TAK Ensemble Releases "Oor," Featuring Erin Gee & Ann Cleare

by Ted Gordon on May 16, 2019, 4:29 p.m.

Over the past six years, New York's TAK Ensemble has emerged as a unique ensemble in contemporary music: the quintet has already released two albums, collaborating with composers Taylor Brook and Mario Diaz de Leon, which show the ensemble's dedication to working directly with composers and artists to create new work. Now TAK has launched their own record label, TAK Editions, and will release their third album—Oor—featuring works by PSNY composers Erin Gee and Ann Cleare, in addition to works by Tyshawn Sorey, Ashkan Behdazi, David Bird, and Natacha Diels. 

Erin Gee's Mouthpiece 28, included on the album, was premiered by TAK in 2016, and here sees a pristine studio recording that captures every minute sound of vocalist Charlotte Mundy's voice, turned into a non-semantic instrument complimeted by bass flute, bass clarinet, violin, and percussion. Oor also features a recording of Ann Cleare's unable to create an offscreen world (c), which explores "ideas of wrongness, incompatibility, and inability with ferocious streams of energy, confidence and hope."

TAK writes: 

The album is called Oor (roughly translating to naked) because these works, to us, share a sense of raw openness, unvarnished emotion, and urgency. This visceral collection of pieces, primarily written for the ensemble, highlights fierce virtuosity, uncanny blends, and otherworldly timbral landscapes.

Preview the album at I Care If You Listen or TAK's Bandcamp page, and if you're in New York, be sure to check out their album release event on May 18th.

Erin Gee Featured at the Resonant Bodies Festival

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 6, 2016, 5:12 p.m.

Now in its fourth year, the Resonant Bodies Festival showcases contemporary vocal performers who curate their own concert programs—allowing for a wide variety of repertoire and musical styles. Held this year at Roulette, Resonant Bodies' closing night features the premiere of a new work by PSNY Composer Erin Gee, performed by soprano Charlotte Mundy alongside the TAK Ensemble. On the Resonant Bodies Podcast, Mundy discusses her curatorial choices with festival director and soprano Lucy Dhegrae. Check out the podcast below. 

World Premiere of Mario Diaz de Leon's "O Ignis Spiritus" by the TAK Ensemble

by Ted Gordon on May 24, 2016, 4:11 p.m.

The TAK Ensemble, an ambitious young group from New York, will premiere Mario Diaz de Leon's new composition, "O Ignis Spiritus", alongside a performance of Ann Cleare's "Unable to Create an Offscreen World (C)", at Roulette on May 25th. Supported by a Chamber Music America commissioning grant and the GENERATE program at Roulette, this performance follows a busy month for Diaz de Leon, who recently has performed in venues as diverse as Brooklyn metal mecca Saint Vitus, the Donau Festival in Krems, Austria, and the Tectonics Festival in Glasgow, alongside the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and frequent collaborator Nate Young, of the noise group Wolf Eyes. 

Diaz de Leon's new work, "O Ignis Spiritus", shares its title with a medieval sequence of the same name by Hildegard von Bingen; the text, which translates to "O Holy Fire", compliments Diaz de Leon's compositional aesthetic, which explores the extremities of timbre, texture, color, and form. 

Diaz has written about fire before: check out "The Flesh Needs Fire", a 2007 composition for flute, clarinet, and electronics.