Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
a beautifully packaged CD, featuring artwork by David Garland, shipping by or before Nov. 30, 2020.
Includes unlimited streaming of Vulneraries Vol. 5 with Pamelia Stickney, theremin
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
The theremin is a remarkable instrument invented in 1920, played without physical contact between performer and instrument. The player moves their hands in the vicinity of antennas to control the pitch and volume of a voice-like electronic sound. Well, most players play with the sound, but few control it as Pamelia Stickney does. She has uncanny skill on her uncanny instrument. I first heard her play about 20 years ago, at Tonic in New York City. She’d only recently taken up the theremin and was already masterful. I invited her to perform on my WNYC radio show Spinning On Air, and soon learned that her unique virtuosity goes hand-in-hand with her unique, playful personality, and other extraordinary traits like her ability to write backwards as quickly as you or I write normally. Her mind works delightfully differently.
Pamelia lives these days in Vienna, Austria, but happened to be near my home in the Hudson Valley of New York State in June, 2019, during my wife Anne’s cancer treatments. As we’ve documented in the other volumes of Vulneraries, my son Kenji and I made music together during that period to help Anne and ourselves cope with what she was going through.
While Anne rested and listened upstairs, Pamelia plugged her theremin into the connection between my modified 12-string guitar and Kenji’s modular synthesizer array so that both she and Kenji could resonate my strings, Kenji could influence and extend the guitar and theremin sounds, I could help color the timbres, and a unique musical interaction among the three of us became possible.
A big vase filled with late-season peonies was in the living room where we recorded, and we could see chipmunks racing and foraging outside. Pamelia recently wrote us that she is “still remembering how beautiful, peaceful and so in the present the energy was with you, while recording and seeing the ghostlike taps that made the petals fall off the flowers on the table.”
Vulnerary is an archaic term for a substance – such as herbs or, in this case, music – used to promote the healing of wounds. At the time of this recording we knew to expect that Anne’s illness would be terminal, but couldn’t foresee that she would die just over four weeks later. I’m glad we can share this music with you now, as we did with Anne then.
—David Garland, November 2020
credits
released November 6, 2020
Modified 12-string guitar
played by hands, modular synthesizer, and theremin
Performers:
David Garland, Kenji Garland, Pamelia Stickney
David also plays Pro-One synthesizer on Waters Fall
Composer/singer/multi-instrumentalist David Garland has been steadily shaping songs in new ways since
1980.
"Like many great songwriters before him, Garland pushes the limits of acceptable harmony and dissonance, yet never at the expense of beauty. If it's not possible for popular music to reach the heights of the great classical masters, it seems no one has told David Garland."
--Sean Lennon...more
supported by 6 fans who also own “Vulneraries Vol. 5 with Pamelia Stickney, theremin”
My god, what an absolutely incredible Suite. I'll admit, I've struggled to get into Pharoah Sanders due to diving headfirst into some of his most challenging catalogue and that never worked. This is the perfect place to restart. Floating Points is new for me and I can honestly say I've never heard synthesizer music this lush and organic before. the LSO is just perfect. This is one of those albums that any serious music fan needs in their life. The perfect swan song for the great Pharaoh! 5/5 ClassyMusicSnob
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