Curtis Wenzel
Investigation of both restraint and freedom, juxtaposing notes and textures to achieve artistic unity with dynamic quiet reflection. I dig it.
Favorite track: The air over and over.
Shake the Hourglass About is Realtree’s second release. Comprised of full band and mixed ensemble works, it highlights the varied interdependent relationships within the group. It is indebted to the work of Bill Dixon, Duke Ellington, Dai Satō, Thérèse of Lisieux, Gene Wolfe and others.
Realtree is a band made up of cello, clarinet, cornet, electric guitar and laptop. They focus on performing songs that use monophonic and timer-controlled compositions as temporal structures for improvisations. Material for each song originates from previous performances, miscellaneous audio or simply other songs, which were transcribed and used as building blocks for the compositions. Realtree’s previous release, "Splendor Falls on Everything Around" (Public Eyesore Records), has been described as “quite orderly” (The Wire) and “totally captivating” (Vital Weekly).
credits
released March 19, 2022
Realtree is:
Carley Olson Kokal - Bb Clarinet
Michelle Kinney - Cello
Patrick Marschke - Laptop
Noah Ophoven-Baldwin - Cornet
Adam Zahller - Guitar
All compositions by Noah Ophoven-Baldwin
Recorded and mixed by Patrick Marschke
Mechanical metronome (B5) built by Paul Metzger
Mastered by Hiroyuki Ura
Art design by Liu Lu
=== An Interview with Noah Ophoven-Baldwin by Zhu Wenbo ===
Zhu:
Maybe you could introduce Realtree at the beginning of this interview. When and where did this quintet start? Could you still remember any process? How did the name come from? Have the line-up been changed?
Noah:
I started writing music for Realtree in 2016. The first iteration of the group was a quartet with a vocalist, Michelle Kinney on Cello and Patrick Marschke was playing drums and cymbals instead of laptop. The music was significantly different, relying on meter and interlocking rhythms to coordinate events. I wanted more moments in the music where very little was happening but I still wanted things to be synchronized. I found that using a timer for this worked really well. Later on Carley and Adam were added to the group.
Zhu:
From Splendor Falls on Everything Around to Shake the Hourglass About, all pieces you played were composed by yourself. Do you think “playing Noah’s composition” is a target to Realtree? Do you also spend some time on performing other composer’s piece or improvisation?
Noah:
I started the band to work on my compositions. Before Realtree there were a few other groups that I had started but they just didn’t stick the way this ensemble did. I love writing music for these particular musicians and this instrumentation.
We are planning to take some time to rehearse and perform other composer’s music in the future. I have schemes to ask a couple musicians to write music for the band and release some “Realtree plays so-and-so” projects.
Zhu:
So you could talk about your second album Shake the Hourglass About, maybe also the former one. For compositions or recording techs, do you think there are any differences between these two albums? Do they have different concerns?
Noah:
With our second album I think I was trying to work on instrumentation relationships within the band. Our first album had a lot of meticulous full group compositions and the improvising was broken into smaller groups. I think here we did the opposite. In Shake the Hourglass About there are very precise small ensemble pieces and a lot of the improvising space was with the full band.
There is an element of fellowship in recording small ensemble pieces when the whole band is present. I think we all get to listen and enjoy what everyone else is doing. During the recording we were all sitting in the room while others played their things. It felt good and supportive.
Zhu:
Something about monophonic, you have mentioned to me on your music. Compare to the former album, to me I felt that you guys were trying to dig more on monophonic in Shake the Hourglass About. I hope I did not make mistake. How did monophonic appeal to you? Is there any musician or composer giving you influence or inspirations on it? Maybe I'm not an expert, but I don't feel that monophonic is in the main exploration directions to nowadays experimental music scene?
Noah:
Initially I wanted to explore monophony because it seemed like a very effective compositional restraint that fit into my process of generating pitch material. After trying it out a bit I was happy with how the music is able to expand around the written notes because the material is so distilled. I think the idea of monophonic is expanded a bit with our playing: There are times when it’s unison like chant or something but it’s also hocketing like medieval motets and performing a single melody together split into separate notes like a bell choir. The improvising is affected too. I think we interact differently when we perform a piece where we are doing our separate little things and then play free. When we play a monophonic piece and improvise in it it’s like there is a unified idea we are working at.
I think Tom Johnson, Sacred Harp and Sachiko M had some influence.
