MP3 Callisto - EASY LISTENING: Mood Music

Spans an intelligently freewheeling grab bag of styles, from classical chamber music and combo jazz to ragas black gospel, and music that showcases Taylor's penchant for writing strong cinematic themes. Rick Clark BILLBOARD MAGAZINE

8 MP3 Songs
EASY LISTENING: Mood Music, CLASSICAL: Contemporary



Details:
BILLBOARD MAGAZINE
Rick Clark

(Texas) Sam Taylor may be known by many in the music industry as the producer of bands like Kings X, Galactic Cowboys, and Third Day, but these days Taylor is coming out from behind the recording console and into the artistic limelight with his first solo effort, "Compositions For The Moons Of Jupiter, Volume One: Callisto," on Loco Entertainment/Wilde Silas Musicworks.
Thanks to his sophisticated songwriting and arranging and his ability to play 16 different instruments, Taylor made significant contributions to the projects he produced. But over time, he felt that his own creative needs were not being satisfied, so he enlisted cellist Max Dyer and percussionist Ray Dillard to play as the Moons Of Jupiter at a local Houston club called Ovations, beginning in early'96. The trio's regular musical forays developed a devoted regional fan base. The name started out from someone trying to describe the music that we were doing and thought that we were sort of musical galactic explorers because we would really go out and stretch the conventional boundaries a bit."
"CALLISTO" spans an intelligently freewheeling grab bag of styles, from classical chamber music and combo jazz to ragas black gospel, and music that showcases Taylor's penchant for writing strong cinematic themes.


Liner Notes by Wilde Silas Tomkyn

The Selections (in order):

ANT MARCH
(March in D, Zembur!? With Improvised Bee-Bop!)
piano, organ, arptuba, clarpinet, cello, trap set, percussion

Imagine the Great Picnic, the ant trails of ecstasy and tears, the debates about, duty to the queen, Man's existence and the foot squash' buzz. This original children's whistle melody is skewed l'allegro and il penseroso (poems by Milton, if you care) for its happy and contemplative verse and chorus. After two cycles the piece shifts to overdrive (sugar!) as the improvisational section features a bee'-bop (the in-sect-ion) reckless pulse which matures (whirling dervish!) into gospel-rag.
Not about Bees! Well, maybe ... Ant Bee Taylor. Say Hey! Gomer.


WALTZ FOR A WEDDING IN A TEXAS FORTE
(Scherzo Waltz in D major with contemplative celebration)
guitar, cello, percussion

Chisos mountains, the Rio Grande & the Big Bend's sunset vistas sweeping into a stoned floored portico.
This light aria, joyful as a butterfly in a rose garden, celebrates being with a whisper and a smile. The rich middle bridge employs dis-chordal open guitar strings with a counter cello melody and exquisite percussion creating a wedding ring blanket of sonic sunshine. A waltz composed for the wedding feast, the scene of the first account of a miracle of the Christ, (the turning of water into wine) and for his bride.


MEMOIRS OF DON QUIXOTE
(Overture & Villancico Waltz in E minor with Fiesta)
guitar, cello, percussion, organ

This composition is both passionate and sad reflecting the dreams of this famous fictitious iconoclastic Spanish knight. The main theme, in E minor, features an open string guitar technique adding the nine for tonal mystery. The fiesta is based on a traditional Mexican theme implying the joy and vulnerability of our dreamer's life. This selection was intended to be autobiographical in nature, but isn't.


GOLDEN HARVEST TIME
(Swing - Rag in G)
piano, cello, trap set, clarpinet, organ, percussion, megaphoned voice

Main text lyric by children's story writer and poet, D. Jordan Greene:
years have gone since we were wed our dreams fulfilled and our passions fed graying hair doth crown our head it's golden harvest time to laugh again and not to weep to lie in bed and not to sleep those memories how my mind doth creep it's golden harvest time our money saved our youth though spent heaven's union bound is earth's union rent we have met the harvester that they have sent and it's golden, golden, golden time, golden harvest time" um yeah yowser


HARVEST JAM
(Improvisational Rag - Gospel in G)
piano, cello, trap set, clarpinet, organ, percussion

it's golden harvest time out there ladies and gentlemen, i'm tellin' you to get down on your knees and it's time for you to think about those golden harvest time, i'm talking about the golden, golden, and not the silver and not the bronze, i'm talkin' bout the golden golden harvest time, yeah you know what i'm talking about!?
Rejoicing with a wink!


PLAINSONG
(Pastoral Tone Poem in D)
guitar, cello, fretless bass, percussion, organ

Inspired vaguely by a Swedish mountain folk melody, reflective and joyful in nature, the main theme is composed as an accompaniment for a pilgrim's journey to his validation from the past and his acknowledged vulnerability in the present.


SONG FOR A FRIEND
(Lilting Opus Vit Expressiono in A flat major & C major)
piano, cello, percussion, organ

This composition features a single line theme designed to repeat in mode with the tenor chordal tapestry ever-so-slightly changing underneath to create the illusion of a varying melodic structure to symbolize the delicate complexity of the relationship of a friend who shares soul, heart, mind & intimate strength with her soul-mate. The bridge employs diminished chords with relative minors (because Taylor likes the way it sounds) until resolving to the fifth and modulating to its flatted relative minor interval, E flat. Inspired by Taylor's admiration of producer-composer George Martin's work and a friend.



