Henry Kuntz

THE MAGIC OF MYSTERY

(HBT 016)

Henry Kuntz / tenor saxophone; Chinese musette; Thai, Nepalese and Bolivian bamboo flutes; Thai, Balinese, and African wood xylophones; Balinese and Javanese gamelans; Tibetan bowls; assorted drums, gongs, and percussion. Four multi-track pieces. (Recorded June, September 1994) Also available as a limited edition cdr on Foxglove.

Prototype wind and percussion ensembles emphasizing sharply contrasted and divergent textural timbral, and rhythmic elements.

“Pursuing his singularly eccentric aesthetic, Kuntz’s newest solo tape presents four remarkable pieces…Avoiding the steady rhythms and hummable melodies of the actual ‘Third World’ musics whose instruments he uses, Kuntz has long been working in a way that is closer (sonically) to the plant and insect life of the wildest lands than to the music of the humans who inhabit them…All his playing is underpinned by an uncanny attention to detail, resulting in a strangely ‘activated’ music from one of the most personalized voices in contemporary improvisation.” – Davey Williams, The Improvisor, Volume XI, 1996.

The music on HUMMING BIRD Tapes

is spontaneously composed, freely improvised. It is presented to the listener in its purest possible form, edited only for purposes of presentation on recorded media. Multi-tracking has at times been utilized – as a separate but related improvising endeavor – to create unusual and unlikely instrumental ensembles and to suggest open-ended ways of approaching form and content during real-time group improvisation.