Zhu:
Except to quintet, there are also other different line-ups in this album including duo, trio, quartet and solo. So will you write scores specially for a detailed line-up? Or maybe I guess you prefer to divide “writing compositions” and “presentation” into different layers (because I feel that monophonic really fit this way maybe)?
Noah:
The instrumentation for a composition often comes first. Sometimes it’s as simple as looking at where the music will be texturally, what range the pitches are in and deciding what instruments can perform what and how. In certain cases, which often coincide with the longer full band pieces, the composition comes first, all the notes and form and such, then I arrange it for the band.
Zhu:
To Realtree’s work, how much could a musician do improvisation?
Most of the music here is improvised. That being said, there is a composed framework for the entirety of each piece. There are sections that are thoroughly notated but each performer is deciding how to use the material in each moment. The written elements serve the improvising space.
Technically, in many of my scores, any of the musicians could decide the notation is unnecessary or not serving the music and improvise the entire time (or not play at all I guess). In practice, however, the notes are usually performed.
Zhu:
There are some big names in this new album: Bart Howard, Miles Davis, Akira Ifukube, and maybe could also adding Duke Ellington because He Loves Him Madly was dedicated to him by MD. But actually we can’t find any similarities from your music to those classic pieces. And you don’t think you have made “cover tracks”, either. So how did you compose them? What kinds of relationship between these tracks and the “original” ones? Why did you choose these pieces? Did the jazz standard and classic movie theme make influences to you on your growing up?
Noah:
Realtree compositions are primarily reorganized past Realtree performances or field recordings that I have made. I transcribe and use moments from recordings as building blocks for new compositions. For this album I wanted to try a similar approach but taking the songs, especially their literal timing (timelines, timescales, harmonic/gestural rhythms), as "found objects" or "palimpsests”. He Loved Him Madly by Miles Davis is a good example of that. If you played some sections of this with the actual song, He Loved Him Madly, it would sound almost synchronized.
A lot of the material choices seem to fall under the theme of “swords to plowshares” and probably more specifically the Plowshares movement (an anti-nuclear weapon and pacifist movement) in the USA. It must have been on my mind while I was putting everything together. Fly Me to the Moon and the Godzilla theme relate to the existential threat of nuclear war a bit. The Duke Ellington thing (I rest my head beneath the piano to never forget the sound is also DE related) loosely connects the covers and the other compositions which use a lot of St. Therese of Lisieux and Gene Wolfe texts as sources for compositions. Not that the music is about any of this but that’s what I was sourcing it from.
Zhu:
And some questions about field recordings. Both of these albums contain some short and quiet field recording pieces. Someone make field recordings as an element to their compositions, and some other people believe that field recording could be as a way of composition. How do think about these? In Realtree’s albums, how did you make arrangement on these field recording pieces? Do you have the habit of recording by phone at any time? Why did you choose these recordings to albums but not the others?
Noah:
Field recordings play a role throughout the writing process. I use them to gather and arrange ideas or as pieces themselves. When I use them to arrange ideas I extract little sections, transcribe them and arrange them out for the band. Because the recordings are a substantial part of my writing process I have a consistent habit of recording (usually using my phone) everyday.
As far as the actual field recordings that make it onto the album go, I usually end up finding a few things while working on Realtree stuff that are strong enough to be presented as plan-and-simple recordings.
Zhu:
You have mentioned to me that the album is about “love”. It is really a difficult thing for me to understand. Because to me I feel that, experimental music is more calm and cold, including Realtree; but “love” is more on passion and emotion, maybe more close to pop music. Of course, there are also many counter-examples, and I don't want to make arbitrary conclusions. So, what do you think? What kind of mood did you in during the creating time?
Noah:
I totally understand. I have a hard time believing any of this stuff is about anything in particular. It’s better if it isn’t! Throughout working and recording on the music I started a family and I couldn’t stop thinking about my partner or my future child. I was just so damn happy. I realized I was not alone: I thought of Bill Dixon’s Fancy Footwork #1 & #2 (you can hear his kid’s voice in these songs), my friends’ art practices (their child is always showing up in it!), Ornette talking about playing with his son Denardo when he was a child. I don’t know if the album is about love but I was definitely distracted while working on it.
Brash experimental electronic compositions from this Tulsa-based musician heavy on serrated sheets of sound that hiss and scald. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 27, 2023
