aa

Michael Gordon's RUSHES transports the sound of seven bassoons into new and otherworldly territory. NOW AVAILABLE! order here: bangonacan.org/store/music/rushes Upcoming performances: Park Avenue Armory, NYC (10/23) 8pm Composed for seven bassoons, Rushes takes its place alongside Michael Gordon’s Timber for expanding the boundaries of a single instrument’s repertoire into unknown (and at times, otherworldly) spaces. Like Timber, which maps new percussive territory for the simantra—a simple two-by-four slab of wood, amplified and played in a group of six to yield trance-like sonic textures—Rushes brings out tonal and timbral aspects of the bassoon that are meant to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state, in the listener as well as the performer. “The name comes from the tall grass that’s reminiscent of the reeds that bassoon players use,” Gordon told the Times-Union newspaper, just before the piece’s September 2012 premiere at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, New York. “It also refers to an ecstatic rush, a euphoria that I’m trying to build. It’s very visceral for the players, who are playing basically nonstop for an hour, and that requires a sense of intensity and concentration.” Rushes is also exquisitely packaged with stunning images by Israeli photographer Moses Hacmon, whose Faces of Water series is part art, part science and part spiritual awakening. Using a photographic technique he developed himself, Hacmon captures the hidden essence of water, frozen in time, to create haunting impressions and visions never imagined. It's the perfect complement to the musical concept behind Rushes, describing a mystical, dreamlike world where all paths lead back to the life-giving source.