Yarn/Wire Releases Andrew McIntosh: Little Jimmy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PR Contact: Leah Rankin | Morahan Arts and Media
leah@morahanartsandmedia.com | 646-378-9386

Yarn/Wire Releases
Andrew McIntosh: Little Jimmy

A combination of music and field recordings evoke connection and contrast between humans and nature

Out September 9 on Kairos

"The new pieces the group commissions are consistently imaginative, and inventive with exacting balance, clarity, and form." – New York Classical Review

“...a force in avant-garde music.” – AllMusic

www.yarnwire.org

New York, NY (July 29, 2022) — On Friday, September 9, 2022, New York-based percussion and piano quartet Yarn/Wire releases Andrew McIntosh: Little Jimmy, on Kairos Music. The album features the new piece, Little Jimmy, by composer Andrew McIntosh and written for Yarn/Wire, along with two solo pieces by McIntosh: Learning and I have a lot to learn.

Yarn/Wire’s musical relationship with McIntosh has lasted over a decade, since the ensemble first commissioned the composer to write the starkly beautiful Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure for two pianists and two percussionists in 2012. Little Jimmy represents the next step on their path together and the deeply personal works on this recording are infused with a deep trust between the musicians and composer; a relationship made possible through professional and personal bonds. This album is a testament to the possibilities of long-term collaborations between like-minded artists.

Little Jimmy not only represents the evolution of this relationship, but also documents a process of collaboration through canceled concerts and virtual connections that resulted in a more meaningful look at alternative ways and spaces to listen to music – largely inspired by and accomplished through field recordings.

"The three pieces on Yarn/Wire's Little Jimmy album,” said composer Andrew McIntosh, “form a trio of harmonically-related pieces, weaving in and out of spectral harmony, noise, just intonation, traditional instruments, and handmade instruments. Common features of all three pieces are a sense of touch, sustain (despite being played on pianos and percussion), and responsiveness to the moment within a sonic environment that may be ephemeral, volatile, or otherwise unpredictable in some way. The musicians of Yarn/Wire have brought these works to life with exceptional care, skill, dedication, and imagination."

An avid climber, McIntosh collected a number of field recordings in 2020 during his hikes near the Little Jimmy backpackers camp on Mt. Islip in the Angeles National Forest. Little Jimmy incorporates these recordings of a wilderness that has since been decimated by wildfire, creating a unique autobiographical and climatological context for the piece while unintentionally archiving a natural setting that no longer exists.

The sonic landscapes of the forest, mountains, wind, and birds are echoed by Yarn/Wire’s soundscape of piano and percussion, inviting meditative reflections about humans and nature that both connect and contrast the two worlds. Bowed piano strings and cymbals, tuned pipes, ethereal piano harmonics, and vibraphone tones all play against a backdrop of McIntosh’s field recordings, augmented by subtle electronic filtered tones. The relationship between these acoustic, electronic, and recorded sounds highlights an intriguing disparity between what is artificial and what is natural or real.

Little Jimmy is followed by two additional works by McIntosh. In I have a lot to learn (2019) for solo piano (performed by Laura Barger), McIntosh writes music that is “extremely slow and organic, allowing for the placement and dynamic of events to be informed by listening to the resonance of the piano.” When the pianist is given two possible chords to play at the end of the piece, “the performer is encouraged not to make up their mind which [chord] they will play until the moment arrives and a choice must be made.” The result is a piece that focuses on the resonant space between musical events, constantly changing colors over time.

Learning (2021), also uses field recordings taken at Rosenita Saddle in Angeles National Forest. Commissioned by Russell Greenberg of Yarn/Wire, Learning contemplates the processes of emerging, becoming, resonating, remembering, and listening. The field recording acts as a memory of physical spaces while the vibraphone and glockenspiel intertwine with the sound of birds.

About Andrew McIntosh
Andrew McIntosh (b. 1985) is a composer, violinist, violist, and baroque violinist who teaches at the California Institute of the Arts, with musical interests covering a broad spectrum including historical performance practice, improvisation, microtonal tuning systems, long-form works, and the 20th-century avant-garde. He holds degrees in violin performance, composition, and early music performance from the University of Nevada, Reno, CalArts, and the University of Southern California, and principal teachers included Phillip Ruder, Martin Chalifour, Mark Menzies, Lorenz Gamma, Sue Feldman, Marc Sabat, and Wolfgang von Schweinitz. He also co-directs Populist Records, a label dedicated to new music from Southern California.

