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ARTIST NAME: Myra Melford's Be Bread
ALBUM TITLE: The Whole Tree Gone
FIREHOUSE CATALOG #: FH12-04-01-012
TRACKS LISTING (ORDER & TIMES):
Through the Same Gate
Moon Bird
Night
The Whole Tree Gone
On the Lip of Insanity
I See a Horizon
A Generation Comes and Another Goes
Knocking from the Inside
PUBLISHING: All compositions by Myra Melford, GEMA and Sun on the Sound Publishing (BMI)
PERSONNEL:
Myra Melford: piano
Stomu Takeishi: acoustic bass guitar
Brandon Ross: guitar and soprano guitar
Ben Goldberg: clarinet and contra-alto clarinet
Matt Wilson: drums
Cuong Vu: trumpet
CREDITS:
Date
Recording
Graphic Design
Photo
Producer
Co-Producer
Websites: www.myramelford.com
NOTES/ESSAY:
Intricate sounds, not words. I catch
what I can’t quite make out. Fire burning down
along the roots, as well as in the branches.
The whole tree gone.
(Excerpt from The Oldest Love in New Shapes, Open Secrets, Versions of Rumi, translated by John Moyne and Coleman Barks; Threshold Books; Putney, VT; 1984, p. 1.)
The Whole Tree Gone, in memory of my mother, Eileen Melford
The fire’s love is all-consuming
and highly combustible,
Nothing remains as it was.
All assumes new forms and guises.
Wars rage,
a fragile peace.
These sounds, an offering
weighty, whimsical.
I live for that moment when,
to quote from Rumi again,
the whole place goes up.
Most of the pieces in this suite, The Whole Tree Gone, were written for a Chamber Music America New Work’s Presentation grant in fall of 2004, except for Moon Bird, which was written for a concert at the MOMA Sculpture Garden (NYC) in July 2005. Though originally written for my ensemble Be Bread, I’ve enjoyed performing this music over the past few years with many wonderful musicians in several configurations, including the multimedia performance Knock on the Sky, and the duo with Marty Ehrlich. This sextet recording captures this moment in the evolution of these compositions. My heartfelt gratitude to the musicians who’ve given a part of themselves to bring this music to life, and to all the other people who have inspired and supported my efforts in many ways, for many years.
Berkeley, CA
June 2009
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Many thanks to Michael Melford, Brandon Ross, Stomu Takeishi, Nick Lloyd, Taylor Ho Bynum, Bonnie Wade, Janet Broughton, Jim Coates, Paulette Powell, Babs Winbigler, and the University of California, Berkeley, and its program in Arts and Humanities. Also to Mevlana and the publishers of Open Secret for permission to reprint the excerpt from the poem by Rumi, "The Oldest Love in New Shapes."
Many of the pieces on this recording come from the suite originally titled,"The Whole Place Goes Up," created with generous support from Chamber Music America’s New Works: Creation and Presentation Program, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
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