Michael Torke - TIME (2022) Hi-Res

A span of time: as short as a nine-minute movement; or as long as a life.

The span of a day, a week, a month, or a year has imprinted in it recurrence and repetition. Recurrence in large scale mirrors recurrence in detail. Repetition can reset an unsettled heart, can calm the nerves, can even adjust brain chemistry. Rhythm itself divides up time and breathes life into time. Time slips away as we age, but music pins us down—it offers a kind of security against the ravages of time.

Time is the one thing money can’t buy. The rich and the poor have equal access to time—time is free but it’s priceless. You can’t own it but you can use it. You can't save it but you can spend it.

TIME is the 3rd recording project (after BEING, and PSALMS AND CANTICLES) unhindered by Covid, insofar as the individual tracks were recorded independently in isolation, and later mixed together. This gave us the opportunity to hire the same musician to do all four clarinet parts, all four sax parts, all three mallet parts, and all four vocal parts whose result is a desired homogeneity and cohesiveness of performance style. Exactness is required in this kind of interlocking, rhythmic music, and we could achieve it with this recording strategy.

Buddha says, “Life is swept along, next-to-nothing its span. For one swept to old age no shelters exist. Perceiving this danger in death, one should drop the world's bait and look for peace.”

Michael Torke Orchestra:
Alan Kay, clarinet, bass clarinet
Pat Posey, soprano and baritone saxophones
Ian Rosenbaum, marimbas, vibraphone
Elliot Figg, harpsichord
Sarah Brailey, sopranos, alto
Tessa Lark, violin, viola
Paul Wiancko, cello
Michael Thurber, bass
Michael Torke, director, piano