As a composer he often works with forms and ideas found in nature or in other artistic disciplines, working in instrumental, vocal, and fixed media forms, and was described by Alex Ross in The New Yorker as “a composer preternaturally attuned to the landscapes and soundscapes of the West". His compositions have been featured at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Gaudeamus Festival, Hamburger Klangwerktage, Moments Musicaux Aarau, Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemasse Muzik, Miller Theatre, National Sawdust, Issue Project Room, Monday Evening Concerts, and Tectonics Festival Glasgow. The individual musical personalities of performers he writes for are a central consideration in his work, and he has worked particularly closely with the musicians of Wild Up, the Formalist Quartet, Yarn/Wire, and soprano Estelí Gomez. Recent commissions include works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry opera company, Yarn/Wire, the Calder Quartet, and violinists Ilya Gringolts, Movses Pogossian, and Marco Fusi.

As a solo artist he has appeared at the San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox series, Miller Theatre in New York, REDCAT, Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemasse Muzik, and festivals and concert series across Europe and the US. He also was the viola soloist in the US premiere of Gèrard Grisey’s Les Espaces Acoustiques, for which performance the LA Times said he “played with commanding beauty”. As a chamber musician he is a member of the Formalist Quartet, Wild Up, Tesserae, Bach Collegium San Diego, and Wadada Leo Smith’s Red Koral Quartet. He has also performed with artists such as the Quatuor Bozzini, Wet Ink Ensemble, Marc Sabat, and Dante Boon, and has worked personally with a wide range of composers including Christian Wolff, Sofia Gubaidulina, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Helmut Lachenmann, Tom Johnson, and Jürg Frey.

Originally from rural Northern Nevada, McIntosh is currently based in the Los Angeles area.

About Yarn/Wire
Yarn/Wire is a New York-based percussion and piano quartet (Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg, percussion; Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, pianos) dedicated to the promotion of creative, experimental new music. According to New York Classical Review, “Yarn/Wire may well be the most important new music ensemble on the classical scene today.” Founded in 2005, and admired for the energy and care it brings to today’s most adventurous compositions, the ensemble seeks to expand the representation of composers including but not limited to those who identify as women, LGBTQIA , Black, African, Indigenous, Latina(o)(x), Asian, or Arab so that it might begin to better reflect our communities and experience new creative potential.

Yarn/Wire’s expansive and international 2022-23 season includes festival performances at Tzlil Meudcan (Israel), Wien Modern (Austria), and Northwestern University New Music Conference (Illinois); returns to the TIME:SPANS (NYC), Festival 20/21 (Belgium), and Rainy Days (Luxembourg) Festivals; a Composer Portrait of Øyvind Torvund presented by Miller Theatre (NYC), which continues the ensemble’s long-running relationship with Torvund; plus appearances at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn and The Stone. Recent performance highlights include a residency at Pioneer Works featuring Katherine Young’s Biomes; premieres by Taylor Brook and Diana Rodriguez at the America’s Society in NYC; a video event and Composer Portrait of Thomas Meadowcroft at Miller Theatre; a concert of solo works at Indexical in Santa Cruz; and the continuation of the Yarn/Wire International Institute and Festival, a summer festival for composers and performers interested in exploring the collaborative side of contemporary music. Their ongoing commissioning series, Yarn/Wire/Currents, serves as an incubator for new experimental music in partnership with Brooklyn-based arts organization Blank Forms.

The ensemble additionally will be in residence at Northwestern University and Adelphi University, and will return for residency activities at Duke University in the 22-23 season. In the previous season, Yarn/Wire was in residence at Cornell, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, Brandeis University, and University of Pennsylvania.

In Fall 2022, Yarn/Wire continues their multi-year residency at Girard College in Philadelphia developing a new multidisciplinary performance work, Be Holding, using poet Ross Gay’s book-length poem inspired by Philadelphia basketball champion Julius Erving (a.k.a. “Dr. J”) as its libretto. The commission will explore themes of Black genius and beauty in the face of racial violence and inequities, and the school will host Gay, composer Tyshawn Sorey, director Brooke O’Harra, and Yarn/Wire, with the world premiere scheduled for Spring 2023.

