Murmurations (One Microphone Recording)

For their second release at NativeDSD, Outer Marker brings us Murmurations from pianist Marcia Hadjimarkos. Like their first release, this is a Stereo DSD 128 recording that is exclusively available in the recorded format and bit rate at NativeDSD Music. 

Murmurations features Marcia Hadjimarkos performing on an 1887 New York Steinway Model B. The album is a One Microphone Recording captured with an AEA R88 Stereo Ribbon Microphone through two channels of D.W. Fearn all-tube Preamplfication direct to Stereo DSD 128. Additional ambience was provided by a Lexicon 224X Digital Reverb.

Marcia tells us about the album “After a long gestation period due to the pandemic, I can’t believe Murmurations is finally taking flight! I’m excited and honored to join Native DSD’s great lineup of musicians, and extend heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped to shape the album.”

What brings these pieces together? They span and slightly overlap the 20th Century, with Satie’s Gnossiennes and Danses de Travers dating from the tail end of the 19th century (when the piano used on this recording was built), Pärt’s Für Anna Maria written in 2006, and the works of Cage, Monk, Tailleferre, Glass, Mompou and Skempton falling in between.

Eight composers, all associated with minimalism to a greater or lesser degree, born in the United States, France, England, Spain, and Estonia. Eight approaches to resonance, pattern, repetition, layering, phrasing, form, color, touch, texture, and volume on the piano.

The ways their music dovetails remind me of a murmuration, a cloud of iridescent starlings swirling and shape-shifting through the sky at dusk, seemingly at random but in fact governed by each bird’s observation of the seven other birds nearest it. So: a small murmuration of seven, plus one extra for luck, inspired by the enthusiasm of friends, students, and other musicians, and by my own reactions to the mesmerising qualities of this music in all its diversity, and the way it pulls me in time and again. This selection only scratches the surface of the works that fall under the capacious umbrella of minimalism, but it’s a start.”

Marcia Hadjimarkos, Pianist