Contact - Brian Eno: Discreet Music (2015)

On the 40th anniversary of the release of Brian Eno's electronic ambient masterpiece Discreet Music, Toronto's classical Contact ensemble, led by artistic director and percussionist Jerry Pergolesi, weighs in with a modern arrangement that harks back to the adventurous experimentalism of the original. In Contact's version, acoustic and electric instruments (cello, violin, soprano saxophone, guitar, double bass, vibraphone, piano, flute and gongs) take the place of Eno's EMS synthesizer, channeling the underlying melodies of the piece until the ensemble itself becomes a kind of "looping apparatus," as Pergolesi describes it. "My hope is that this recording pays homage to an influential piece of music and fulfills its own purpose as, in Eno's words, 'not something intrinsic to certain arrangements of things - to [a] certain way of organizing sounds - but actually a process of apprehending that we, as listeners, could choose to conduct. Music is something your mind does."

"The recording makes the listener abundantly aware of Eno's looping technique, inspired by Terry Riley and Steve Reich, and of the need to dispel any assumptions about how music develops. The recording was made in one take, a testament to the powers of concentration and interaction of the seven Contact musicians and their guests, Emma Zoe Elkinson (flute) and Dean KurtisPomeroy (gongs)." –Donald Rosenburg, Gramophone Sounds of America, June 2016

Tracklist:
1. Part I (9:44)
2. Part II (10:36)
3. Part III (5:24)
4. Part IV (7:08)
5. Part V (7:29)
6. Part VI (8:00)
7/ Part VII (11:37)