James Wood: Cloud-Polyphonies

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James Wood is an outstanding percussionist as well as a composer and conductor, and all three strands of his musical life come together in Tongues of Fire...Cloud-Polyphonies is an equally rigorous... — The Guardian, 7th April 2016, 3 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 19th Feb 2016
Catalogue No: NMCD223
Label: NMC
Length: 60 minutes

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Wood, James: Tongues of Fire

Work length24:20

Album only

Kim Jae-Hyong, Felix Plock, Kerstin Klein-Koyuncu
MDR Rundfunkchor, Ear Massage Percussion Quartet
James Wood
Recorded: 5-7 November 2014
Recording Venue: Peterskirche, Leipzig, Germany

Wood, James: Cloud-Polyphonies

Work length36:37

Album only

$11.60

$15.75

Yale Percussion Group
Robert van Slice
Recorded: 3-5 June 2013
Recording Venue: Sprague Memorial Hall, New Haven, CT, USA

I. Starlings

Track length7:29

$1.50

$2.60

$3.50

II. Clouds

Track length15:56

Album only

$5.15

$7.00

III. Buffalo

Track length13:12

$2.05

$3.85

$5.25

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About

James Wood’s multi-faceted career has led him into an extraordinarily broad spectrum of musical activities, as conductor, composer, musicologist, instrument designer and percussionist.

Tongues of Fire (2001) is a work for symphonic chorus and percussion quartet, written for the 140th Anniversary of the Yale Glee Club. Conscious of the enormous tradition of American university Glee Clubs, and the part that gospel and spiritual music has played in it, Wood emphasizes America’s rich cultural diversity using the story of the Pentecost. The central text from The Acts of the Apostles is set in various languages, starting in Latin-American Spanish and splintering off into Hebrew, Maori, Jamaican English, Latin, Hungarian, Russian, German and French. A quartet of oil drums, plus cowbells, gongs, guiros and metal rods provide percussive timbral richness and power. These combine with a variety of vocal styles, including chanting, singing, hissing and whistling, to give the work a tribal feel.

Percussion sextet Cloud-Polyphonies explores the movements of large formations of organisms - whether animals, insects, birds, fi sh, water, steam or crowds of human beings. The fi rst movement Starlings, is written for six marimbas and woodblocks, the second, Clouds, for metal instruments and prepared piano, and the third, Buffalo, for drums, simantras and bullroarers.

Reviews

7th April 2016

James Wood is an outstanding percussionist as well as a composer and conductor, and all three strands of his musical life come together in Tongues of Fire...Cloud-Polyphonies is an equally rigorous exploration of percussion sonorities.

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