Nate Wooley Releases Recording And Chapbook Of Michael Pisaro-Liu's STEM-FLOWER-ROOT
The piece is one of the first compositions from the For/With series, a group of pieces Wooley commissioned from artists that normally wouldn't write for brass.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Dec. 10, 2021
Today, Friday, December 10, 2021 trumpeter Nate Wooley released a recording of Michael Pisaro-Liu's stem-flower-root for trumpet in Bb and sine tones and an accompanying chapbook, Edition TTE002 of Pleasure of the Text Records imprint, Tisser Tissu Editions.
stem-flower-root was commissioned by Wooley and premiered by him on the closing night of the inaugural For/With Festival in 2017 at Brooklyn's Issue Project Room. Only Pisaro's second piece for solo trumpet, the piece is one of the first compositions from the For/With series, a group of pieces Wooley commissioned from artists that normally wouldn't write for brass or for solo trumpet.
The accompanying chapbook includes writings by Michael Pisaro on D'Arcy Thompson's book, On Growth and Form, and its impact on stem-flower-root, as well as an aphoristic essay by Wooley on the idea of stems, flowers, and roots. It also features photos by artist Jessica Slaven and the score for the work. The book is designed by Lasse Marhaug.
The For/With Festival occurred in three iterations, from 2017-2019, at Brooklyn's Issue Project Room space. Initially conceived as a commissioning series, the concerts were an outlet for Nate Wooley's project of commissioning, performing, and documenting pieces for solo trumpet by composers that may not have seen the instrument as a viable or interesting outlet for their musical voices. The first festival, in 2017, included solo premieres of works by Christian Wolff (For Trumpet Player upcoming release as TTE003) and Michael Pisaro-Liu (stem-flower-root TTE002), as well as works by Ash Fure and Annea Lockwood. In 2018, the premieres consisted of works made in direct collaboration with Wadada Leo Smith (Red Autumn Gold upcoming release TBA) and Annea Lockwood (Becoming Air 2021 release on Black Truffle Records) as well as ensemble works by Annea Lockwood, Ash Fure, and Catherine Lamb. 2019, the last year of the For/With Festival included premieres of work for trumpet by Sarah Hennies (monologue TBA) and Eva-Maria Houben (chanting ballads TBA) as well as works by Katherine Young and Ryoko Akama. Although the festival had reached its end before the COVID quarantine, work continues on new commissions by Katherine Young and Catherine Lamb in hopes of creating an alternate literature for the future of solo trumpet.
Each Tisser Tissu Editions recording will be accompanied with beautifully designed books including information and context intended to help unspool and reconstruct the meaning of the music in the same way the reader unravels and reweaves a text. In some cases, these accompanying features will clarify: composers and performers talking directly about their work. In others they will only give a vague contextualization or will exist to purposely frustrate understanding. All of these elements are intended to goad the audience into reflection and personal study, with the best possible result being a return to the work as a way of inviting new and individual threads into the overall fabric.
About Nate Wooley
Nate Wooley (b.1974) was born in Clatskanie, Oregon and began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. He made his debut as soloist with the New York Philharmonic at the opening series of their 2019 season. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language.
Wooley moved to New York in 2001 and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Annea Lockwood, Ken Vandermark, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada. He has premiered works for trumpet by Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Annea Lockwood, Ash Fure, Wadada Leo Smith, Sarah Hennies and Eva-Maria Houben.
In recent years, he has built a reputation as a composer of music epic in scope and social in design. His series of solo works based on the International Phonetic Alphabet, The Complete Syllables Music, was compared to the literary work of Georges Perec and hailed as "revolutionary solo repertoire" by All About Jazz. At the other end of the spectrum, his decade-long Seven Storey Mountain cycle has encompassed almost 50 different performers, the most recent version consisting of a 32-person ensemble. This iteration, Seven Storey Mountain VI, "expresses communality, with all of its potential for the profound and the spiritual," according to Pitchfork. SSMVI appeared on many year-end lists, including as record of the year in El Intruso's International Critics List and critic Peter Margasak's personal list.
Another branch of Wooley's compositional work is his commitment to the concept of Mutual Aid Music, beginning with the quartet work Battle Pieces, commissioned by Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Foundation in 2014, and including a short-lived, but powerful compositional set entitled knknighgh in homage to poet Aram Saroyan. MAM has since matured into a full chamber ensemble work for double quartet and has been expanded through collaborative work with Annea Lockwood (Becoming Air, release on Black Truffle Records 2021), choreographers Kim Brandt, Jen Mesch, and Anna Sperber, and with commissions by TILT Brass, Loadbang Ensemble, and Dither Quartet.
Wooley received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award in 2016. He was the recipient of the Instant Award for Improvised Music and the Spencer Glendon First Principles Prize in 2020.
He is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums. Learn more at www.natewooley.com.
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