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Avant Flute

by Arthur Durkee

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Anton Kapela
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Izzy Maxwell
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Benjamin Doran
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eperez0911
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1.
Transit 08:28
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2.
3 5 3 1 03:52
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3.
Turtle Creek 02:23
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4.
Touching Falling Stars 05:56
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a poem to accompany the music: moonless night, palm trees black silhouettes blocking out a sea of stars meteors make streaks of light behind the shadow of the smoking volcano
5.
Cedars 03:21
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6.
Transit II 07:38
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7.
Bonus Album Track: Mountains Without End 04:44
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a poem to accompany the music: from this mountain ridge peak clouds at my feet sail through deep gorges as line after parallel line of mountain ranges become ever more pale and blue with distance

about

As a young avant-garde and experimental composer and flutist, I was heavily inspired by exploratory solo flute music from composer-performers such as Jon Gibson, Robert Dick, and Paul Horn. I was also strongly influenced by shakuhachi, the player of traditional Japanese honkyoku Kohachiro Miyata, and the modern jazz shakuhachi innovator John Kaizan Neptune. Also the fierce, almost avant-garde playing of traditional Japanese bamboo flute music by Watazumi Doso Roshi. Eventually I also added Indonesian suling to my influences, during my studies of javanese and Sundanese gamelan music.

I took up playing wood and bamboo flutes out of my interest in music from other cultures, especially from Asia, out of personal interest in their music cultures, but also from a need to add new music vocabulary to my own compositions and performances. I never thought of myself as a flutist till much later in life, as I had not developed any proficiency in standard classical technique or repertoire. Flutes for me were, and are, a means of generating musical sounds, usually improvisations or structured improvisations, mostly non-notated. Over time my flute technique has gradually improved, but I still would not claim to be more than an enthusiastic amateur. I remain an explorer.

Looking back on my early flute recordings and performances, I used flute as a way of exploring new musical resources, outside the classical and academic frameworks. It was an important part of my post-college self-taught musical expansion into improvised music, world music, soundscape, and using the recording studio as a compositional tool.

The other, earlier reason I took up playing flutes was to regain my breath after a youth full of respiratory illness, early age bronchitis, and bad allergies. It worked. Alongside choral music singing, I restored my breath, indeed improved it. I sing better now, at an age when most singers are considered past their prime, than I did in my young adulthood; I have a better range, and even better mastery over my vocal performance. The same is true for playing flutes. It’s a lifetime of accumulated practice. But I still don’t think of myself as A Flutist, but flutes are one very important aspect of my musical explorations.

Several pieces were originally recorded using analog equipment. Every effort has been made to preserve the original recordings while removing artifacts such as tape hiss and background noise. Nonetheless some ambient noise may also be present in some recordings.

credits

released April 2, 2021

Arthur Durkee: flutes, ethnic flutes, Native American cedar flute, shakuhachi, Thai flutes, bamboo flutes, wood flutes, keyboards, synths

Written & Produced by Arthur Durkee
Additional Co-Production by Al Jewer and Stuart Hinds

© 2021 Arthur Durkee Arts
All Rights Reserved

Recorded at: Dragonsweyr, Laughing Cat, and at remote locations
between 1982 and 2021
Engineered by AD with Al Jewer and Stuart Hinds

Remixed and mastered 2021 by AD at Dragonsweyr

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all rights reserved

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Arthur Durkee Ann Arbor, Michigan

Arthur Durkee is a composer & songwriter who records & performs on Chapman Stick, bass, analog modular synths, bamboo & wood flutes, keys, frame drums, and voice. He has won awards for composed, notated music as well as for his recordings, & is a published poet, & designer & illustrator. ... more

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