Tourmaline is both a gem and the title of a new gem of a release from NEUMA RECORDS. It features the virtuosic saxophonist Dylan Ward (dylan-ward-saxophone@squarespace.com playing on the soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones Alexandra Gardner’s Tourmaline, Viet Cuong’s Nalca, Seth Andrew Davis’ Angelus Novus, Kenneth Michael Florence’s Seven Steps, and Emma O’Halloran’s Sum of its Parts.

The use of both electronic and acoustical sounds in combination dates to the Musique Concrète of the 1940’s, a movement that paved the path for Xenakis, Boulez, Varèse, and, in the world of rock, Frank Zappa, to name but a few pioneers, to create work at a higher level of technical accomplishment that today is continued in the novel creations of Alexandra Gardner, Viet Cuong, Seth Andrew Davis, Kenneth Michael Florence, and Emma O’Halloran.

NEUMA RECORDS (www.neumarecoeds.org ) again delivers the kind of perfectly produced, engineered, and packaged collection of experimental music that we have grown to expect from this label.

Rafael de Acha © 2022