New CD: Draw the Strings Tight w/ Kenneth Meyer

This new disk with guitarist Kenneth Meyer features my piece, Roses Don’t Need Perfume, for solo guitar and live electronics. In addition to the inclusion of my work, I was sound recording engineer for the project, seeking to capture both the resonance and intimacy of the guitar and of these unique pieces.

Roses Don’t Need Perfume, a work in three movements, takes its title from a quotation by Uruguayan writer/philosopher (…journalist, historian…), Eduardo Galeano. In a recent interview, Galeano reflected on his own work and how, in a world of spin and manipulated language, one recognize truth.

In the first case, Roses… treats the notion of truth literally as the guitar is almost never “touched”/manipulated by the player, it sounds “as it is”. Nearly every note is a natural harmonic and the entire electronic part (minus the use of spoken text) is derived from the instrument itself. In the opening phrase, the guitarist slowly releases two fretted/stopped B naturals, allowing the natural harmonics directly beneath them (also B naturals) to sound. The whole gesture, therefore, is that of simply lifting the hand to allow the guitar to speak for the remainder of the piece.

Draw the Strings Tight pulls together a range of new music composed for the acoustic guitar. It features premieres of newly commissioned musical discourses on love, reflections on the nature of memory, the search for truth in the many voices of reality, and meditations on sense and enjoyment. The album title is also an evocative phrase that reflects the challenges facing a composer, performer, instrument, and listener, as they work together to realize something of substance, meaning, beauty, and truth. In addition to the premiere recordings of music by Kevin Ernste, Edie Hill, Jesse Jones, James Piorkowski and Nicolas Scherzinger, this album also features the Drei Tentos of Hans Werner Henze. According to Henze, these ”three sketches” set to the writings of Friederich Holderlin are, ”…the vision of a poet who has clouds of madness around his head, and who stammers in fragments, with beautiful, seemingly dislocated, phrases.” As Kenneth Meyer writes, ”The Drei Tentos are included here as an homage to Julian Bream and the memory of how captivated I was the first time I heard his recording of these pieces. It opened my ears to the intimate language of my beloved instrument and placed a seed in my musical conscious.” Kenneth Meyer, the national first-prize winner at the Music Teacher’s National Association Collegiate Artist Competition, is regarded by the Washington Post as, ”A thinking man’s guitarist – who focuses on the inner structure of a piece…and plays with impressive gravity and power.” The Buffalo News has called him, ”Impeccably articulate with superb technique.”

Works on This Recording