Soundings: Improvisations and Compositions for Horn and Electronica - James Naigus, John Manning, Jason Palamara, Israel Neuman and Michael Ozment

I've been making my living playing the horn since I was twenty-two, and during all those decades I played music written by others: symphonies, opera, musicals, ballet, chamber music, solos and more. But beginning about a dozen years ago I started doing something that was very scary at the time: I started making up my own music on the horn. That is, I started speaking with my own voice on my instrument. This meant learning to think and speak in music and to have musical conversations with others in this way. This disc is the fourth in a series of my classical improvisational recordings, each wildly different from the other, but all sharing the premise of personal expression and discovery of new territory. All of them have given me the chance to improvise in some way; a number of them are combinations of written sections and improvisational sections. This release is an overdue exploration of what can happen when improvised horn playing meets electronics. Electronic effects and influences have been around for many decades, heard more often in jazz, pop or avant-garde music, but not so much with players of orchestral instruments.

All recordings in any genre make use of electronics in some way, even if they purport to be recordings of acoustic performances. The recording process itself is of course electronic: it uses analog or digital microphones, with other electronic processes coming in later such as editing, equalization, reverb, and so on. One big difference with Soundings is that we make a point of emphasizing the electronic component in order to discover new timbres and tone colors, to surprise and awaken our ears and imaginations. Horn players and classical listeners are accustomed to hearing the horn in a fairly narrow range of traditional timbres and settings, so no doubt some ears may be unprepared to know what to make of some of these new settings. We hope and believe that those who can make the leap of ear and imagination to these new realms of timbre, melody, and expression will be well rewarded.

Notes on the horn improvisation here: In speech, what a person says is selected in the moment (i.e. improvised) from everything that person knows and has experienced in life and language. The same is true in musical improvisation all kinds of styles and influences come forth at various times. The improvisation that takes place here is not jazz improvisation, where the player creates a line over a given chord progression. What I did in most cases was to listen to the atmosphere created by the background and then create something seemed to fit. There are no pre-set chord progressions, keys, styles, etc. As in conversation, it was all about listening. I listened to what had just happened and was happening in the moment and then made a quick decision a guess as to what to do next, much like what one does in a sporting event or theatrical improvisation. As you listen to the tracks, you can enhance your experience by guessing what choices I will make, or by imagining what your choices might have been.

Another thing to consider: we sometimes forget that in written compositions composers often create what is easy to notate, staying away from that which is difficult to notate. Since none of the improvisations were written down, I was free to add all kinds of colors and special effects (melodic, rhythmic, timbral) that would be difficult or perhaps even impossible to notate. This freedom, plus the addition of various electronic enhancements, gives this recording a truly unique flavor and spirit of exploration and, well, playfulness.