Theory of Everything: Steve Lehman Octet’s Travail, Transformation, and Flow

The Washington City Paper reviews Lehman’s latest.

On the disc, Lehman uses a jazz application of “spectralism”: a French school in which composers begin with a note on a given instrument, use a computer to analyze the spectrum of tones that make up that note, then orchestrate all of those tones on different instruments to create new harmonies. The physical acoustics and the musician’s attack on the instruments help determine the nuances within the tonal spectrum, but timbre is the primary element of spectral harmony.

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