Ave Maria: Variations on a Theme by Giacinto Scelsi, by Ian Power & Anne Rainwater

Ave Maria: Variations on a Theme by Giacinto Scelsi

by Ian Power & Anne Rainwater

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
The physical CD comes in a beautiful laser-cut, hand-folded jacket and booklet designed by Jacob DeGeal that evokes the period of Scelsi’s original work, with liner notes by composer Carolyn Chen. Only 50 available.

Includes unlimited streaming of Ave Maria: Variations on a Theme by Giacinto Scelsi via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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	1.	Theme (Ave Maria from Three Latin Prayers by Giacinto Scelsi, 1972) 03:34
	2.	Variation I 05:00
	3.	Variation II 04:09
	4.	Variation III 04:05
	5.	Variation IV 03:00
	6.	Interlude 05:43
	7.	Variation IV (cont'd) 01:33
	8.	Epilogue 03:42

about

Anne Rainwater, piano, voice
Ian Power, composer

Carrier Records presents Ave Maria: Variations on a Theme by Giacinto Scelsi, an album-length work from composer Ian Power and Bay Area-pianist Anne Rainwater. Power unwinds the original melody of Scelsi’s 1972 hymn, over and over, into an obsessive meditation for performer and listener alike. What begins as lush chords and hammering bells is interrupted by a bizarre ritual where the pianist must perform an impossible task and be held musically accountable for their mistakes. Ave Maria’s relentless repetitions and uncannily tonal harmonies probe, exalt, and challenge religious concepts of devotion and interiority.

Dedicated to Eileen Hayes-Power.

Liner notes by Carolyn Chen featured in digital and physical booklets after purchase.

Jacket design by Jacob DeGeal. Liner photo by Ian Power. Jacob DeGeal won a 2023 American Graphic Design award for this CD jacket & design.

"[Ave Maria] figures out how many Jenga blocks you can pull from the theme, and then pile ‘em all back on top — along with a bunch of extras from an additional box, and maybe a few pieces from the wrong game, too — without the whole thing falling over. I’m reminded of the creatures in Annihilation, organic matter falling away and re-amassing in heaping, arbitrary clumps until you have only a dim sense of what the original animal template might have been."
-Dave Moore, theotherdave.substack.com, 10/26/23

"The idea of ritual as a task, and its associated demands, is already established here, with a secluded, unpolished recording that draws out the imperfections in her voice and her instrument, with the soft creak and thud of the piano’s hammers. The subsequent variations play on the obsessive side of Scelsi’s art, with the piano alone repeating the prayer in harmonisations that get thrown against an insistently reiterated high pitch, before condensing into loud clusters of sound echoed by forceful use of the pedal on the lower strings. The strangest variation is not marked as a variation at all, but as an Interlude that suddenly wrenches the composition into a different focus. The pianist is required to repeat the theme, but to press the keys silently. Background becomes foreground in a breathless negative space, substance made of incidental noise, with the added jeopardy of sounding a note by mistake: any such mistake must then be repeated thirty-six times. The interlude becomes a fraught hiatus in the music. Scelsi always demanded an inner calm for his music, presumably to heard it as well as play it, and this pairs with the experience that even his finest music can be a bit of a chore. In Power’s version, penitence and apprehension is shared by performer and audience. Even with frailties mercilessly exposed, Rainwater’s playing remains both strong and dutiful in equal measure."
-Ben Harper, cookylamoo.com, 12/14/23

credits

released October 24, 2023

Score dedicated to Eileen Hayes-Power and Robert Pierzak.

Composed 2008-09, premiered 19 May 2009 by Stephen Lewis at the University of California, San Diego.

Recorded 3-4 October 2022 at the Wright Theater, University of Baltimore, Baltimore, Md.

Produced by Murat Çolak and Ian Power. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Murat Çolak at GERYON.

This recording was made possible by the Peggy & Yale Gordon Trust.

© 2023
CARRIER 072

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Ian Power Baltimore, Maryland

Composer and performer of insistently, intensely meditative music in Baltimore.

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