Wayne Horvitz - Film Music 1998-2001 (2002)

Wayne Horvitz decided to scramble the tracks on this collection, taking pieces from different film projects and sequencing them out of order to make an album of stand-alone music. The effect is simply stunning, as Horvitz pulls the works from their original contexts and births a whole new beast in the process. The conceptual shifts seem random at first but unfold with an appealing aesthetic coherence. Within the first four tracks alone (there are 47 in all), Horvitz moves from eerie samples to mellow acoustic to hip-hop to early jazz. (Bill Frisell, DJ Logic, Julian Priester, Michael Bisio, and the members of Zony Mash are among the supporting musicians.) As the disc plays, patterns begin to emerge and the specific character of each film project becomes clearer. In addition to music for Gary Gibson's Chihuly Over Venice and an untitled film by Gus Van Sant, Horvitz includes four pieces composed for a Frank Gehry exhibit, six from a project called "Bellagio," and three intriguing demos. Tracks 30 through 47 depart from the rest of the program by presenting, in one continuous block, music conceived for Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, performed live by the Seattle Chamber Players.