WONDERAGA
(Raga Sonata with Appalachian, Hindi, Israeli & Metal Themes in C with Impromptu)
guitar, cello, tablas, organ, percussion

The intro & outré of this the most eclectic work featured are based on an Appalachian theme that slowly develops into a Hindi raga utilizing sevenths and flatted fifths of the open-tuned C drone motif on the guitar. The parallel fifth convention is intentionally violated with a drop C" riff loosely interwoven into the raga with antiphonal cello and guitar lines. The middle section features an eastern four-line theme utilizing the augmented fifth and flatted two of the minor. Sam said he only vaguely knows, much less cares, what these words mean!? ... hum!? The title and hint of a metal theme is a nod to a musical entity to which Sam was at one time close.


THE VINEGAR TASTER'S GENTLE SUITE
(Hymn to the God of Abraham in E minor with neo-classical Improvisation)
piano, cello

The first theme was composed to accompany the lyric of a hymn entitled, Gentle Jesus, Meek & Mild,' the second to accompany the lyric of a hymn entitled, One Day,' the middle is an improvisation based on a Chinese painting entitled, The Vinegar Tasters,' which features Confucius, Buddha & Lao-Tzu tasting vinegar and their subsequent responses to the rancorous piquancy based upon their different philosophies of life. What this all has to do with the aforementioned hymns is not obviously clear, but apparently intentional. The performances are fervent, beautiful, inspired, meditative, majestic, vulnerable, saffronesque!?

Credits
Sam Taylor Compositions for the Moons of Jupiter, Volume One: Callisto

Sam plays piano, guitar, organ, clarpinet, arptuba & voice. Max Dyer plays cello & fretless bass. Ray Dillard plays trap set, tablas, yelp! and various other percussion and international noise makers. Jeff Wells engineered, recorded & mastered at Sound Arts Studio in Houston, Texas. Additional engineering by Steve Ames. Cover artwork and sketch illustrations by Sam Taylor. Photograph by James Bland. Layout by Deric Van Reenan.
D. Jordan Greene lyric used by permission. Liner notes by Mr. Tomkyn. All compositions by William Samuel Taylor, copyright 1997 William Samuel Taylor Music ASCAP. International copyrights secured. Used by permission.
Produced by Sam.
A Wilde Silas Musicwork.
Band Members

Max Dyer - Cello
MAX DYER is a cellist with over 25 years of professional experience in the United States and abroad. As an improvising cellist, he is fluent in many musical styles and performs at festivals, jazz and folk clubs, churches and recording studios. He is producer for Nightwatch recording and Artistic Director of the New World Renaissance Band. This season, Max is In the recording studio with Blackfeet Indian singer/songwriter Jack Gladstone, the speed metal rock band Galactic Cowboys, MCA Artists The Jay Quinn Band, his Renaissance Festival quartet CANTIGA and Nashville-based Contemporary Gospel singers Kim Hill and multi-platinum multi- Grammy recipient Michael W. Smith. As a classical cellist, he plays with the Houston Ballet Orchestra and performed and toured for three seasons with the Houston Symphony. During the past year he has also performed with the Houston Grand Opera, Houston String Quartet and with the Michele Brangwen Dance Company. During the 70's, Max toured widely in Great Britain and Sweden with the Fisherfolk, a Christian folk group working in the charismatic renewal of the church. As a member of the Fisherfolk, he led worship in churches and cathedrals throughout Great Britain and led music residencies at Oxford University and Kings College Cambridge. Max holds a Bachelors of Music Degree from the University of Houston and a Masters Degree from Rice University's Shepherd School of Music where he studied with Shirley Trepel.

Ray Dillard - Percussion, World Noise Makers
Ray Dillard received his Bachelor's and Master's of Music degrees from West Texas State University where he studied percussion with James Beckham and Dr. Thomas Horst and composition with Dr. Joseph Nelson. He has also done concentrated study with percussionist Bob Becker and other members of the group NEXUS. He studied Ghanaian drumming with Abraham Adzenyah and Indian tabla drumming with Pandit Sharda Sahai. Ray has been active for several years commissioning and premiering new works for percussion. He has composed works for percussion soloists and numerous chamber ensembles. Ray was percussionist for the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra for eight years. During that time he was Director of Percussion Studies at West Texas State University in Canyon, Texas, from 1983-1984. He then served as Guest Lecturer and Instructor of Percussion at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, from 1984-1985. Ray then moved to Houston, Texas, to become the head of Percussion and MIDI Technology at San Jacinto College which continued until 1998. The Paul (English) Improvising Chamber Orchestra, P.I.C.O., was at the center of Ray's Houston-based performance environment. P.I.C.O. developed a unique repertoire which spans jazz and classical idioms, centered around Ray's eclectic percussion battery. Performances with the World Drum Ensemble have taken him to Canada and Australia for performances during the Australian Bicentennial celebration at the World Expo 88 site in Brisbane, Australia. In March, 1996, he performed with BUKA, an eight member all-star ensemble made up of members of the larger World Drum Ensemble, in Taipei, Taiwan. They were the featured group of the Taipei International Music Festival. In the summer of 1998, BUKA was the featured performers at a concert in Lisbon, Portugal for EXPO '98. In the summer of 2000, The World Drum Ensemble took the stage again in Hannover, Germany for EXPO 2000. Ray currently resides in Toronto, Canada where he works full time with the percussion ensemble NEXUS and performs in Disney's The Lion King. Recording credits include Grammy and Juno nominated projects with artists and ensembles from the United States, South America, Europe, Japan and Canada. His recording work with the Toronto-based percussion ensemble NEXUS includes some 12 titles, the most recent featuring clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. These and other percussion rich works are at the core of his most popular work. Ray's work can also be heard on recordings spanning styles as varied as Renaissance, Classical, jazz, rock, contemporary Christian, Tejano, and experimental music.

