“This Rock We’re On: Imaginary Letters feels like vespers sung for the Anthropocene before night falls.”
— Terry Tempest Williams, environmental author and activist
Acclaimed composer/arranger Mike Holober creates an epic masterwork melding jazz, classical and art song for his Grammy-nominated Gotham Jazz Orchestra
Due out June 14, 2024 via Palmetto Records, "This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters" draws inspiration from the natural world and the insights of environmental authors, artists, and activists such as Ansel Adams, Rachel Carson, Sigurd Olson, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, and Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Featuring Holober's GRAMMY-nominated Gotham Jazz Orchestra, soloists include Jason Rigby (tenor saxophone), Ben Kono (alto saxophone), Charles Pillow (alto saxophone), Marvin Stamm (trumpet), Jared Schonig (drums), Nir Felder (guitar), Jody Redhage Ferber (cello) and James Shipp (percussion). The ensemble is joined for the occasion by tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist John Patitucci, and the up-and-coming Brazilian vocalist Jamile Staevie Ayres.
“Holober has brought a profound artistic vision to bear on today's jazz scene and confirmed his standing as one of the finest modern composer/arrangers of our time, in the tradition of Gil Evans, Bob Brookmeyer and Jim McNeely.”
Ed Enright— DownBeat
“Mike Holober's writing is in the expansive and ambitious lineage of Gil Evans, Bob Brookmeyer and Maria Schneider: music of varying moods that merges the thrust of jazz with atmospheric colors closer to the classical world. It can teem with energy or settle into a state of quiet, contemplative beauty.” - Jerome Wilson — All About Jazz
Refuge - imaginary letter from Castleton Tower to Terry Tempest Williams
(from “This Rock We’re On: Imaginary Letters”)
Music and lyrics by Mike Holober
Jamile Staevie Ayres (voice), Jody Redhage Ferber (cello), Mike Holober (piano)
Composer’s Note
“Refuge” is an art song in the form of an imaginary letter from Castleton Tower, a sandstone monolith in southeast Utah, to environmental author and activist Terry Tempest Williams. In one of her earlier books, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, Terry reminisces about trips to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge with her mother, each chapter focusing on one bird and one stage in her mother's terminal cancer. I spent a day alone there in November 2019 (not a good time to look at birds), but it was still beautiful and I did get to meet many grebes and harriers.
Castleton Tower is a freestanding sandstone spire in view of Terry's home in Castle Valley, Utah. I used this as a metaphor for the Bears Ears National Monument while thinking about Terry's fight for recovering the sacred wildlands lost to the Trump administration’s resource extraction policies. Terry and I had breakfast in Salt Lake City (just before Covid) and she played for me a recording that audiologists and geologists had made of Castleton Tower. You could hear how both the local and far reaching geology, the built environment and even the weather had an effect on the sonic life of the tower.
In “This Rock We’re On: Imaginary Letters,” “Refuge” is followed by two works for jazz orchestra: “Tower Pulse,” for Castleton Tower, and “Erosion,” for Terry. In her recent book Erosion, in the chapter titled “The Resonance of Stone,” Terry writes, “Castleton Tower has a pulse. We have a pulse. The Earth has a pulse.”
Greetings from Cologne! I’m here to conduct the wonderful WDR Big Band in a project called “The Flight,” featuring Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas, with arrangements by Mike Abene. Details below (note, the September 16 concert will be livestreamed)
The Flight – The Music of Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas
Friday September 15 l 20.00 Uhr l Eupen, Alter Schlachtof
Saturday September 16 l 20 Uhr l Hochschule für Musik und Tanz, Köln
LIVESTREAM: youtube.com/wdrbigband