This autumn, Erased Tapes are set to release Give It to the Sky: Arthur Russells Tower of Meaning Expanded by composer and producer Peter Broderick and French 12-piece group Ensemble 0; a complete re-recording of Russells epic minimalist orchestral composition originally released in 1983. Give It to the Sky also includes unreleased tracks by Russell which have been restored and re-recorded, resulting in an 80-minute reanimation that threads several lost songs into a meticulous and gorgeous rendering. The album was recorded live as a group in a small theatre in the Southwest of France with minimal overdubs.
For all its wonder and beauty, the musical output of the American cellist, composer, singer, and musical visionary also embodies irony, tragedy, and paradox. Russell famously recorded more than 1,000 hours of tape and left an otherwise-tremendous archive, now part of the New York Public Library. But before his death in 1992, Russell released just three albums under his own name. One of those was Tower of Meaning (1983), a score commissioned for and then abandoned by a Robert Wilson production of Euripides Medea. Composer and pianist Philip Glass helped preserve the music, at least, subsequently releasing a somewhat-thin recording on his own label of just 320 LPs.
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