Masako Kunimoto, Steve Sehman, Bill Sallak, Steven Schick, Aiyun Huang,
Fabio Oliveira, Justin DeHart, Jude Traxler, Berndt Thurner, Ayano
Kataoka, Chris Leonard, Dale Speicher, Matt Apanius, vibraphone; Katalin
Lukacs, piano; Gisela Mashayekhi-Beer, flute
Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) has created a diverse and
unusual body of musical and literary compositions. His music is usually
chromatic, atonal, and rhythmically complex, with his pitch material
selected in an intuitive manner rather than via the twelve-tone
technique. Many of his works are theatrical, asking the performers to
speak, sing, act, and perform pantomime in addition to playing their
instruments. His works often feature improvisation. Approximately half
of his more than 130 works involve percussion, and his works are
particularly popular among percussionists. This is the first complete
recording of the Links series.
"The Links Series of Vibraphone Essays is scored for
vibraphone in various settings, from unaccompanied solos to duos with
flute, piano and off-stage orchestra bells. This series was composed
between 1975 and 1995. There are eleven individual Links pieces.
The title refers to the entire structure of the work, in that the end of
one composition elides to the beginning of the next-a link in a
delicate necklace. Also, "links" in German means "left" in English. The Links
Series remains left of the center of the past and current musical
languages in which composers have composed and are composing. It is the
most physically, melodically, rhythmically, and conceptually demanding
vibraphone music yet composed. The Links are performed all over
the world and are part of important percussion curriculums from Yale to
UC-San Diego, to mention a few."
-Stuart Saunders Smith