The Eleanor Hovda Collection

The Eleanor Hovda Collection

Description: 
The sound around the sound, and beyond
Composers: 
Eleanor Hovda
Performers: 
Prism Players
Jeannine Wagar
Libby Van Cleve
Jack Vees
Eleanor Hovda
Relache
William McGlaughlin
Cassatt String Quartet
California EAR Unit
Jan Weller
David Gilbert
Elizabeth Panzer
Lee Humphries
Dan Coody
Charlotte Lord
Catalog Number: 
#808
Genre: 
experimental
Collection: 
women
gay
ambient
in memoriam
chamber
music for dance
flute
improvisation
Location: 

New York, NY

Price: 
$30.00
Release Date: 
Jan 31, 2012
Liner Notes: 
View
4 CD
The Eleanor Hovda CollectioniTunes Artist's PageiTunes Album Page
Song TitleTimePrice
1.Onyx13:40
2.Song in High Grasses12:14
3.Snapdragon08:47$0.99
4.Leaning Into and Away12:51
5.Ariadne Music14:44
6.Coastal Traces Tidepools 111:03
7.Shenai Sky01:53$0.99
8.Record of An Ocean Cliff09:08$0.99
9.Crossings in a Mountain Dream08:53$0.99
10.Glacier Track07:59$0.99
11.Glosses/Glacier06:39$0.99
12.Beginnings08:37$0.99
13.Coastal Traces Tidepools 208:32$0.99
14.Borealis Music10:29
15.Boundaries07:10$0.99
16.Centerflow / Trail II09:14$0.99
17.Journey Music08:03$0.99
18.Lemniscates17:55
19.Regions12:40
20.Jo Ha Kyu03:44$0.99
21.Ikima04:35$0.99
22.Breathing13:26
23.The Proclamation02:13$0.99
24.Dancing in Place03:26$0.99
25.Spring Music With Wind11:38
26.40 Millions Gallons of Music31:02
One Sheet: 

There are any number of ways to describe artists who work at the margins: underrated, overlooked, a musician’s musician. But if many slip into the cracks, there are a few who actively relish those cracks, a few who seek to split the rocks apart with inexorable innovation and provocatively big musical ears. Eleanor Hovda (1940–2009) was such an artist, and innova is honored to present The Eleanor Hovda Collection, the definitive 4CD archive of her mind-blowing works.

Robert Carl of Fanfare Magazine called her one of the major composers of her generation because of her “exquisitely refined musical personality, overflowing imagination and constantly inventive craft.” That inventiveness was seemingly inexhaustible: her music is coloristic and textural, with minimal melodic elements. It anticipated immersive ambient drone, trance, and spectral music long before they became fashionable. Her music’s intimate connection with the human body was expressed in her extensive work with dance legends like Nancy Meehan and Mikhail Baryshnikov, who choreographed her string quartet, Lemniscates, for his White Oak Dance Project.

But it’s more than timbral music for dance. Hovda’s music was for choreographing the whole breathing human body. On the surface, it sounds almost improvisatory—emotional, multi-faceted and searingly intense—partly because of her use of extended techniques that highlight the overtone series, breath, resonant spaces and psychoacoustical phenomena. But beneath the surface the pieces are intricately organized and scored—the better to focus their powerful effects. Immersing yourself in this collection will lead to an altered and ecstatic shift of realities akin to Brian Eno, Harley Gaber, the Grateful Dead, Tristan Murail, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or anyone who likes a little grit with their bliss. It will remind you that the days of the 1960s avant garde have significant reverberations today and will still be echoing tomorrow. It will fill your being with sound as well as the spaces around that sound. Just set aside four hours and crank the headphones.

Her music has been performed extensively and by such outstanding ensembles as the Kronos Quartet, Zeitgeist, California EAR Unit, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and many other contemporary and symphony ensembles. She was a full professor/composer-in-residence on the music faculties of Princeton, Yale, and Bard College. Her residencies included music and dance appointments at Sarah Lawrence College, Wesleyan University, the College of St. Scholastica, and the American Dance Festival. A long debilitating illness at the height of her career led to a decline in activity and her passing in Arkansas in 2009.

Reviews: 

FANFARE
“In Hovda, we have a wonderful example of that 'X' factor that makes certain artists transcendent and musical theorists sputter in frustration at the challenge of the evanescent perfection of art.”
Robert Carl

GAPPLEGATE CLASSICAL-MODERN MUSIC REVIEW
"I believe that The Eleanor Hovda Collection is destined to join the ranks of the most important releases of this decade in the 'New Music'/'Avant Classical' categories." [FULL ARTICLE]
Greg Edwards 

MUSIC FOR MANIACS
"This 4-disk set is a revelation. The late Ms. Hovda wrote music that puzzled me at first --it's sometimes glacially paced, with long silences. I kept expecting ambient, drone, minimalism or chamber music - it is all and none of those. The first piece is for bowed cymbals, the second finds Hovda playing 'piano innards.' My most listened-to album of the year so far, even at 4 disks." [FULL ARTICLE]
Kevin Trantow 

ARCANE CANDY “[H]ighly subtle, often sparse, spatial music … her work totally flows and breathes, sounding for all the world like the best dream state free improvisation–even though it’s all meticulously composed … [E]asily earns a place among the best slow-motion acoustic soundscapes out there.”