Patrick Higgins - Bachanalia

180-gram vinyl, album download included

Adventurous electro-acoustic Bach performed by a prime mover of avant-garde classical!

"Mr. Higgins' Bach is crisply and often muscularly rendered, technically dazzling and exquisitely and ingeniously recorded. According to the artist: 'The record was very carefully recorded in three different environments: two different rooms at St Cecilia's Church in Brooklyn and the main hall at Future-Past Studios in Hudson NY. ... The record is a hybrid in the truest sense, live un-edited performance to analog recording, digital processing to digital mixing, analog mastering and beautifully lathed to 180 gram vinyl.' ... The varied results are mesmerizing and sonically spectacular. ... You'll sit transfixed until the sides end, aided by an outstanding dead quiet QRP pressing." — Music = 10/11; Sound = 10/11 - Michael Fremer, AnalogPlanet.com, Jan. 2, 2016. Read the full review here.

People have been reinventing Bach for nearly 300 years but there has never been anything quite like Patrick Higgins' Bachanalia. Equal parts gorgeous and severe, these highly original arrangements of J.S. Bach prove the endless possibilities contained within the master's pen. Bachanalia emerges from a dynamic relationship among three main elements: Higgins' own virtuosic classical guitar playing, stereo electronic processing, and the recording spaces themselves.

Truly site-specific, it makes unique use of the extreme and special acoustics of St. Cecilia's Church in Brooklyn and Future-Past Studios, an upstate New York recording complex housed in a historic Lutheran church. Although Bach's compositions will be familiar to almost everyone, Higgins gives us a mesmerizing glimpse into the future.

Described by The New Yorker as one of the "prime movers of the local avant-garde," and an "exacting avant-classical guitarist" by Time Out NY, Patrick Higgins is a New York-based composer/performer of experimental music. Higgins has composed works for some of the nation's leading ensembles, from chamber orchestra works, percussion cycles, and string quartets to smaller ensembles and soloists. He has scored music for television, museum exhibitions, and films both short-form and feature-length. Higgins plays guitar and composes in Zs, hailed by The New York Times as "one of the strongest avant-garde bands in New York."

As a producer and studio owner at Future-Past, Higgins has helped produce records for The National, Josephine Foster, John Zorn and Dither Quartet, Mantra Percussion, Zs, Eric Wubbels and Josh Modney, Ensemble Contemporaneous, Vicky Chow, and many more.

Music

Sound

Ratings from Michael Fremer @ AnalogPlanet.com

 

1. Aria - Goldberg Variations BWV 988

2. Prelude - Violin Partita No.3 BWV 1006

3. Bouree - Lute Suite No.1 BWV 996

4. Gavotte - Cello Suite No.6 BWV 1012

5. Chorale - Cantata 147 BWV 147

6. Minuet 1 And 2 - Cello Suite No.1 BWV 1007

7. Chaconne - Violin Partita No.2 BWV 1004

8. Aria Da Capo - Goldberg Variations BWV 988

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