Sam Taylor - Piano, Guitar, etc
It is altogether interesting that Galileo Galilei's Father, Vincenzo was, excuse the pun, instrumental in changing European music's medieval polyphony to harmonic modulation; Rigid theory stifles new musical forms', he would say to young Galileo, countless times. His eldest son, in 1609, believed his Father's mandate and applied it to the scientific realm when he built a 20 times magnification telescope with which he discovered mountains and craters on Earth's Moon. He also discovered the planet Jupiter had moons. Galileo Galilei published his findings in The Starry Messenger, in 1610. He named the new discoveries circling Jupiter Callisto, Io, Europa & Ganymede. For his published works Galileo eventually was summoned to Rome and tried for heresy. Being found guilty he was sentenced to life in prison, later commuted to house arrest. Galileo had shattered the stiff illusory theory. Even though a heretic, his life and work would ultimately allegorize scientific form. Upon hearing Liberace on a Xmas television special, a young Sam Taylor, age five, proceeded into the music room of his family's southwestern home and began banging unmercifully on the keys with great pomp and crescendo. His parents, astounded at this noise, burst into the room expecting to find the dog and the cat dueling on the Steinway. Instead, to his parents slight, Sammy was issuing a dramatic performance tremendously short of convention. He explained that he was playing his composition just as he had heard the be-candled pianist on the television. His parents were not amused. He continued to perform his impromptu production, even if in private, never quite achieving constancy. As a Xmas gift he received a telescope along with the story of the inventor. Being a curious little swat, he had his mother check out Galileo Galilei's biography, as was his favorite kind of story. Upon learning about heresy, specifically Galileo's, he asked that since rigid theory stifles new musical forms' was this somehow what was happening to him with his music. His father later informed him that in order to have this be true, he should actually have to know the rigid theory and the existing musical forms before one could see if they were stifling. Samuel had no clear idea what that meant, but he knew that there was something he was missing in his fervent desire to compose listenable music and perform it in front of attentive audiences on a piano. Determined to learn the instrument, he begged his parents for the gift of a piano tutor. Finally they acquiesced, and after four lessons with a German (Sammy had found the teacher down the street from his father's office) rigid musical theorist, young Samuel brought home a note from the maestro still sealed that read, In my humble opinion you are wasting your money giving this child lessons, he cannot or will not learn the fine high art of concert piano!" Seems Sammy was improvising too much. Apparently, Rat-a-Tat-Tat the Air Hammer' had too many tats' and a syncopated rat' or two. As a youngster, he was exposed to Gospel quartet all night singing conventions, big band swing, New Orleans jazz, Black blues gospel church services, church choral music, hootenannies & rock-n-roll concerts (he saw the Beatles in 1966) through his musical father, mother and older brother, each accomplished musicians and singers in their own right. He had begun playing melodies and chords behind his father's gospel songs on the piano at the age of three, performing ukelele on tv by five with a girl back-up trio and composing actual repeatable compositions by the age of six, teaching himself the guitar at age twelve. Other intsruments followed as he had access to them. He eventually did receive some formal training in music theory, orchestration and performance on two brass instruments: trumpet & euphonium, (neither played on this recording). He had already decided that notes, chords, melodies, harmonies and tempos (he had used different names for them), were merely mathematical intervals displayed on a piece of paper - - maybe it was too late. He found Galileo's father's words to be true, rigid theory stifles new musical forms! As a performer and composer he began adding all the elements he was exposed to as a formative self-taught musician. Any and every opportunity to perform in front of an audience sharpened his concertizing skills and elevated his performance genius to exceptional heights. As a producer and musician you may own some of his works with King's X, Third Day, Galactic Cowboys and others. You have no doubt heard his songs from his era as a writer and session player in Nashville from the '70s. As a film maker you probably have seen his works relative to the 'car era' of ZZ TOP and the 'Gretchen era' of King's X. Renaissance man, some say!? ... Sam Taylor! ... hum!?

In conclusion, my overall perception, as I feel you must agree of this - his first collection of premium works - is that the absence of rigid theory in this case did not stifle new musical forms... Hum?!

- Tomkyn
American Samoa