Monday, January 24, 2011

Ambient Orchestral Show. One Night Only!


On February 19th, I will be premiering a collection of ten ambient pieces composed during a recent residency at Port Townsend’s Fort Warden State Park. These pieces were specifically written for and recorded in the Park’s Cistern -- an empty, two million gallon, underground water tank, boasting unique acoustic properties which produce an incredible, 45-second reverb decay. For this one-time musical event, Jherek will be joined by a live orchestra, as well as sound engineers, to help recreate the incredible reverb and ambience of the Cistern in surround sound.

I will write more about this event as it gets closer!

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Organ Recording!


On Friday I had the chance to get into St. Marks Cathedral in Seattle and have their organist play a few of my pieces on their huge organ! It was super amazing. To hear that much sound coming from 1 person, activating thousands of pipes... wheeeew! It was a very exciting moment for me. When I was maybe 12 or so, my school took all us kids on a field trip to check out all the major religions and houses of worship. We ended up at St. Marks Cathedral. They took us up to the organ and a man played the organ for us. This was right around the time when I was choosing an instrument to play. He showed us the range of the instrument and when he played those foot pedals and made the gigantic bass notes come out, well I really believe that that was when I decided to play bass. To feel the whole place vibrating and to hear the wind whizzing through the tubes, it really had an impact on me. So to come around probably close to 20 years later(!!!!) and hear my music played on this instrument was a real pleasure. I recorded 3 pieces.
1. A song I wrote for Parenthetical Girls.
2. A song for string quartet that I arranged for the organ.
3. A piece that Mayumi Heider wrote. She wrote this great piece that when I found out I would be getting access to this organ we arranged it specifically for it.
I would like to thank Robb Kunz for recording and Alan DePuy for being kind enough to play our music!