MP3 Christian Asplund - Viola

Experimental. Solo viola improvisations using extended techniques.

13 MP3 Songs in this album (72:24) !
Related styles: AVANT GARDE: Experimental, JAZZ: Avant-Garde Jazz

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Details:
Christian Asplund is a Utah-based composer-violist-harmoniumist. He has played with Stuart Dempster, Christian Wolff, Eyvind Kang, Willy Winant, Francois Houle, and many others.
The press has used the following words to describe Asplundâs music: passion, panoramic power, pure pointillist, plaintive, painstaking, rhythmically toothy, rocking, remarkable, rollicking, searing, subdued, soothing, submersive, splendid, unique, enjoyable, ethereal, mesmerizing, mind-blowing, otherworldly, absorbing, intelligent, idiosyncratic, distinctive, captivating, bewitching.

Below is a sampling of press comment on Asplundâs violism:

âWay back in the late â90s⦠Asplund was a foundation stone of Seattleâs avant-music scene. Among other things, he was a cofounder⦠of the Seattle Experimental Opera, collaborating with his wife/librettist Lara Candland on a series of exquisite and inscrutable theater pieces. And every once in a while, at some gig here or there, heâd burn a hole in your brain with a thrashing speed-metal improvisationâon his viola.â Seattle Weekly

âChristian Asplund[âs] contributions. . . have been nothing short of the b[eatific] child of Jean-Luc Ponty and Leroy Jenkins.â The Daily Barometer

"Asplund plays a mean viola, a splendid harmonium and a rock solid piano." Andrew Bartlett, The Stranger

â[T]he interplay of instruments and the tools the musicians used to pull these sounds out of their instruments (dual rubber bands, for instance, around the âwaistâ of the viola) was interesting, and I was thoroughly drawn in by the absolute passion the men, especially the violist [Asplund], put into their playing.â Karen Ann Webb, The Salt Shaker

Eminent composer and performer, Jarrad Powell, has said the following of VIOLA:

"The recording is a stunning investigation of the sounds that a viola can make. There is no distinction between the instrument and the process of recording and manipulation. It all becomes one instrument - organic, expressive, and terrifyingly human." Jarrad Powell