It’s been quite the wait, but Jason Sharp has far from sit idly by. The Montréal-based saxophonist and electroacoustic composer last appeared with 2018’s searching Stand Above the Streams. In the time since, he’s delved into working truly on his own, crafting the entirely solo album, The Turning Centre of a Still World, which will arrive on August 27 through Constellation.
It’s truly a beguiling project, treading gracefully between grandiose movements and “earthier”, intimate sensibility.
Sharp goes in depth describing his latest:
“This music was developed and composed with the use of a customised electroacoustic interface in which I wear a heart monitor that sends signal to an array of modular synthesizers. All electronic rhythmic elements stem from my real-time human pulse, establishing a fluctuating centre that continually channels and responds to the physicality of the performance. The entire compositional process is given essential shape and colour through biofeedback; the electronics are humanized. The music is orchestrated with my bass and baritone saxophone playing, along with other methods of intentional breathing and heart-rate manipulation, to influence and interact with my electronic/synthetic materials to fulfill the arc of each composition.
“In live performance, tempos and other signal-processed components of the music are different each time, directly conditioned by my visceral and emotional presence. My physicality is inherently patched into all aspects of these electroacoustic séances: concentration, vulnerability, emotion, meditation – all are at work in the performance of the music, including at a formal/structural level through biofeedback of constituent sonic materials. As synthesized sound elements shift according to fluctuations in the signal path sourced from my pulse, the performance accommodates and manipulates these responsive variables, continually re-synthesizing the synthesis. These works are always and fundamentally unique to each performed instantiation, in a connective way that encompasses audience, machine and me.“
Beats Per Minute is pleased to premiere the album’s first offering, along with its stellar video, “Everything is Waiting for You”. Check it out below.
Jason Sharp’s new album The Turning Centre of a Still World comes out on August 27 through Constellation (pre-order). You can find him on Bandcamp.
