HARRY BERTOIA – ‘Complete Sonambient Collection’ 11xCD + book
The Complete Sonambient Collection features all 11 Sonambient releases newly restored from the original master reels. A heavy duty box holds 11 CDs each packaged in replica sleeves and a 110 page book contains a lengthy historic essay, a Smithsonian interview with Harry Bertoia, exclusive Sonambient era material from the Bertoia archive, photos of the Sonambient barn during Harry’s lifetime and updated with many shots of the barn today. Also included are reflections on Bertoia from David Sefton, Tom Welsh, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) and all three of Bertoia’s children. In the late fifties Harry Bertoia began working on long-form improvised compositions by utilizing pure acoustic tones produced using his own metal sound sculptures. Bertoia coined the term Sonambient to desribe the music of his sculptures and the lush overtones they evoked, renovated a barn on his property deep in the PA woods, and often recorded his nightly sessions in the barn using 4 overhead microphones and a 1/4″ tape recorder. Bertoia dedicated the last twenty years of his life to his Sonambient work and in 1970 he released the first Sonambient LP. In 1978, in the final months of his life, he selected recordings from his archive and produced 10 more Sonambient records. He would not live long enough to see these records in person.
ELEH/TARA JANE O’NEIL split LP
Tara Jane O’Neil Medusa Smack; ELEH Circle Four: 100 Gongs For Arieto. Sound sculptures and gongs by Harry Bertoia unite the sides of this split LP from Tara Jane O’Neil and Eleh. Packaged in deluxe screen printed jackets in an edition of 800. The first 300 copies are on metallic gold vinyl. O’Neil’s composition was commissioned by Venessa Renwick for her Medusa Smack video installation (originally screened in 2012 at the Oregon Biennial). The piece is partially comprised of sounds recorded by Harry Bertoia on his own Sonambient sound sculptures, as well as a recording Tara made of Athanasius Kircher’s Bell Wheel at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Eleh’s side consists of 100 gongs synthesized on a Serge modular system to honor the centennial of Bertoia’s birth in 2015.