SONUS - v2
The Toll (2002), 00:12:46Marilyn Lerner
Nationality:
Residence: Canada
Biography: Pianist/improviser/composer
Tamara Bernstein (National Post):
…..this remarkable pianist..has established herself as one of the most
exhilarating improvisers in Canada's jazz and new music scene.
Montreal born pianist/improviser Marilyn Lerner has performed widely in Canada and abroad. She has recorded extensively over the past ten years, has also written for film, theatre, radio and television and has produced a series of audio art pieces. .She has performed with the likes of Jane Bunnett, Jean Derome, Gerry Hemingway, Steve Lacy, and Tito Puente. Ongoing artistic collaborations include audio artist Ken Gregory, poet Patrick Freisen(with whom she has just released a CD collection of poems and improvised music entitled Small Rooms) and video artist b.h. Yael. Recording highlights include Birds Are Returning(Jazz Focus), recorded in Havana Cuba, ‘close’, duos and trios with Queen Mab (Lori Freedman on clarinets) (Spool) a duet with singer David Wall featuring original settings of contemporary Yiddish poetry entitled Still Soft Voiced Heart (Traditional Crossroads) , Struck, with Vancouver cellist Peggy Lee, Special Angel, a duo with jazz legend Sonny Greenwich (CBC records), and a new solo CD on Ambiences Magnetiques entitled Luminance.
Program Notes: The source material for this piece comes from my improvisations on the acoustic piano. They were recorded earlier this year by Steeve Lebrasseur during a residency at Avatar in Quebec City. We achieved substantial variation in sound quality by experimenting with different microphones and mike placements. The resulting audio piece which was later spatialized with the Richmond Audio box by myself and Darren Copeland.
I have a long and complex relationship with the piano, having played it since the age of 7. At times I have been extremely frustrated by this large elephant, this bourgeois parlour instrument. I have often felt its limitations in terms of expression. Over the past ten years I have been active in the improvised music scene, and this frustration has been remedied to some extent by experimentation with extended technique. I am particularly interested in the strings, in their harmonic overtones and the sound that is generated when they are plucked or struck at different parts of the instrument.
Concurrent with my career as a performer, I have been creating audio art pieces over the last five years. The idea for this project was to portray the piano in different way, to liberate it and to re-present it, to take it apart and to disguise it. I wanted to make it sing, shout cry, pulsate and to create a soundscape that is at once familiar and foreign.
The title reflects the mood I was in through the creation of this piece which was one of sadness about the events of the past year.
There was an element of mournfulness in some of the sounds I chose and also a call to awareness that I tried to imply with the sound of bells tolling.
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CEC: Sonus
©:
SOCAN
