Works For Harmonica

The three British composers in this programme all found very different ways to integrate the harmonica with that most aristocratic of ensembles, the string quartet. Gordon Jacob’s Divertimento is a delicious musical tableau, full of his characteristic melodic ease and playfulness. James Moody was devoted to the harmonica, for which he wrote a number of works, and his Quintet has a Classical structure that includes both highly virtuosic and deeply introspective episodes. Renowned as a jazz drummer, Tony Kinsey adopted a late-Romantic stance in his Quintet but also looked to Gershwin and Piazzolla, ending the work with the blues and an unforgettably catchy riff.

Are you hankering to play the harmonica? Harmonica For Dummies is an easy-to-read practice guide that gives you step-by-step instructions and gets you making music in no time! Even if you’re an experienced harmonica player, this jump-in-anywhere reference is packed with tips and playing techniques that will take your skills to the next level.

Nate Young and John Olson as Wolf Eyes have worked with pretty much everybody from alternative rockers like Sonic Youth and Andrew W.K. to fellow noise totems like Merzbow, Black Dice and Prurient or the experimental hip hop-adjacent duo Model Home, yet there are few artists as formidable or as apparently well suited to their sound as the legendary saxophonist Anthony Braxton, with whom they first collaborated at a music festival in Quebec in the spring of 2005. Braxton had reportedly cleared out their merchandise table a year earlier at a festival in Sweden upon his first introduction to the band, and at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville the following May he found time to sit in on their set between his own scheduled performances with Fred Firth and his sextet, as part of an event curated by the Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore. The resulting album was released in 2006 as the critically acclaimed Black Vomit, with Olson stating ‘his language on the saxophone is just insane. There is nothing he can’t do on the horn. It was a perfect match’ while Braxton remarked Wolf Eyes to him ‘felt like family immediately. The communication was immediate’.

This live recording brings together a selection of works from two concerts given at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid by Antonio Serrano, accompanied by pianists Federico Lechner (22 November 2014) and Ignasi Terraza (27 November 2021). In these recitals Serrano demonstrated his virtuosic mastery of the harmonica, an instrument that has played a hugely influential role in the history of jazz. The memorable music of two such significant composers as Cole Porter and George Gershwin acquires a new creative dimension in the hands of Antonio Serrano. Unfamiliar to many, the idiomatic potential of the harmonica is fully revealed in this recording, conjuring an unusual sound world that will transform the listening experience for those curious enough to dive into it.