Passover Watch Party // thingNY YouTube Channel
FRI NOV 4 2022
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Passover, a new album from composer-writer Rick Burkhardt performed by thingNY is now available in CD and digital download on Bandcamp
Five years back we commissioned one of our favorite sound poets Rick Burkhardt to make us a piece and it’s brilliant and multi-layered, and we are so happy to be putting it out into the world.
In Passover a sextet of speaking instrumentalists, seated around a dinner table with a double bass lying on it, take turns relating stories of escape. Beautiful recorded by Zach Herchen and beautifully designed and illustrated by Jason Tseng, the physical CD is an absolute peach and worth the extra few bucks, in our humble opinion.
The album marks the first time in a decade that a recording of Burkhardt’s remarkable compositions have been released, and the first time ever that one of his extended compositions has been released on an album. Burkhardt is an Obie award winner known for his intricate chamber pieces like Great Hymn of Thanksgiving and musically centered theatrical works like Three Pianos. His work fuses explorations of extended instrumental technique as in Helmut Lachenmann, use of compositional linguistics influenced by Kenneth Gaburo, an ear for American speech akin to Robert Ashley, and an experimental approach to narrative inspired by his favorite innovative playwrights, Adrienne Kennedy, David Greenspan, and Wallace Shawn.