March 2023

March 2, 2023

On New Album YMUSIC The Widely Influential Ensemble Continue To Reimagine The Chamber Group For The 21st Century

15 Years On, yMusic Continue To Reimagine The Chamber Group For The 21st Century On New Album YMUSIC (May 5 / StorySound Records)

Known For Acclaimed Collaborations With Paul Simon, Ben Folds, Dirty Projectors + More, yMusic Carve Unique Compositional Shapes On Album’s Nine Original Pieces

Since forming in New York in 2008, yMusic has distinguished itself as a thoroughly modern chamber group, defying orthodoxy and paving a new path for ambitious, genre-fluid young musicians. Through the precision and virtuosity of its playing and its collaborations with an assortment of acclaimed artists — including renowned composers like Caroline Shaw, Son Lux, and Nico Muhly, beloved songwriters like Paul Simon, Ben Folds, John Legend, St. Vincent’s Annie Clark, Bruce Hornsby, and ANOHNI, and indie rock groups like Dirty Projectors, The Tallest Man On Earth, and The Staves — yMusic have constantly challenged themselves to contort into new shapes and, as a result, have built a singularly rewarding body of work.

Fifteen years into a varied and respected career, today yMusic announce YMUSIC, a new album due out May 5th on StorySound Records. YMUSIC marks another creative milestone for the group: Instead of interpreting other artists’ compositions or building upon the works of others, YMUSIC finds the group focused on discovering an artistic voice all their own. This is a groundbreaking album from a group of musicians who, over the past decade and a half, have mind-melded through rhythm, melody, harmony, and artistic impulse — both a culmination of their alchemic artistry and a fresh, bold adventure into group composition.

Today, yMusic share the album’s dreamily percussive lead single “Zebras.” Says the group about the track: “This was inspired, at first, by the sound of key clicks on the bass clarinet. The song goes back and forth between a “big 7” and “little 7” feel, meaning that the song can be counted in either a fast or slow seven beats. The title came from some stand-in, nonsense lyrics Alex wrote along with the ascending melody, and we got attached to calling the track "Zebras." We love the anthemic end, as well as the eventual triumph of Hideaki’s bass line."

Watch the video for “Zebras,” directed by Jeremy Robins, HERE

The nine pieces on YMUSIC serve as a natural extension of the lessons yMusic have learned through years of collaboration — all of the songs were created together, sometimes at in-person jam sessions, but more often virtually over the course of the pandemic. Each song is a relatively concise statement that explores disparate compositional territory, like a collection of short stories linked more by theme than by setting.

Throughout its runtime, YMUSIC delivers moments of sublime mystery and complicated resolution: Opening track, “Baragon” weaves a web of rhythmically-driven grooves and intoxicating melodies, mixing flashes of earnest beauty into a foreboding collage of timbres. “The Wolf” is almost all gesture, beginning with an amorphous rhythmic buildup and a series of rising chromatic phrases that lend it an alluring tension. Meanwhile “Cloud” sounds like a chamber group performing a deconstructed hip-hop sample; traces of the DNA of past collaborators are evident, but the triumphal union of cascading horns, lissome vocals, and obtuse rhythmic propulsion is all yMusic’s own.

yMusic are Alex Sopp (flutes / voice), Hideaki Aomori (clarinets), CJ Camerieri (trumpet / French horn), Rob Moose (violin), Nadia Sirota (viola), and Gabriel Cabezas (cello). Their virtuosic execution and unique configuration have attracted the attention of high profile collaborators—from Paul Simon to Bill T. Jones to Ben Folds—and inspired original works by some of today’s foremost composers, including Andrew Norman, Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Son Lux, Missy Mazzoli, Marcos Balter, Judd Greenstein and Gabriella Smith. They have performed around the world in venues of all sizes, including the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and Madison Square Garden.

yMusic will embark on live dates throughout the year, beginning with release shows in Los Angeles (May 9 at 2220 Arts + Archives) and New York (May 12 at Public Records). Keep an eye out for more tour dates to be announced soon.

March 3, 2023

yMusic Track "Zebras" Included on New York Times Playlist

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos.

A seven-beat rhythm percolates through “Zebras,” a minimalistic but eventful romp by the chamber sextet yMusic. The rhythm hops from key clicks on a bass clarinet to pizzicato strings; it’s juxtaposed with sighing melody lines and hints of a circus band, making the most of its three-and-a-half minutes. JON PARELES

Read the full article HERE

March 17, 2023

Dan Tepfer Interview on NPR Morning Edition

For pianist Dan Tepfer, improvisation is the mother of Bach's Inventions

March 17, 20235:15 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

By Sacha Pfeiffer

In the early 1720s, Johann Sebastian Bach composed a set of Two-Part Inventions to help his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, learn to play the keyboard.

Now, 300 years later, jazz pianist and composer Dan Tepfer has extracted the framework and narrative from these deceptively simple exercises to guide new improvisations for an album he calls Inventions / Reinventions. "The musical content, what's going on underneath the surface is so profound that it's really this wonderful way of introducing children to what the greatest music can be," he tells NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer.

Bach's pieces help the learning pianist master harmony, rhythm and technique. They are called Two-Part Inventions because there are two separate voices distributed between the pianist's two hands. "So not only is there a dialogue between two voices here, but there's also a dialogue between two hands," Tepfer explains.

The New York-based pianist initiated a conversation with Bach across the centuries by emulating the composer's narrative structure: A musical idea, or theme, is like a protagonist, introduced before experiencing various adventures — expressed musically through modulations — and ultimately returning to the home key.

"The chief goal here is to be in conversation with Bach and to stay in my shoes — not to be playing on his turf, but to be using his ideas on my turf, which I think is what any good conversation is," Tepfer says. And in doing so through improvisation, Tepfer is also drawing from the beating heart of Bach's music. The Baroque master was renowned in his own time as an improviser, one people would travel from all over Europe to hear.

It's not the first time Tepfer, 41, has improvised in ways that build upon Bach. In his 2011 album Goldberg Variations / Variations, he played the original 18th century composition (an aria and a set of 30 variations) alongside his own 21st century improvisations. During the pandemic, Tepfer, who also has an undergraduate degree in astrophysics, wrote a computer program that plays back each Goldberg variation, but flipped upside down.

Essentially, Tepfer inverted the multiple lines of music (counterpoint) Bach had composed. Where a melody might fall in the original composition, the pattern would rise in what Tepfer called the #BachUpsideDown project. While the flipped versions are completely new music, they also are an echo of the original piece and sound oddly familiar.

With his new Two-Part Inventions, Tepfer's improvisations are in the nine keys not covered by Bach's cycle. Out of the 24 possible major and minor keys, Bach only composed these exercises in 15 of the most commonly used keys. But Tepfer is quick to insist that nothing is missing from the original compositions.

"I don't believe those gaps need to be filled at all. I never want to improve on what Bach has written. I think it would be foolish to do so," Tepfer says. Instead, he adds, "I suddenly realized that Bach had left open a window for me to respond to him in."

Listen to the full Interview HERE

March 10, 2023

Ana Egge On Tour With Iris DeMent

March 28, 2023

Dan Tepfer Charts at #1 on Billboard

We are thrilled to announce that Dan Tepfer's album 'Inventions / Reinventions' has entered the Billboard Traditional Classical Albums chart at #1.

On his new album Inventions / Reinventions, pianist-composer Dan Tepfer performs each of Bach’s beloved 15 Two Part Inventions interleaved in chromatic sequence by 9 of his own free improvisations in the “missing” keys to create a new full, and fully transporting 24-key experience, a 55-minute mix of the timeless and the contemporary.