one day, I imagined he was trapped inside my wall and was trying to get out and communicate with me. Often he was screaming and pounding on the wall and I thought maybe my music and drumming would comfort him. So I began communicating with him through playing my drums...A few years later I got into Beckett and became interested in expanding the concepts of theater of the absurd and minimalism in plays such as That Time and Footfalls...Evolving my 'wandering' folk theory has led to extending my study of folklore and storytelling into a more personal form of expression."

The music draws from a diverse range of compositional styles, from Neoclassical and 20th century American experimentalism (Nancarrow, Cowell) to downtown contemporary(Zorn), as well as punk and free jazz. But for the last few years Noonan has also been telling stories from the drum kit in semi-improvisational counterpoint to his drumming (as can be heard on his self-released jazz-rock quartet record, Set the Hammer Free). In this project, the relationship of the drums and strings developed from Sean's experience of hearing/playing music from the drum position - conceptually and even literally the strings are positioned as extensions of the drummer's limbs: “There are many unique sonic amalgams a drummer experiences sitting behind the drum set that are not heard by the listener. I wanted to capture and exploit these qualities and emulate them in my string arrangements and in the process of mixing the album," explains Sean. “So I positioned the two violins far left and right, the viola mid-left and the cello mid-right. The drum set faces directly toward the quartet. I thought it would be quite interesting to intertwine or overlap the strings and percussion and treat it all as one organism."

The string players which Sean chose all have experience in improvisation, and it shows. “I want to praise these great musicians...I knew it wouldn't be easy to find players with the right background and the level of concentration to execute and interpret my written compositions and on the turn of a dime be able to improvise in a free-form manner."

On A Gambler's Hand, the narrative elements are left to the listener's imagination to find in the music, or not find, if one prefers. However, the story of A Gambler's Hand has also been crafted into a 3o minute-long film, which was shot in Poland by the composer and director Marta Kopec, and in which Sean plays the role of the gambler.

For those in the New York area, the music and film will both be premiered at Roulette on September 24, featuring two string quartets: the Momenta Quartet and a quartet of improvisers including Jason Hwang, Tom Swafford and Mat Maneri.

Purchase

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Track Listing

A Gambler’s Hand; Caught in the Act; Lully; Banshee Dance; Thank You; Ghost Quarters (Improv Canon); Triptych (A Far, No Silence/Forced Meatballs/A Far, So a Far); I Feel the Clouds; Courage Unleashed; Monster of Solitude.

Personnel

Additional Instrumentation

Sean Noonan: drum set, percussion, conductor, composer; Tom Swafford: violin; Patti Kilroy: violin; Leanne Darling: viola; David West: cello.

Album information

Title: A Gambler's Hand | Year Released: 2012 | Record Label: Songlines Recordings

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