Cellist Clarice Jensen Releases Debut Solo Album

Cellist Clarice Jensen, artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), releases her debut solo album, For this from that will be filled, worldwide on Miasmah Recordings on April 6, 2018. Building on a long and romantic tradition of solo cello repertoire, Jensen expands and confuses the familiar sound of solo cello through the use of effects pedals, multi-tracking, and tape loops recorded at variable speeds.

The album includes music Jensen conceived of and wrote with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (bc, track one). Jensen collaborated and toured with Jóhannsson from 2009 until his death in February 2018, often with her group ACME. The album also features music she has written for herself (For this from that will be filled a and b, tracks three and four), and Michael Harrison's Cello Constellations (track two) for multi-tracked cello and sine tones, written for Jensen, which meditates on long tones sustained on the acoustic cello among sine tones in an expansive experience of the harmonic series.

Miasmah Recordings founder Erik K. Skodvin says, "With For this from that will be filled, Clarice Jensen has made an incredibly strong first album, which feels like a surreal and futuristic journey through an alternate timeline."

For this from that will be filled was originally conceived as a collaboration between Jensen and the artist Jonathan Turner as an audio-visual live performance which premiered at The Kitchen in New York City in 2017. It is presented here in its pure audio form with album artwork by Turner based on the projection environment of the live performance. In conjunction with the album, four music videos created by Turner utilizing material from the performance projections will be released, each connotating a different structure of unknown scale or place and conjuring the simulated presence of the viewer/listener within this interior.

For this from that will be filled a and b were co-produced by Clarice Jensen and Francesco Donadello and recorded by Donadello at Voxton Studios Berlin. bc was written and produced by Jensen and Jóhann Jóhannsson, with Donadello as co-producer, and recorded at Voxton Studios Berlin. Cello Constellations was written by Michael Harrison and recorded at Virtue and Vice Studios Brooklyn by Dan Bora.

For this from that will be filled will be available from Miasmah Recordings (distributed by Morr Music / Forced Exposure) on vinyl LP, CD, and digitally (FLAC/WAV/MP3).

About the Music:

bc was composed by Clarice Jensen and Jóhann Jóhannsson and explores the experience of repetition. The work displays the startling effect subtle changes have on conventional elements across many repetitions, employing the simple devices of a two-octave c-major scale and a three-chord loop.

Written for Jensen by composer Michael Harrison, Cello Constellations is a vast exploration of the harmonic series scored for solo cello and 25 multi-tracked cellos and sine tones. The work is divided into three sections, each a constellation of pitches that are sustained at very specific hertz numbers. The effect of these precise pitches interacting with each other is such that harmonic beating occurs as an incidental but deliberate component of the work.

From a drone emerges undulating, arpeggiating progressions in For this from that will be filled (a), composed by Clarice Jensen. The cello sound is treated such that it evokes a strange organ that is both grand and deteriorating, at times rich and at times brittle.

In For this from that will be filled (b), also composed by Jensen, drones, long loops, and a field recording from New York's Grand Central Terminal interweave with acoustic and heavily processed cello, which conjures the sound of machinery. The work contemplates sonic repetition and solicits both meditation and disorientation.

About the Artists:

Clarice Jensen is the artistic director of ACME, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. A graduate of The Juilliard School, she studied with Joel Krosnick, Harvey Shapiro and has taken master classes with many composers such as Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter and Roger Reynolds. Recording artists she has collaborated with include Jóhann Jóhannsson, Stars of the Lid, Owen Pallett, Max Richter, Tyondai Braxton and numerous others. Her most recent performances include concerts at The Kings Theatre, Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), Disney Hall, Benaroya Hall, The Sydney Opera House, Big Ears Festival, Duke Performances, BAM, (le) Poisson Rouge, Roulette, and the Isamu Noguchi Museum. Recording collaborations have been released on Deutsche Grammophone, Kranky, Warp, Matador, Brassland, Domino, Merge, Jagjaguwar, Domino, New World, 4AD and many others.

Composer/pianist Michael Harrison has been called "an American Maverick" by Philip Glass. Through his expertise in "just intonation" (pure tunings) and Indian ragas, Harrison has created "a new harmonic world...of vibrant sound" (The New York Times). His professional engagements have included associations with filmmakers, choreographers, visual artists and architects, including filmmaker Bill Morrison, cellist Maya Beiser, Roomful of Teeth, Stuttgart Ballet, Kronos Quartet, JACK Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, and Contemporaneous, as well as with his mentors, composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley. Harrison's compositions have received performances at BAM's Next Wave Festival, Carnegie Hall Hall, Park Avenue Armory, the Louvre, Centre Pompidou, Spoleto Festival USA, the United Nations, Ojai Music Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Big Ears Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, National Sawdust, Le Poisson Rouge, Other Minds Festival, and many more. Recent awards include the American Composers Forum Delegation to Cuba, New Music USA, Aaron Copland Fund, Classical Recording Foundation Award, University of Oregon Distinguished Alumnus Award, IBLA Foundation Grand Prize, and fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, Yaddo, Djerassi, Ucross, Millay, VCCA, Bogliasco, and MacDowell, where he has served on the Fellows Executive Committee since 2013.

Jóhann Jóhannsson was a Berlin-based composer originally from Iceland. His varied and eclectic output includes commissioned works for Bang on a Can, Theatre of Voices, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, and more. His debut album Englabörn appeared in 2002; he released eight solo albums on the Touch, 4AD, and Deutsche Grammophon labels. He also composed music for the theatre, dance and film, including the film scores for The Theory of Everything (2014), Sicario (2015), and Arrival (2016). In 2015, he won the Golden Globe and received Oscar, BAFTA, Grammy and Critics' Choice nominations for his score for The Theory of Everything. In 2010, Jóhannsson collaborated with the American avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison on The Miners' Hymns, a lyrical and reflective response to Britain's lost industrial past and the heritage of the mining communities of Northeast England. In 2015, Drone Mass, Jóhannsson's piece commissioned and performed by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) was premiered at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Jóhannsson premiered another ambitious project at Manchester International Festival in 2017 - Last and First Men, in which Jóhannsson's symphonic soundtrack is paired with text based on Olaf Stapledon's sci-fi novel read by Tilda Swinton, and footage shot by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen in the former Yugoslavia.

Jonathan Turner is a Brooklyn-based artist working in video, animation, print, installation and performance. As a solo artist and as a member of the art collective Yemenwed, Turner has been exploring the circumstances and depiction of an increasingly technology-influenced human and natural world. Turner has collaborated with musicians Glasser and Dutch E Germ, artists Tauba Auerbach, Matt Keegan, Josh Kline and Anicka Yi, and fashion designers Hood by Air and Telfar. Through his solo practice and collaborations, Turner's work has been exhibited at the Perez Art Museum, Miami; Tate Modern, London; MoMA, New York; MoMA P.S.1, New York; MOCA, Los Angeles; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.

Track List:
For this from that will be filled
Clarice Jensen, cello
Miasmah Recordings | April 6, 2018 (worldwide)

1. bc by Clarice Jensen and Jóhann Jóhannsson [12:01]
2. Cello Constellations by Michael Harrison [15:27]
3. For this from that will be filled (a) by Clarice Jensen [5:51]
4. For this from that will be filled (b) by Clarice Jensen [18:22]

To post a comment, you must register and login.