Great Scott at The Sound Lounge
‘Great Scott – The Music of Raymond Scott’ will offer you a remarkable night of music paying homage to the one of the great unsung American composers, musicians and pioneer of electronic music with an exceptional all star band. These days Raymond Scott has an almost cult following and is being rediscovered by a new generation of fans right throughout the world.
Raymond Scott was among the unheralded pioneers of contemporary experimental music, a figure whose genius and influence have seeped almost subliminally into the mass cultural consciousness. As a visionary whose name is largely unknown but whose music is immediately recognizable, Scott’s was a career stuffed with contradictions: though his early work anticipated the breathless invention of bebop, his obsession with perfectionism and memorization was the very antithesis of jazz’s improvisational ethos.
Though his best-known compositions remain at large thanks to their endless recycling as soundtracks for cartoons, he never once wrote a note expressly for animated use, and though his later experiments with electronic music pioneered the ambient aesthetic, the ambient concept itself was not introduced until a decade after the release of his original recordings. His music is familiar to millions because of its adaptation by Carl Stalling in over 120 classic Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and other Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts. Scott’s melodies may also be heard in contemporary shows like Ren and Stimpy, Duckman, The Simpsons, Animaniacs, The Oblongs and Batfink.
The night will start with a performance of Peter Dasent, best known in Sydney as leader of The Umbrellas, and for those with preschoolers, as the resident pianist at Play School since 2000. In 2015 he released an album of his piano compositions Songs for Solo Piano, which was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios in London. In a 4.5 star review, John Shand wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald “he composes with the same absence of artifice with which a child builds sandcastles.”
It will be followed by ‘Great Scott!’, during which you’ll explore Raymond Scott’s early quintet miniature masterpieces, his ground-breaking electronica as well as his eerie and often unnerving advertisement jingles, played by an all star band composed of Sarah Belkner (vocals), Matt Ottignon (saxophone), Ross Harrington (clarinet), Sam Golding (trumpet), Peter Dasent (piano), Steve Elphick (double bass) and Evan Mannell (drums).
What: Great Scott! at The Sound Lounge
Where: The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre
When: 21 January 2017
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