[85.1] PALMER'S COURT

Album: Encounter...
Composer: John Palmer
Performers: Jane Chapman, Pete Lockett, etc.
Released: 2001
Label: Sargasso 28038
CD: 1

John Palmer's music-making is rooted in the modern composed tradition, but his journeyings across the world have given him an interest in a wide range of aural universes. 'Encounter...' is precisely about the excitement, energy and unpredictability that can occur when musical worlds collide. The title piece engages haprischord with oriental percussion, for example. 'Hinayana' is based on solo oboe, but employs pitchbending and multiphonics to stunning effect. Electronic and acoustic sounds blend and confront each other in a collage of composition and improvisation rooted in intense expressivism. Timbral variation and development is one of his major concerns.You can't really put Palmer into words, you simply have to listen and explore...

"John Palmer was born in 1959 and took his first piano lessons at the age of six. He is a British composer with a strongly international background: brought up in Wales, Italy, Switzerland, Russia and the UK he worked mainly on mainland Europe until 1990 when he returned to London. In the mid-seventies he began to compose and perform as a pianist and keyboard player and directed several groups of experimental music and jazz. Since the mid-eighties he has focused on instrumental, orchestral, vocal and chamber music, and in the early nineties he extended his compositional interests with electroacoustic resources." (c) MusicNow