Stock: 
Format: 
Release Date: 25-01-1997
Label: Celestial Harmonies
Catalog Number: 15027-2
Barcode: 13711502725
Musical Style: World
Track Listing:
| Disc 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Track 1 [02:54] | 6 | Track 6 [11:15] |
| 2 | Track 2 [03:56] | 7 | Track 7 [09:34] |
| 3 | Track 3 [02:27] | 8 | Track 8 [06:38] |
| 4 | Track 4 [02:38] | 9 | Track 9 [13:28] |
| 5 | Track 5 [03:53] | ||
Description:
From the dance production by choreographer Graeme Murphy and The Sydney Dance Company, Free_Radicals emerged in a most surprising way. The music envisioned would be performed by three percussionists on stage with the dancers who interact (in addition to their movement) with vocals and additional percussion. When the work began, there was no score, just the musicians and the dancers. Michael Askill, Low Choy and Eddington were creatively challenged with minimal instrumentation to produce new music at maximum speed and to find within themselves sufficient variety and invention to sustain a full evening production. Askill accomplished this by finding a common rhythmic language for both the dancers and musicians using number systems. This can be quite confusing in an environment based entirely on rhythm without obvious melody. These number systems became the basis for much of the music of Free_Radicals and the key for real interaction between the dancers and musicians. The title words, free and radical, are intended to capture the wildness of the music and dance. The percussion is like the skeleton of the synchronized moments, you feel like the dancers are like little speakers, generating the sound that comes flying out of them,' says Murphy. In this CD version of Free_Radicals David Hudson presents improvisations as an alternative to the choreographed interaction of the original stage version. The choice of didgeridoo may at first seem strange, yet Hudson (himself a dancer) is a master of an instrument which is arguably as old or even older than the drum. His improvisations on didgeridoo propel and embellish while (like a dancer) his vocalizations and chants create new forms and shapes.'
Biography:
Producer and composer Michael Askill is regarded by many as Australia's finest percussionist. He is a founding member and the Artistic Director of Australia's premier contemporary ensemble Synergy, a composer, producer, the Head of the Percussion Department at the Canberra School of Music and finds time for collaborations and a solo career. By his teenage years, Omar Faruk Tekbilek was one of Turkey’s most sought after session musicians. A virtuoso performer on the Near Eastern cane flute (ney) and the Turkish lute, (baglama) Tekbilek was in demand in both jazz and traditional Turkish/Arab music circles. Along the way, he has mastered several kinds of reed instruments, a variety of strings (bowed and plucked), synthesizer, hand drums and even the accordion. In 1976, he settled in upstate New York. Since then, his music has appeared regularly on concert stages, recordings and films in the United States, Europe and Australia. In addition to a thriving solo career, he has played with a wide range of other musicians, from the late Don Cherry to pianist Michael Harrison’s Mandala Jones, a band that draws on the poetry of the great 13th century Sufi poet Rumi.
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