Rusty Banks is a composer/guitarist/teacher originally from Jasper, AL, now living in Pennsylvania.
His compositions benefit from themes relating to regions or environments. For example, his composition commissioned by the Alabama Music Teacher Association's 2004 convention featured audio samples from the Cahaba River, Alabama's last free-flowing river. Another work, "Long Pine Creek: New Year's Day," uses sounds from Long Pine Creek in Nebraska. His compositions range from traditional concert music to sonic installations where boom boxes are scattered throughout a room. His music is described as thoroughly modern, yet accessible, a description he shudders at, but reluctantly accepts. His compositions may be heard on Living Artist Recordings, as well as his web site, rustybanks.org.
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Friday, May 12, 2006
Color on a Gray Day in Philadelphia
I just got back from Philadelphia, where I saw a rehearsal of Gerald Levinson’s “Toward the Light” for organ and orchestra. It’s a great piece being played by great orchestra featuring a great organist.
For the most part, I find organ and orchestra to be incompatible, but Levinson navigates this problem deftly. At times the work seemed like a piece for orchestra and electronics, or organ and electronics, with one monster being the ghost of the other. The use of color (Levinson’s specialty) was not only interesting but also meticulously crafted. Timbre changes were paced the way romantic composers might have paced harmonic rhythm, providing a sense of direction and destination to an otherwise atmospheric, yet intense, work.
Afterwards, I had coffee with the ever-passionate Eric Bruskin, and the extremely amicable Jim Jordon. We discussed acoustics, Taoism, music education, and professional dancers’ abilities in fist-fighting. It was a good time.
posted by Rusty Banks
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