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Music of Morgan Powell, John Fonville, Eric Mandat with Phoebe Legere and Howie Smith "Dancing with the Ramblers" is the latest installment of an intensive annual two week collective residency by virtuosic new music ensemble The Tone Road Ramblers, guest starring vocalist Phoebe Legere and saxophonist Howie Smith. As inclusive as it is diverse, the music of the Tone Road Ramblers explores the boundries of jazz, world music, and western avant-garde through the use of extended techniques, toys, microtonality, and unique sound sources. Dancing with the Ramblers kicks off with the composed lyrical beauty and impulsive dynamicism of Destiny and Desire by Morgan Powell. Intertwining saxophone and trumpet lines converge, plunge, and tumble like a flock of birds with playful exactitude. John Fonville's Operation Big Money, is a 25 minute kaleidoscopic piece bringing together unusual compositional devices (pedal tones, microtones) with unusual noisemakers, didgeridoo, and scatological tromboning to create an unsettling density of passion, plaintiveness, and black humor. The remaining nine tracks compose the final piece by Eric Mandat with text by Phoebe Legere: Dark Energy. Mandat designs a world with generous boundaries in which the Tone Road Ramblers thrive - cosmic horns meet with the eroticized, playful interpretation of cosmological phenomena of Legere's vocals. The Tone Road Ramblers are John Fonville, flutes; Eric Mandat, clarinet; Ray Sasaki, trumpet; Jim Staley, trombone, diggeridoo; Morgan Powell, trombone; and Steve Butters, percussion. Guest starring on this album are transmedia artist Phoebe Legere whose erotic lyrics and vocals on Eric Mandat's Dark Energy explores Einstein, Reimann, and even Mr. Universe Himself provide insight on the unseen forces constantly shaping existence; and alto saxophonist Howie Smith whose distinctive voice on Morgan Powell's Destiny and Desire is electrifying and dynamic. |
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