Sculpting Sound
Twelve Musicians Encounter Bertoia
Pyroclastic Records presents Sculpting Sound, a groundbreaking collection of six once-in-a-lifetime performances bringing together twelve master improvisers with the sound sculptures of visionary artist Harry Bertoia
These captivating performances, available as of the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2023 via SculptingSound.org, feature Nels Cline, Ben Monder, Ambrose Akinmusire, Nate Wooley, Ingrid Laubrock, JD Allen, Jen Shyu, Brandon Seabrook, Marcus Gilmore, Dan Weiss, Kris Davis and Craig Taborn
The visually gorgeous, sonically rich and artistically inventive performances on Sculpting Sound feature a dozen of music’s most forward-looking artists playing with, and on, sound sculptures by Harry Bertoia. Presented by Pyroclastic Records and premiering on the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2023 at 10:27 p.m. ET, SculptingSound.org offers free and complete access to a series of revelatory performances recorded at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. The musicians were given unprecedented access Bertoia’s sculptures. The results blur the lines between music and visual art and provide an opportunity to hear strikingly fresh and innovative work from some of the most vital improvisers of our time and to explore Bertoia’s work, not just visually, but as he fully intended: sonically.
The heart of the website is the collection of six high-definition concert films. Each hour-plus long concert places two musicians famed for their distinctive voices in dialogue with Bertoia’s Sonambient sculptures: guitarists Nels Cline and Ben Monder, trumpeters Ambrose Akinmusire and Nate Wooley, saxophonists Ingrid Laubrock and JD Allen, acoustic string players Jen Shyu and Brandon Seabrook, drummers Marcus Gilmore and Dan Weiss, and pianists Kris Davis and Craig Taborn. All twelve musicians are known for their genre-crossing and expansive outlooks, and here they push their art even further by engaging in a complex interplay with each other, their instruments, and the sculptures—which ring with bell-like tones, vibrate and shimmer, boom and whisper, echo and reverberate, chime and crash, sing out and sing on. The music that emerges is unique—a new collaborative form at the juncture of improvisation, ambient and experimental music, art, and chance.