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Anybody Checked Out Olly Wilson?


JSngry

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I have exactly one recording of a Wilson piece on my shelves - "Sometimes" for tenor and tape (1976), performed by William Brown on the CD shown above. It's 17 minutes long, to give you an idea of the scope. It's based on "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," and I find it to be an intriguing and moving piece. Because of the source material, it's more tonal than many electronic pieces. The tape mixes pure electronics and processed vocal source material.

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He's from St. Louis, seems to have played jazz as a youngster before getting fully into composition, and might have had local interactions with Oliver Nelson, who was maybe a few years older in both age and experience. Also had a gig as composition professor(?) at Florida A&M.

I'll come for the backstory but will stay for the music. Your description is not discouraging!

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On ‎7‎/‎18‎/‎2016 at 8:54 PM, jeffcrom said:

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I have exactly one recording of a Wilson piece on my shelves - "Sometimes" for tenor and tape (1976), performed by William Brown on the CD shown above. It's 17 minutes long, to give you an idea of the scope. It's based on "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," and I find it to be an intriguing and moving piece. Because of the source material, it's more tonal than many electronic pieces. The tape mixes pure electronics and processed vocal source material.

Quite the stealth record here, Jeff! Besides the Mitchell piece, which I enjoyed (enough to pick up something else of his, will explore until put off or run out), there's the David Baker work (not sure how much of his work in this world has been documented, actually), Oliver Lake(!!!!) and man, do I need to check out some more Donal Fox!

Videmus....looking at their website http://videmus.org/ I see that I have unknowingly already purchased a few of the releases from out of their orb...this one ties it together now, a broader picture starts to form, none of this is happening in a vacuum.

But Donal Fox...I should've heard about this guy by now...

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have we not had cause to discuss the Columbia Masterworks Black Composers series before? Mea culpa, though that's another instance of the label having done excellent work which it then ignores in the CD era, not even "mostly" ignores as w/ its Ives albums but totally--

https://www.discogs.com/label/460768-Black-Composers-Series

also on this Albany anthology

 

Edited by MomsMobley
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  • 4 years later...

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