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ensemble minisym - new sound - bongo joe - vinyl

New Copy

Genre: Jazz

1. Oasis
2. Single Foot
3. Bug On A Floating Leaf
4. Sand Lilly
5. Log In A
6. Log In E
7. Log In B
8. Frost Flower
9. Ground In D
10. Vercingetorix
11. Snow Flakes
12. Fleur De Lys
13. Barn Dance
14. Elf Dance

“I like to write chamber and choral music, especially for orchestra. But since it is not always easy to have orchestral works performed, the organ is the next best medium to give the composer vast tonal resources.”, Moondog wrote in 1978 in the liner notes accompanying the Selected Works album – the confidential American cousin of Moondog in Europe, the first album he recorded in Germany.

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With New Sound, the Minisym Ensemble goes the opposite direction, taking the pieces for organ(s) constituting the A New Sound of an Old Instrument album (1979) – as well as pieces composed in Europe during the same period – towards a new and singular instrumentation.

The Ensemble’s work is hence based on a vast knowledge of the composer’s universe, Moondog himself having – throughout his lifetime – regularly given new colors to particular compositions by changing their instrumentation. This is especially obvious with the A New Sound of an Old Instrument album whose first side comprises pieces mainly composed amidst the tumult of the streets of New York and characterized by an incredible science of interbreeding (“Oasis”, “Single Foot”), while the second side favors new compositions inspired by the European soil Moondog is now beginning to discover and will never leave (“Barn Dance”, “Elf Dance”, “Log in B”). Heading off the beaten path, Minisym’s musicians also decipher previously unreleased pieces, sometimes even never played or recorded by Moondog (“Logrundr in A”, “Ground in D minor”, “Marche Funèbre (Vercingétorix)”, “Shneeflocken”).

Far from all academicism, this is a world we encounter here, in the shade of instruments as rare as they were dear to Moondog. This record, result of a lengthy period of work, allows for a new breath as faithful as iconoclastic on the music of a composer who spent his whole life crafting a particularly naive body of work.