Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$8USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
12” LP of Electronic saxophone and field recording from Matanzas, Cuba.
“Mr. Leonard creates a haunting, rhythmic, chantlike score, secular spiritual music for a New World. After leaving the gallery I kept hearing it, with delight, in my head, on the street, all afternoon.” Holland Cotter (The New York Times)
Matanzas is an album of meditative and evocative pieces for alto saxophone, audio processing, and field recordings. The music was premiered at Bar Matanzas, a pavilion by Leonard and Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons for documenta 14, Kassel, Germany. Original field recordings are from Ciénega Zapata, a 4,162 square kilometer biosphere in Matanzas, Cuba. The music was composed and performed in Robert Rauschenberg’s multipurpose 40’x80’ studio in Captiva, Florida.
Leonard writes, “The music on this LP is a reflection on living in and listening to the sounds of Matanzas, Cuba while preparing works for documenta. My recordings of folkloric musicians, interviews with mystics, bartenders and biologists, as well as the urban soundscape were in my ear while composing this piece.”
The music draws on Leonard’s association with top-shelf artists including Joanne Brackeen, Terence Blanchard, Richard Devine, Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, Phill Niblock, Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner), Stephen Vitiello and Amnon Wolman. Leonard's experimental work is known widely through concerts at documenta, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Whitney Museum of American Art and Venice Biennale.
Co-produced and mixed by Neil Leonard and long-time collaborator, Joseph Branciforte. The LP was cut by Scott Hull
Includes unlimited streaming of Matanzas
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
Electronic saxophone and field recording from Matanzas, Cuba.
credits
released June 1, 2017
Neil Leonard - composition, alto saxophone, electronics, field recordings
Album Notes
The music on this album is a reflection on living in and listening to the sounds of Matanzas, Cuba. My recordings of folkloric musicians, interviews, urban surface noise and wetlands were in my ear while composing this work but not heard on the final pieces. What remains is the sensation “after listening,” the stillness and sense of wonder that lingers after hearing Matanzas.
This album seemed to compose itself. In August 2016, midway through developing new work for documenta 14, I was in residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s Rauschenberg Residency Program in Captiva, Florida. The baby grand piano placed at the entrance of the 40’ x 80’ studio caught my attention. Each day I found myself playing it before sunrise while experiencing the solitude of the white space, the cathedral-like acoustics and the challenge of facing fresh music paper as light entered the room. Before long, I finished a collection of three and four voice vignettes but had no agenda for completing a work based on these meditative pieces.
With the help of Stephen Vitiello, I found a new microphone and recording gear to experiment with acoustics in the space. Again, working at daybreak, I recorded solo saxophone performances of each vignette. The room let clouds of notes ring simultaneously, as if the studio was a giant piano, sustaining the notes and forming chords. During the residency I also developed a new generation of saxophone processing ideas that resulted in the additional layers of electronics heard here. The result is a ‘choir’ of saxophones, some processed electronically, some not(,) and some playing breathing sounds to add a sense of perspective.
Joe Branciforte’s insights as co-producer helped gather these vignettes into two pieces for vinyl release and later quadraphonic presentation for live performance. We added my field recordings made in the wetlands of Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) area of Ciénega Zapata, a 4,162 square kilometer biosphere in Matanzas, to create a connective tissue between sections.
The two pieces on this album are musings on Matanzas created in Rauschenberg’s studio at a time when the sounds of the city, remote estuaries and former plantations rang in my ear but did not need to be heard directly. Occasionally the waves, insects and migratory birds of the Americas intervene to guide us to the next section. The saxophone is in the foreground and the feeling of Matanzas, an area that I have recorded since 1986, is present.
Fragments of the album Matanzas were heard in a 10-channel sound piece for the installation "Matanzas Sound Map" exhibited at the Athens School of Fine Arts in Greece. A two channel version of that piece accompanies a video installation in Bar Matanzas in Kassel, Germany, presented by documenta 14 (2017).
Neil Leonard
August, 2017
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All compositions by N. Leonard, Arcadio Music (ASCAP)
Recorded at Robert Rauschenberg Residency program, Captiva Florida, 2016. Field recordings from Matanzas, Cuba, 2016
Co-produced by Neil Leonard and Joe Branciforte
Mixed by Neil Leonard and Joe Branciforte
Mastered by Scott Hull
Graphic design by Harel Schreiber
Photo by Neil Leonard
Neil Leonard is a sound artist, saxophonist and composer. He performs his compositions with a mix of contemporary musicians
and folkloric ensembles. Recent sound installations explore how global marketing impacts our listening, and were made in collaboration with bartenders, biologists, street criers and dock workers....more
The prolific drummer and producer, a veteran of the Philadelphia and Antwerp club scenes, proves his rhythmic mastery once again. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 21, 2024
Belgian beatmaker honors his Georgian roots through the incorporation of local choirs and field recordings collected during his travels. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 29, 2023
Tenderlonious pays homage to the iconic spiritual jazz he loves on this crucial new release, featuring the artist on alto saxophone. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 31, 2023