Yarn/Wire’s numerous commissions include works from composers such as Annea Lockwood, Enno Poppe, Michael Gordon, George Lewis, Ann Cleare, Catherine Lamb, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Alex Mincek, Thomas Meadowcroft, Misato Mochizuki, Sam Pluta, Tyondai Braxton, Kate Soper, and Øyvind Torvund. The ensemble enjoys collaborations with genre-bending artists such as Tristan Perich, Ben Vida, Mark Fell, Sufjan Stevens, and Pete Swanson.

The quartet has performed at festivals all over the world including the Lincoln Center, Edinburgh International, Rainy Days (Luxembourg), Ultima (Norway), Transit (Belgium), Contemplus (Prague), and Wien Modern (Austria) Festivals, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall, Dublin SoundLab, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Brooklyn Academy of Music, and New York’s Miller Theatre.

Yarn/Wire has recorded for the WERGO, Kairos, Northern Spy, Distributed Objects, Black Truffle, Shelter Press, Populist, and Carrier record labels in addition to maintaining their own imprint. Recent and upcoming releases include Tonband, featuring works by Enno Poppe and Wolfgang Heiniger, on the WERGO label; Annea Lockwood’s Becoming Air and Into the Vanishing with trumpeter Nate Wooley on Black Truffle Records; Yarn/Wire Currents 7 featuring works by Victoria Cheah, Zeno Baldi, and Diana Rodriguez; Marcel Zaes’ Parallel Prints; the piano and percussion works of Andrew McIntosh; and many more. For more information, please visit www.yarnwire.org.

About Kairos
KAIROS means “an opportune moment”, or the “here and now”- the moment when conditions are right for taking crucial action. Founded in 1999, the label became part of Paladino Media (now called HNE Rights GmbH) in 2014, and is now artistically curated by its owner, cellist Martin Rummel. A strong network of international distributors have contributed to the international reputation of KAIROS to be one of, if not the most important record label for contemporary music.

By virtue of commitment to artistry of the highest level, KAIROS recordings have been awarded countless important international record prizes. KAIROS recordings can be found on “best of” lists of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit and The New York Times. KAIROS will continue its dedication to the adventure of exploring Contemporary Music in an uncompromising manner, with the utter conviction of its team that Contemporary Music is essential to human life.

Andrew McIntosh: Little Jimmy Tracklist
ANDREW MCINTOSH (b. 1985) - I have a lot to learn (2019)
1. I have a lot to learn for solo piano [4:56]
Laura Barger, piano

ANDREW MCINTOSH (b. 1985) - Learning (2021)
2. Learning for solo percussion, with field recordings and sine tones [13:20]
Russell Greenberg, percussion

ANDREW MCINTOSH (b. 1985) - Little Jimmy (2020) for two pianos and two percussionists
Yarn/Wire
3. I: Positive/Negative 1 [2:43]

4. II: Little Jimmy at the End of Winter [5:45]

5. III: Positive/Negative 2 [1:04]

6. IV: Heart [10:27]

7. V: Positive/Negative 3 [3:27]

8. VI: Little Jimmy, Half an Hour Later, or, there is a place within you that has never been wounded [5:50]

Yarn/Wire
Laura Barger, piano
Julia Den Boer, piano
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Sae Hashimoto, percussion

Recorded and Mixed at Oktaven Audio- Mount Vernon, NY
August 26, 2021: I have a lot to learn and Learning
August 27, 2021: Little Jimmy
Mixed - August 28, 2021

Produced by Russell Greenberg, Andrew McIntosh
Engineered, Mixed, Mastering by Ryan Streber
Liner notes by Erica Scheinberg
Translations by Wieland Hoban

Recording session photographs and Andrew McIntosh portrait by Kat Nockels Photography
Yarn/Wire Portraits by Mark Sommerfeld
Outdoor photographs of field recording locations by Andrew McIntosh
Cover art based on artwork by Jakob Gasteiger

I have a lot to learn, for solo piano, was composed in February 2019 for pianist Richard Valitutto.

Learning, for solo percussion with field recordings and sine tones, was commissioned in 2021 by percussionist Russell Greenberg. The field recordings of Coulter pines were taken on May 11, 2020 at sunset at Rosenita Saddle, in the Angeles National Forest.

Little Jimmy, for two percussionists and two pianists, was commissioned in 2020 by Yarn/Wire for premiere at the TIME:SPANS festival. The piece uses field recordings taken on April 23, 2020 at or near the Little Jimmy backpackers camp on Mt. Islip in the Angeles National Forest.

This recording was supported, in part, by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music

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