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Album
Meteor Farm
Henry Brant →107 listeners646 plays
spatial musicgammareccontemporary classicalexperimentalavant-garde
about this album
Meteor Farm: A Spatial Concert of Ceremonies is the fourth volume in Innova’s series,The Henry Brant Collection. As with several other Brant compositions, this 1982 work comprises the whole album . The last.fm edition above does not contain most of the content on the Innova release. The entire work should unfold as seventeen consecutive sections numbered as such on the disc. Composed to a commission from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, this piece is scored for every ensemble and soloist available on their campus in 1982. Three conductors lead two sopranos, two choruses, each of which have their own complement of saxophones or flutes, orchestra, a section of “Wall Brass,” two groups of percussion, steel drums, jazz band, Javanese Gamelan, West African drummers and a South Indian Classical Trio. With such a massive ensemble, the sound of the piece is enormous and sweeping. The groups do not play at the same time throughout, and there are quiet moments. But various unusual combinations are employed—some of which are hard to imagine and quite striking. For example, a South Indian Trio bangs into a jazz orchestra and African Percussion group soon after the piece gets started. These sonic and cultural collisions and interactions occur throughout the piece, alternating with the eerily quiet—or relatively quiet— passages. In concert, the separate musical groups are spatially segregated in carefully choreographed fashion, and the various locations of the musicians cre
