Today is release day for Doug Anderson’s new album, Douglas Anderson: Chamber Symphonies 2,3,4. Doug’s already garnering great reviews. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can read it here.
We recorded Doug’s Chamber Symphony 3 nearly a decade ago in 2006. We actually recorded in the instrument closet in the old building at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, where Doug, Matt and I all teach. During Hurricane Sandy that closet was completely flooded with water from the Hudson River. The odor after was a lovely combination of mold and bleach (Matt remembers notes of carpet adhesive as well). The day of the session, years before, all was dry. There were all sorts of cables strung up and running from the narrow room out to the larger outer space where the computer and drives were.
Recording in a closet was a bit unusual. I tend to think of recording studios as beautiful spaces with lots of wood and other acoustically favorable materials. This space, with grey lockers and linoleum floors, wasn’t even close to that image. We tried to record in the orchestra rehearsal room, but found that the closet (perhaps storage space would be a more accurate description?) was quieter and had better sound. We laid the piece down in a few hours, and if I remember correctly, Doug took us out for lunch after . I knew Doug had some “master plan” about getting the work out where people could hear it — but after a year or two or three, I kind of forgot about it.
That is until about two years ago, when Doug told us that he wanted to record Chamber Symphonies 2 and 4 and put out an recording of all three. He was going in search of a label and would let us know what happened.
And now here it is. A month after our debut album, Albert’s Window hit the virtual shelves of the internets media stores, out comes DA CS 234, also on the Ravello Records label.
As an aside, I miss when we released records. I know it makes me sound 100 years old, but with so many ways to listen to music today there is no single word that accurately describes music that you listen to that isn’t a live performance. I hate the word “media” but with CD’s, MP3’s and other streaming thingys, it’s probably the most accurate. Still, I just can’t bring myself to call it that, so I’m just going with album. Don’t take it literally — even though I personally think it would be cool, as far as I know, it isn’t available on vinyl.
We’re not quite done with recordings though. We are currently finishing edits on an upcoming album of music of Scott Brickman. That will be coming out later this year. Scott wrote two pieces for our trio – French Suite and his piano quartet (Ninety Six Strings and Two Whistles) which we premiered and recorded with pianist Beth Levin. Additionally, each of us collaborated with Beth to record an individual work. There’s Windpower, for flute and piano (winner of best title), Divertimento for cello and piano, and Partita for viola and piano. Don’t be fooled by the Baroque Period titles – they are all 21st century Brickman.
I’ll be writing more about Scott’s album soon, but in the meantime check out the first two here.
