Hollenbeck, John - Rainbow Jimmies

SKU GPE 2543
John is, of course, known to all of us as the leader of the incredibly wonderful Claudia Quintet. This includes a number of different aspects of his work but most importantly for fans of Claudia, it includes two great tracks by Claudia (total of 16') including a track with guest guitarist Mark Stewart.

"The Gray Cottage Studies, written for Todd Reynolds, encompass the first phase of my 2007-2008 Guggenheim Fellowship project. The basic idea was to write etudes or studies based on one specific violin technique so that I could learn more the violin in the process. One interesting problem I encountered was that no matter what the challenge, Todd could pretty much play anything I wrote, so I was none the wiser as to what limitations there were to playing the violin! These pieces were conceived at and capture some of the spirit of Blue Mountain Center. My early morning canoe trips, the deer, and the residents and staff were all a big inspiration. Ziggurat (exterior) and its sister piece Ziggurat (interior) came about from two simultaneous commissions from two great percussion ensembles. As a resident of New York City, I am constantly fascinated by the sounds of building construction and the amount of organization required to complete a skyscraper. I am equally fascinated by ziggurats, ancient buildings that most likely required as much organization to build, but were erected without the technology of today. My interest in architecture led me to create a piece that explores the sounds of construction and the teamwork required to construct a building. I arranged the composition structurally to reflect the workings of a construction team intent on completing a sacred structure. In ziggurat (exterior), the role of "contractor" was ably performed by Brian Sweigart, who spontaneously guided and shaped the ‘building’ of this piece. The setting for ziggurat (interior) rests in the construction of the sacred rooms inside a Ziggurat where four artisans work together intimately during certain stages of construction, and in other stages part in order to focus their energies on separate but equally important tasks. Sinanari (acoustic remix) was written for the Weill Institute 2007 Distance Learning Event in Istanbul and New York City, an event that the Claudia Quintet was a part of. I arranged this popular Turkish song in the same fashion that someone would remix a piece - ala cut and paste - and then added a little John Bonham. Rainbow Jimmies BOAC was written to celebrate my engagement to Katharine Schroeder. Hailing from upstate NY, I call the colorful ice cream candy topping Rainbow Sprinkles. In other parts of the northeast they are called Jimmies (my wife contends that they were called "shots" at her childhood local dairy bar, but I'm still skeptical of that name). The opening section was originally inspired by imagining the sound of Jimmies being sprinkled on ice cream. During the course of writing the guitar part, I showed it to the great Ben Monder, who said (without knowing who I was writing it for): "the only person that I think could play this is Mark Stewart." I totally agree and am honored to work with such a special human being as Mark."-John Hollenbeck August 2008


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