The Harmonic Series is a compilation of musical works in Just Intonation
created by three generations of contemporary composers who utilize
this tuning system. The compilation, curated over the span of two years
by Duane Pitre, has the goal of educating listeners about the origins and
use of Just Intonation as well as portraying the unique beauty of this tonal
“color palette,” which is heard by relatively few in the Western world and
explored by even fewer.
Although all the artists on the compilation work within the avant-garde or
experimental genres, each lends something unique to the collection, and
each employs a different approach toward how to utilize Just Intonation.
Within The Harmonic Series you’ll find an array of instrumentation such as
piano, cello, accordion, electronics, guitar, ukelin, saxophone, violin, koto,
and more.
Track Listing
• FULLMAN & WONG: Blue Tunnel Fields
• DAVIS: Star Primes (for James Tenney)
• HARRISON: Tone Cloud II [from Revelation]
• LAWLER: Bowshock
• OLIVEROS: The Beauty of Sorrow [excerpt]
• PITRE: Comprovisation for Justly Tuned Ukelin
No. 1
• WATKINS: Country Western [excerpt]
• CURTIS: Stanzas Set Before a Blank Surface.
PRESS QUOTES
“Pauline Oliveros has been a figure of the classical and electronic avantgarde
for decades … her careers as writer, composer, and performer have
been dedicated to the exploration of music as a psychosomatic means
of expanding consciousness … Her music is a fine example of eschewing
artifice as a means of arriving at richer art: the persistent, undulating mass
of sound that she elicits from her accordion brings to mind the image of a
raw sine wave—the simplest visual avatar of sound.” — Tiny Mixtapes
“A unity of purpose and multi-hued sound that renders an engrossing
listening experience.” — Textura (review for Duane Pitre)
“The music scrapes and rattles along beautifully, the musicians interacting
with sympathy and precision, creating images of lonely marshlands,
desolate yet captivating. Abstract voices add another layer to the
compositions, wringing yet more emotion from the pieces.” — Terrascape
(review for Teresa Wong)
“Listening to it, you feel like you are inside some cyclopean subterranean
grotto … its bejeweled walls glistening with an alien luster [and] sounding
like something that shimmers … iridescent shapes bend conventional
pulse-based time and impose their own paradoxical temporality, where
constant movement teems within a vast stasis.” — The Wire (review for
Ellen Fullman)