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BERTOIA, HARRY - Sonambient (Complete Collection)

Format: 11 x CD BOX Label & Cat.Number: Important Records IMPREC419 Release Year: 2016 Note: first ever CD re-issue of HARRY BERTOIA\'s famous 11 LPs with truly magic (fully acoustic) recordings from his own metal sculptures and gongs (recorded 1970-1975), restored from the original masters; comes with 100 p. booklet in nice box with interviews, photos, essays... \"... a celebration of sustained tones, slow decay, healing vibrations and shimmering harmonic \"; DRONE RE-ISSUE OF THE YEAR !!! Price (incl. 19% VAT): €85.00 Warning: Currently we do not have this album in stock! More Info \" \'I don\'t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.\' Harry Bertoia, 1976 Harry Bertoia\'s Complete Sonambient Collection features all 11 of Bertoia\'s original records newly restored from their master tapes and housed in replica jackets. A heavy duty box, printed with metallic inks, holds the 11 discs as well as a 100 page book containing a lengthy historic essay, Smithsonian interview with Harry Bertoia, exclusive Sonambient era material from the Bertoia archive, modern and archival photos of the Bertoia barn as well as reflections on Bertoia from David Sefton, Tom Welsh, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) and all three of Bertoia\'s children. The Complete Sonambient Collection celebrates 100 years of Harry Bertoia in 2015, the centennial of his birth. In the late 1950\'s Harry Bertoia (1915-1978), already a renowned American sculptor, began creating long-form, improvised pieces of music utilizing pure acoustic tones evoked from his sound sculptures. Around this time Bertoia came up with the term \'Sonambient\' to describe the music and environment created by his tonal sculptures and their lush harmonic overtones. In a renovated barn on his property deep in the Pennsylvania woods Harry curated a harmonious selection of his sculptures and gongs, often recording his frequent, intuitive sound experiments 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 or hear these records himself. Bertoia died in 1978, at age 63, and was buried beneath a giant gong behind his Sonamient barn. Bertoia\'s recordings are as much a celebration of sustained tones, slow decay, healing vibrations and shimmering harmonics as Indian Classical music, singing bowls, The Well Tuned Piano or Benjamin Franklin\'s glass armonica. Through these rich harmonics, pulsing tones and pure gongs Bertoia was able to more clearly articulate his inner spirit than he could with sculpture alone - a point he made himself many times in interview. Harry\'s single greatest piece of art is the totality of his life which is nearly impossible to measure but easy to feel. It\'s our hope that somehow this box set evokes some of the same sacred, personal feeling that one has in Bertoia\'s barn.\" [label info] www.importantrecords.com Long in the works, this weighty box set represents the complete recordings of Harry Bertoia - the furniture designer, sculptor, and sound artist who produced eleven albums in the late \'70s all of which were released on his own Sonambient imprint, many of them posthumously, as he died in 1978. Bertoia first achieved acclaim for his mid-century designs for furniture which were formed through lattice works of welded thin steel rods, first commercially available through Knoll and later through Herman Miller. These same thin steel rods became the principle materials for his scultures, many of which featured hundreds of vertical rods mounted to flat bases that would waver and crash into each other with a force as delicate as the wind. The sounds produced by these sculptures are eerie and hallowed - with dense billowing clouds of rich, psychoacoustic overtones and slow decay on the long sustained tones. He produced numerous variations on these sculptures, many of which had made their way into art museums (where they will never be played, only looked at... how fucking sad); and he housed much of his personal collection in a barn near his Pennsylvania studio. This is where all of these Bertoia recordings were made. Throughout the \'80s and \'90s, the Sonambient lps slowly disappeared from circulation, and in the wake of artists like Andrew Chalk and Alan Lamb generating similarly sublime compositions, Bertoia\'s work became all the more timeless. Beautifully remastered from the original tapes and housed in a handsome box with 114 page book filled with images, interviews, and expository texts. (Aquarius Rec.)