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NW 80819CD
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"The title of this recording has multiple meanings for its composer, Larry Polansky (b. 1954). These are the generations... is a translation of the Hebrew title for the second work on the program, Eleh Tol'd'ot, the first words of the thirty-fifth verse of the first book (B'rey'sheet) of the Torah. Beyond referencing Polansky's Jewish heritage, the phrase reflects this particular collection of works on several levels. The compositions included stem from different generations of Polansky's musical output: Some were composed in the 1980s while he was teaching at Mills College in Oakland, California (Eleh Tol'd'ot, Sacco, Vanzetti); some while living in New Hampshire when he was a Professor of Music at Dartmouth College (Glockentood II, 22 Sounds-); and others are recent compositions completed in Santa Cruz, California, around the time of Polansky's retirement from the University of California, Santa Cruz (five songs for kate and vanessa, kaddish (ladder) canon). The performers on the recording are similarly of different generations. Some have known and worked with Polansky since the 1980s or earlier; others are much younger and began working with him as graduate students within the last few years. Moreover, some of these works use some form of algorithmic composition while others use more conventional approaches to composing music. In some pieces, the musicians themselves must enact some kind of procedure to generate the sounds or structures they are to play. Finally, the works presented here demonstrate Polansky's deep understanding of the history and techniques of experimental music in the United States. Within these compositions one can find compositional approaches that span styles from the ultramodernists in the early twentieth century to advanced computational algorithms not yet possible in that era. Through these works Polansky somehow manages to integrate older and newer styles of experimental composition into a cohesive voice that despite, or perhaps because of, its eclecticism and diversity is unmistakably the music of Larry Polansky."
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NW 80777CD
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"This album exemplifies the depth to which Larry Polansky (b. 1954) explores and connects different musical ideas: In Three Pieces for Two Pianos and Old Paint, mathematical models and algorithmic processes are used to set folk songs; in k-toods, simple text scores outline complex musical processes that Polansky has theorized extensively; and the Dismissions are culminations of lifelong musicological investigations. His unique compositional style is unified through diversity and a constant reexamining, questioning, reformulating, and mixing of ideas. In Three Pieces for Two Pianos (2006-07) Polansky integrates several compositional processes, many of which are individually employed in the subsequent pieces. In Old Paint (2010), a setting of the traditional American cowboy song 'I Ride an Old Paint,' Polansky augments Ruth Crawford Seeger's piano arrangement from Twenty-two American Folk Tunes Arranged for Piano. The piece starts and ends with a haunting melody that floats above, below, and around the tune sung by the pianist. The five k-toods (2002) musically reflect personal experiences and reflections Polansky has had as a father. While loosely programmatic in that sense, they are not at all separate from deep musical investigations found throughout his work; most notably, mathematical functions of time that control the evolution of one musical shape into another, which he calls 'morphological mutations.' Through the Shakers, he first became interested in the concept of 'dismission' in American sacred music. Dismission (pianotood) (2006) expands the original hymn both harmonically, with very wide, open voicings of the chords through much of the piece, and temporally, by increasing then decreasing the lengths of the measures with the time-stretching algorithm also used in the Three Pieces for Two Pianos. Dismission (pianotood 2) (2006) does not implement the time-stretching algorithm and the voicings are generally a bit more compact. Instead, Polansky ornaments some of the chords with delicate embellishments and figurations."
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NW 80700CD
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"The World's Longest Melody is a collection of experimental music written for the guitar by composer/guitarist Larry Polansky (b. 1954). The guitar has long been an important component in Polansky's musical explorations, and this CD has grown from the enthusiasm for his work by the musicians of the Belgian electric guitar quartet ZWERM. The acoustic and electric guitar are featured both solo and in small and large combinations; a few pieces not originally conceived for the instrument are also presented here in guitar-oriented guise. These works explore new techniques of experimental intonation, computer composition, and extraordinary and new modes of playing the guitar. It includes the premiere recording of his radically difficult 'for jim, ben and lou' (harp, guitar, and percussion) in which the percussionist retunes the strings to different just intonations as the piece progresses. Given the endlessly fluent and fertile nature of Polansky's imagination one is somehow reluctant to describe any of his individual compositions as a masterpiece: but certainly this work powerfully encapsulates a wide range of his preoccupations and integrates them into a coherent whole that could not be mistaken for the work of any other composer."
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NW 80684CD
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Performed by Jody Diamond, Chris Mann (voice); Phil Burk and Larry Polansky (live computers, fretless electric guitars); Robin Hayward (tubas). "Among the lineages of knowledge that Larry Polansky (b. 1954) has woven together in his creative work, as both a composer and theorist, have been mathematics, intonation theory, cybernetics, systems theory, artificial intelligence, musicology (both Western and non-Western), American Sign Language, and Jewish mysticism. He has combined these and many other fields of study together into some of the most important music written by anyone of his generation while retaining status as the composer who is most worthy of being called a true theorist. In many ways, his compositions are themselves injunctive demonstrations of his theoretical insights that stand as critiques of the theoreticism that is now endemic to the art world. This intellectual integrity and facility has also been responsible for one of the most interesting characteristics of Polansky's compositional output. His music is one of the most successful, and rare, examples of a confluence between two, generally conflicting, 20th century musical streams. Like his mentor, James Tenney -- and many other late 20th century experimental masters who were inspired by the aesthetic innovations of Cage -- Polansky creates musical expositions of phenomenal reality. Sometimes these are based in psychoacoustic science, and sometimes they are grounded in mathematical formalisms. Sometimes they explore both at once. What he also manages to do -- and this is where he succeeds at the above-mentioned confluence -- is so often reveal these concepts within an expressive musical frame that is strongly linked to more traditional musical values."
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ART 1023
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"Polansky's 'morphing' pieces, for instruments and computers, are collected on his third solo CD on Artifact Recordings. These works explore musical change in diverse and strange ways. Several were written by computer, using formal, mathematical, and software morphing techniques. Performers include the composer, Daniel Goode (clarinet), Empi Esguerra (voice), Sarah Cahill (piano), Nick Didkovsky (guitar), Leo Ciesa (drums), Greg Anderson (bass), and Tom Erbe (sound).
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NW 80566CD
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"Larry Polansky (b. 1954), though known primarily for his work in the field of computer music, has produced a major addition to the keyboard literature, this massive theme-and-variations on Ruth Crawford Seeger's arrangement of the folk song 'Lonesome Road'. Inspired by his deep engagement with her music, 'Lonesome Road' (1988-89) is a prime example of Polansky's penchant for building large architectonic structures through complex transformational processes. The work is in three sections of seventeen variations each. This is the world-premiere recording of this mammoth piece, a wonderful amalgam of Ivesian pianism, gamelan patterns, jazz-tinged harmonies, and folk song. Its size and grandeur hark back to a pianistic outsider tradition of sui generis works and it is the most important American keyboard work since Frederic Rzewski's 'The People United Will Never Be Defeated'."
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