Book of Silk | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | August 10, 2004 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 52:03 | |||
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Producer |
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Tin Hat Trio chronology | ||||
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Book of Silk is the fourth album of Tin Hat Trio. It is a modern chamber music work, encompassing jazz in the Django and Grappelli vein with a haunting, acoustic soundscape that might have served as a film score.
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
All About Jazz | (positive) [1] |
AllMusic | [2] |
BBC | (positive) [3] |
Pitchfork | 7.8/10 [4] |
PopMatters | {positive} [5] |
Reviews were uniformly positive, with critics noting the more introspective and entirely instrumental turn, save for the closing lullaby. That final track, with lyrics by Mike Coykendall, was a response to the death of guitarist Mark Orton's wife Lauren in a rafting accident. [6]
"March of the Smallest Feet" appeared on the documentary A Fierce Green Fire (2012). [7]
"The Longest Night" was used as the background music for the flash game Tri-Achnid by Edmund McMillen. [8]
Miya Masaoka is an American composer, musician, and sound artist active in the field of contemporary classical music and experimental music. Her work encompasses contemporary classical composition, improvisation, electroacoustic music, inter-disciplinary sound art, sound installation, traditional Japanese instruments, and performance art. She is based in New York City.
Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser. Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. He was also a member of the groups Art Bears, Massacre, and Skeleton Crew. He has collaborated with a number of prominent musicians, including Robert Wyatt, Derek Bailey, the Residents, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Mike Patton, Lars Hollmer, Bill Laswell, Iva Bittová, Jad Fair, Kramer, the ARTE Quartett, and Bob Ostertag. He has also composed several long works, including Traffic Continues and Freedom in Fragments. Frith produces most of his own music, and has also produced many albums by other musicians, including Curlew, the Muffins, Etron Fou Leloublan, and Orthotonics.
Zeena Parkins is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist active in experimental, free improvised, contemporary classical, and avant-jazz music; she is known for having "reinvented the harp". Parkins performs on standard harps, several custom electric harps, piano, and accordion. She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and professor in the Music Department at Mills College.
Art Bears were an English avant-rock group formed during the disassembly of Henry Cow in 1978 by three of its members, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith and Dagmar Krause. The group released three studio albums between 1978 and 1981, and toured Europe in 1979.
Trevor Roy Dunn is an American composer, bass guitarist, and double bassist. He came to prominence in the 1990s with the experimental band Mr. Bungle. While performing with Mr. Bungle, Dunn would dress similar to the St. Pauli Girl. He has since worked in an array of musical styles, including with saxophonist/composer John Zorn, Secret Chiefs 3 and with his own avant-garde jazz/rock ensemble Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant. He is also a member of the band Tomahawk.
Carla Kihlstedt is an American composer, violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently working from a home studio on Cape Cod.
Tin Hat is an acoustic chamber music group currently based in San Francisco, California. Their music combines many genres of music, including jazz, southern blues, bluegrass, neoclassical, eastern European folk music, and avant-garde.
Classical Baby is an American animated television series for young children and families directed by Amy Schatz and produced by HBO. The animation was created and designed by Maciek Albrecht and MaGiK World Animation. Classical Baby is designed to introduce young children to masterpieces from the worlds of music, art, dance, and poetry. This series first aired on HBO Family on May 14, 2005.
Rya Kihlstedt is an American actress. She starred in the 1997 comedy film Home Alone 3 as Alice Ribbons. Kihlstedt would go on to appear in the films Deep Impact (1998), Women in Trouble (2009) and The Atticus Institute (2015). On television, she had a recurring roles as Dr. Michelle Ross in the Showtime crime drama Dexter and as Marilyn Rhodes in the ABC musical drama Nashville. In 2015, Kihlstedt starred in the NBC miniseries Heroes Reborn.
Music for Children is the first release in John Zorn's Music Romance Series and features three Naked City compositions performed by Zorn with the band Prelapse; a 20-minute composition for wind machines and controlled feedback systems dedicated to Edgar Varese, and a classical chamber music piece for violin, percussion and piano performed by the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio framed by a poly-rhythmic etude for percussion and celeste and a lullaby for music box.
Maybe Monday is an American experimental electroacoustic improvisation music ensemble comprising guitarist Fred Frith, koto player Miya Masaoka and saxophonist Larry Ochs. The trio was formed in San Francisco in March 1997 when they performed in a concert at the Great American Music Hall. They have since toured the United States, Canada and Europe, and released three albums between 1999 and 2008.
Covenant is an album by American folk singer/guitarist Greg Brown, released in 2000. It was released only a few months after Over and Under.
Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California, by multi-instrumentalist and composer Fred Frith. The band comprises Frith on guitar, Zeena Parkins on keyboards and accordion, Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Matthias Bossi on drums, and The Norman Conquest on sound manipulation. All About Jazz described their music as "somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock".
The Book of Knots is an American experimental art rock band consisting of the members Matthias Bossi, Joel Hamilton, Carla Kihlstedt and Tony Maimone.
Robert Burger is an American composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, and music director.
Mark Orton is an American composer and musician. An alumnus of the Peabody Conservatory and the Hartt School of Music, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based Tin Hat chamber music group, and is best known for his score for the Academy Award-nominated film Nebraska (2013). A recipient of a Sundance Composer Fellowship and nominee for Best New Composer by The International Film Music Critics Association, some of his other film credits as a composer include The Good Girl (2002), My Old Lady (2014) and Sweet Land (2006), while he has written or performed songs in films including Everything Is Illuminated (2005) and The Boxtrolls (2014). Orton lives in Portland, Oregon.
The Compass, Log and Lead is a 2006 studio album of improvised acoustic experimental music by Fred Frith, Carla Kihlstedt and Stevie Wishart. It was recorded in October 2003 in Oakland, California, and released by Intakt Records in 2006.
Dalaba Frith Glick Rieman Kihlstedt, also stylized as DalabaFrithGlickRiemanKihlstedt, is a 2003 studio album of improvised experimental music by Lesli Dalaba, Fred Frith, Eric Glick Rieman and Carla Kihlstedt. It was recorded at Guerrilla Recording in Oakland, California, and was released by Accretions Records in San Diego, California in 2003.
Unsquare is a 2008 studio album by Maybe Monday, a San Francisco based experimental electroacoustic improvisation music ensemble featuring guitarist Fred Frith, koto player Miya Masaoka and saxophonist Larry Ochs. It is their third album and includes guest musicians Gerry Hemingway, Carla Kihlstedt, Ikue Mori and Zeena Parkins. Unsquare was recorded at East Side Sound Studio in New York City on November 18, 2006, and was released by Intakt Records in Switzerland in January 2008.
Nebraska (Music from the Motion Picture) is the soundtrack to the 2013 film Nebraska directed by Alexander Payne. The film's musical score is composed by Mark Orton and released through Milan Records on November 19, 2013. The score consisted of acoustic instrumentation deviating from the Western and country music tropes. It also featured contributions from the music of Tin Hat band being used as temp music and eventually mixed into the film. The score received positive reviews from critics.