Virgil Moorefield

Hinterzimmer Records is proud to present a double-header CD & DVD release featuring avant composer and intermedia artist Virgil Moorefield’s recent creative output. The CD, polemically entitled No Business As Usual, presents Moorefield’s recent, alternately explosive and lyrical post-minimal works for his Bicontinental Pocket Orchestra, a group of luminaries from Europe and the U.S.: Vicky Chow (piano), Ian Ding (vibraphone, drums), Aleksander Gabrys (contrabass), Taylor Levine (guitar), Martin Lorenz (percussion), Jürg Wickihalder (baritone sax) and Virgil Moorefield on drums. The title track is a five-movement work which deploys the ensemble as a «single, potent, prismatic drum set» (Time Out New York, 2012). Detroit per Se, another work for sextet, builds from a meditative piano beginning to an incendiary, polyrhythmic workout for the entire group. Also included on the CD is the propulsive duet Siamese Kits, Joined at the Kick (A Study In Prime Numbers). The eleven-minute track features the composer on drums, giving his comprovisational approach a driving workout opposite the redoubtable Ian Ding. 

The DVD consists of the intermedia piece Five Ideas About the Relation of Sight and Sound, a new kind of performance work that explores audiovisual synesthesia using advanced technologies. The piece consists of five tableaux, each taking a different approach to how technology extends and affects the interplay between image and sound. In trio, three drummers thunder on sets of floor toms which are transformed into visuals in real time while also being processed into electronic surround soundscapes. In river of color, two pianists caress the strings of a beautiful instrument, generating cascades of color on an enormous wave screen while inexorably building to an apocalyptic climax that literally breaks the frame. The guitar piece grainyFilm builds towering clouds of granular sonic mass from simple performance gestures. Combined with processed live video of the guitar, the composer invokes a vision of literally stopping time. The release includes an elegant double poster set which features an intermedia manifesto, extensive liner notes about the work, score excerpts, and photos of the group in action.