Eric Cadesky and I represented Glass Orchestra for The Weird Instruments show on CBC radio’s GO. It was a lot of fun and got to meet a number of interesting people who come to music from different directions and intentions, like a visual artist, Iner Souster, who transforms found objects into musical instruments. Here’s a link to part two of the show: streaming radio. The Glass Orchestra segment occurs around 37:00 and the jam occurs at 48:00.

In front of a studio audience at the end of the jam:

This is from the 10 May 2010 concert at the Music Gallery in Toronto.

Dina Jandela is a composition by Mang Koko, a master of the kacapi – a 20 string zither from Indonesia. I made a solo kacapi arrangement for an Evergreen Club recording called Sunda Songs, which was released by Naxos (2003). I also added a coda to the arrangement. It’s a little tune that I overdubbed and includes Blair Mackay on percussion.

Here is the arrangement I wrote and performed on kacapi, with Blair Mackay on percussion. It is used unedited for the promotional video of a gamelan extravaganza going on in Vancouver, put on by friends and colleagues.

Here is a beautiful gamelan version of the original tune.

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Subsequently, I wrote French lyrics to the song and have performed it many times with Evergreen Club when we do the Sunda Songs show that features Jennifer Moore, Suba Sankaaran, and Maryem Tollar. Evergreen Club is working toward a release of the Sunda Songs project in the next year.

GAMELAN is a collection of bronze, wood, and bamboo instruments. Evergreen Club is a Toronto based ensemble that performs contemporary music written specifically for their gamelan, which comes from Sunda, west Java. They have been together since 1983 and I have been playing with them since 1994. (To hear us in action I’ve included two pieces below, both which I have arranged and feature me on kacapi.)

10 May we will be performing in Toronto at the Music Gallery, 197 John St. just up from CityTV building.

We’ll be playing new repertoire for gamelan and will include guest solosists on prepared piano, oboe and French horn. (SEE promotion flyer below.) For those of you who know me, I will be playing kacapi (20 string zither), as well as a few instruments in the gamelan.

Hope to see you there.

03 Pengkolan (Arr. Bill Parsons) ( On The Corner)

07 Dina Jandela MP3_ (Arr. Bill Parsons) From The Window

PROMO FLYER

EVERGREEN CLUB IN PERFORMANCE

BILL PARSONS, double kacapi

I wrote St. James in the mid-1990s after returning from Vancouver with an interdisciplinary MFA in music composition. I had an idea to create a recording of pieces that explored rhythm in an unconventional manner. Of the eight pieces that made it onto Passing Time St. James is the most rhythmically complex – each player is in a different time signature, with the guitar part in 200/8.

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St. James - CLICK/LISTEN

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REPRODUCTION

I have another collection of tunes ready to be recorded for a follow up album called Reproduction. Here the pieces explore a different orchestration, including Indian and Indonesian instruments. I hope to have this done in the next two years. Once the P minor blue is published and 6stringMosaic.com is up and running.

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In This is Spinal Tap lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel boasts that his amplifier “goes up to 11″ one louder than all other amps.

FRI. NOV. 27/09
THE GLASS ORCHESTRA – A ‘HANDS-ON’ DEMONSTRATION + CONCERT
Array Studio | 6:30 PM Lecture/Demo / 8 PM Concert | by donation
Otherworldly glassware music you’ve got to see-and-hear to believe!
* This concert is part of Array’s new Resident Studio Artists Program

Glass Orchestra features:

Rick Sacks, Eric Cadesky, Paul Hodge, Bill Parsons

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0001376

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