String Band

for Violin, Cello, and Prepared Piano Approximate Duration: 11' Buy on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/american-trios/id302507978?ign-mpt=uo%3D4 PROGRAM NOTES Sandwiched between my burgeoning shelf of electronica vinyl and an admittedly more modest stack of bargain-bin classical LPs, I have in my record collection a few dozen albums of old-time string-band music. The covers show ecstatically happy groups of country musicians crowded together and clutching the tools of their trade: fiddles, guitars, mandolins, banjos, a string bass. The breakneck, instrumental picking on the records is even more lively than the looks on their faces, and somewhere in that soulful, earthy music I found a space to begin String Band. Those who are aware of old-time string-band music might hear a twangy resemblance to the work’s opening material. A unison that slowly bleeds lower, made more effective by the use of pencil erasers and small screws inserted in the piano, grows into bluesy, sliding ha