Ophiuchus Butterfly

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Ophiuchus Butterfly
Ophiuchus Butterfly cover.jpg
Studio album by Liberty Ellman
Released 2006
Recorded September 2005
Studio Brooklyn Recording, Brooklyn
Genre Jazz
Length57:37
Label Pi Recordings
Producer Liberty Ellman
Liberty Ellman chronology
Tactiles
(2003)		Ophiuchus Butterfly
(2006)		Radiate
(2015)

Ophiuchus Butterfly is an album by jazz guitarist Liberty Ellman, which was recorded in 2005 and released on Pi Recordings. He leads a sextet with Steve Lehman on alto sax, Mark Shim on tenor sax, Jose Davila on tuba, Stephan Crump on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums. [1]

Liberty Ellman American musician

Liberty Ellman is a jazz guitarist born in London and raised in the United States, beginning in New York City. In the early 1980s, Ellman's family moved to California. Before leaving New York, he attended City and Country School in Greenwich Village.

Pi Recordings record label

Pi Recordings is a jazz record label founded by Seth Rosner in 2001. He was joined as partner by Yulun Wang in 2002. Pi specializes in avant-garde jazz. Its first albums were by Henry Threadgill.

Steve Lehman is a composer and saxophonist in the genres of jazz and experimental music. His compositions have been performed by a number of international performers and orchestras. As a performer, Lehman leads a number of his own ensembles and performs frequently as a sideman with artists like Anthony Braxton, Vijay Iyer, and Jason Moran. His recording Travail, Transformation & Flow was chosen as the #1 Jazz Album of the year by The New York Times. Lehman’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, Down Beat magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Wire, National Public Radio, and the BBC. Lehman was a Fulbright scholar from 2002-2003. He has a B.A. (2000) and M.A. (2002) in composition from Wesleyan University and received his D.M.A. (2012) with distinction in composition from Columbia University.

Contents

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [2]

In his review for AllMusic, Scott Yanow states "This music will take a bit of patience but it is worth the time for Ellman's music is quite original and subtle." [2]

AllMusic Online music database

AllMusic is an online music database. It catalogs more than 3 million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musical artists and bands. It launched in 1991, predating the World Wide Web.

The All About Jazz review by Mark F. Turner notes "The creative and exhilarating Ophiuchus Butterfly finds Ellman digging deeper into eccentric and progressive territories with a sextet of like-minded artists with distinct voices." [3]

<i>All About Jazz</i> comprehensive American website for jazz enthusiasts and professionals, based in Philadelphia

All About Jazz is a website established by Michael Ricci in 1995. A volunteer staff publishes news, album reviews, articles, videos, and listings of concerts and other events having to do with jazz. Ricci maintains a related site, Jazz Near You, about local concerts and events.

In a review for PopMatters , Will Layman says "Ophiuchus Butterfly is reserved in its solo statements, but exuberant in its rhythms and construction." [4]

PopMatters is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater, visual arts, travel, and the Internet.

The JazzTimes review by Aaron Steinberg states "Ellman still likes his funk and bop, but he’s now thinking in bigger structures, more complicated voicings and in textures." [5]

JazzTimes is an American magazine devoted to jazz. Published 10 times a year, it was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1970 by Ira Davidson Sabin (1928–2018) as a newsletter called Radio Free Jazz. Sabine founded Radio Free Jazz to complement his Washington, D.C. record store that he founded in 1962. As a newsletter, it informed consumers of the latest jazz releases and provided jazz broadcasters with news and backstories related to playlists.

Track listing

All Compositions by Liberty Ellman

  1. "Ophiuchus Butterfly" – 6:33
  2. "Aestivation" – 6:56
  3. "Snow Lips" – 4:09
  4. "You Have Ears" – 6:35
  5. "The Naturalists" – 1:51
  6. "Pretty Words, Like Blades" – 4:34
  7. "Tarmacadam" – 7:08
  8. "Looking Up" – 7:58
  9. "Chromos" – 8:48
  10. "Borealis" – 3:05

Personnel

Guitar fretted string instrument

The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that usually has six strings. It is typically played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger(s)/fingernails of one hand, while simultaneously fretting with the fingers of the other hand. The sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker.

Synthesizer electronic instrument capable of producing a wide range of sounds

A synthesizer or synthesiser is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals that may be converted to sound. Synthesizers may imitate traditional musical instruments such as piano, flute, vocals, or natural sounds such as ocean waves; or generate novel electronic timbres. They are often played with a musical keyboard, but they can be controlled via a variety of other devices, including music sequencers, instrument controllers, fingerboards, guitar synthesizers, wind controllers, and electronic drums. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are often called sound modules, and are controlled via USB, MIDI or CV/gate using a controller device, often a MIDI keyboard or other controller.

Sampler (musical instrument) musical instrument

A sampler is an electronic or digital musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer, but instead of generating new sounds with voltage-controlled oscillators, it uses sound recordings of real instrument sounds, excerpts from recorded songs or other sounds. The samples are loaded or recorded by the user or by a manufacturer. These sounds are then played back by means of the sampler program itself, a MIDI keyboard, sequencer or another triggering device to perform or compose music. Because these samples are usually stored in digital memory, the information can be quickly accessed. A single sample may often be pitch-shifted to different pitches to produce musical scales and chords.

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References

  1. ↑ Ophiuchus Butterfly on Pi Recordings
  2. 1 2 Yanow, Scott. Liberty Ellman – Ophiuchus Butterfly: Review at AllMusic . Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  3. ↑ Turner, Mark F. Ophiuchus Butterfly review at All About Jazz
  4. ↑ Layman, Will. Ophiuchus Butterfly review at PopMatters
  5. ↑ Steinberg, Aaron Ophiuchus Butterfly review at JazzTimes
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