Peter Zummo - Experimenting with Household Chemicals (1995)

This opus by composer and trombonist Peter Zummo was created between 1987 and 1992. Originally conceived as a solo trombone work, it featured strange notations that moved toward exacting slide mechanics that lie apart from chord changes or diatonic harmonic structures. Instead, Zummo worked out a system of multi-modal approaches that allowed him -- within the notation -- to follow superimposed, well-defined mental diagrams while creating new and unexpected melodic components free of the trappings of more "normal" musical procedures. Since the time of its inception, Zummo has performed the work solo and in concert with up to seven musicians, including the late cellist and composer Arthur Russell and reed and woodwind team Jon Gibson and Josef Kubera. Each time a performance of the work took place it was recorded. Here, with the wonders of digital editing, the piece takes on its latest incarnation, with slices and dices of all the performances and rehearsals that were recorded making up the thing itself. Elements of jazz improvisation, swing, group chaos and tension, serenity, pastoral beauty, and unidentifiable noise wind together in a thoroughly musical but outrageously unconventional work that speaks as much to the variations found within the harmonic partials in a trombone slide as to different compositional, dynamic, and sound placement strategies. For all of its cutting and pasting, this is a strikingly "whole" work that flows together beautifully. There is only one question it seems to ask at its end: "Can it be extended any further now that it's been recorded?"