“… the group blends elements of jazz, folk and classical chamber music to create unique, yet often eerie compositions that seem like the perfect movie score.” –Billboard
"Their haunting and strangely familiar music... is a soundtrack for the kind of puzzling dream which leaves you sitting awake in the middle of the night..." –The New Yorker
“Forget the definitions, and simply think of the music of the Tin Hat Trio as compelling entertainment, rich with whimsy, imagination and intelligence.” –The Los Angeles Times
"Tin Hat's music crackles with the improvisational savvy of jazz, but it is unclassifiable - like notes from some dusty heartland attic, restored and polished to a high sheen…The Sad Machinery of Spring, is a marvel of intimate chemistry and resourceful orchestration." -The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Taking the work of the Polish-Jewish writer and graphic artist Bruno Schulz as inspiration, this remarkable quintet of multi- instrumentalists create a series of measured vignettes that brilliantly mix the familiar with the bizarre. Founder members Carla Kihlstedt - fulsomely melodic on violin - and ultra-sharp rhythm guitarist Mark Orton are here augmented by harp and an instrumental assortment that includes wheezy harmoniums, querulous trumpets and plaintive clarinets. Unhurried tempos add to an underlying feeling of uncertainty, creating a genuinely surrealist musical soundscape, highlighted by the only vocal track, a menacing "Daisy Bell"." -Financial Times, London
NEW TIN HAT RECORD–"THE SAD MACHINERY OF SPRING"
With the release of its first CD for Hannibal/Rykodisc, The Sad Machinery of Spring, the internationally acclaimed band of genre-leaping musical adventurers known as Tin Hat (formerly Tin Hat Trio) begins a new chapter in its remarkable decade-long career.
Founded by composers and multi-instrumentalists Mark Orton, Carla Kihlstedt and Rob Burger in 1997, Tin Hat moves effortlessly between genres, creating a new kind of acoustic chamber music that melds elements of jazz, folk, classical, and various American and World roots music. The group’s concert performances and recordings have earned widespread critical praise and an ever-growing legion of fans around the world.
When Rob Burger left the trio in 2004, Orton and Kihlstedt were faced with a daunting task of reinvention. As Orton explains it: “We knew we had huge shoes to fill, and that we’d miss Rob greatly. He and I grew up together, and we’ve both known Carla since she was a teenager.” Of the musical intimacy and telepathic connection afforded by such long-standing friendships, Kihlstedt adds: “there's nothing that could possibly replace that history.”
Orton and Kihlstedt wisely chose not to try replacing the irreplaceable. Instead, they took the situation as an opportunity to broaden the palette of musical colors available to them. Dropping the word “trio” from the group name, Tin Hat added not one but three new players to the mix — all brilliant instrumentalists of tremendous virtuosity and imagination, and distinctively idiosyncratic composers in their own right.
Joining Kihlstedt (violin, viola, trumpet violin, voice, piano, celeste, bowed vibes, bass harmonica, ukelin) and Orton (guitar, dobro, banjo, piano, pump organ, auto-harp, bass drum, bass harmonica) on The Sad Machinery of Spring are: Ara Anderson (trumpet, baritone horn, piano, pump organ, toy piano, celeste); Ben Goldberg (b-flat clarinet, alto clarinet, contra alto clarinet); and Zeena Parkins (harp).
One of the most striking things about The Sad Machinery of Spring is that although no fewer than five different composers are represented here, the work speaks with a powerfully unified voice, without obscuring the vivid individual personalities of the players. Carla Kihlstedt reflects on that achievement: “Although we’ve given it room to shift organically with the new lineup, the history of the group still shows through. I’ve been a fan of Ben's writing and playing for at least 10 years, and though the tunes he wrote for this record fit seamlessly into the Tin Hat ‘sound’, I can absolutely recognize them as his. This is true of Ara and Zeena as well. Everyone has stretched to find a place in the band, but also, the band has stretched to encompass the new chemistry...” (continued on page 2)
“… it's been a true give-and-take. Collaborations are really about exploring the places where people overlap with one another, so of course those places shift with each new person.”
The music on The Sad Machinery of Spring was inspired by the work of Bruno Schulz, a Polish-Jewish novelist and graphic artist whose life was cut tragically short in 1942 by a Nazi officer’s bullet. Schulz’s relentlessly imaginative and evocative writing in his two best-known works, The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of The Hour Glass, earned him a reputation as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th Century. No less a storyteller than Isaac Bashevis Singer said of Schulz, “He wrote sometimes like Kafka, sometimes like Proust, and at times succeeded in reaching depths that neither of them reached.”
Explaining the attraction the members of Tin Hat have to Schulz’ writing, Orton notes: “There’s an old world quality, a classical sense, to his work, but he was a dedicated surrealist as well. I think it’s that combination of elements that makes us feel a kinship with him… There are certain, almost childlike qualities in Schulz, like he’s discovering things for the first time, which is something we try to convey in Tin Hat… a simplicity at the heart of the music.”
Kihlstedt elaborates: “[Schulz’ stories] are full of the most magnificent descriptions of the most mundane things. He has a way of pivoting on a simple observation, and diving down into it until you're at the bottom of the world looking up, or way above it looking down. He gives his imagination a very long leash, and it runs away with the smallest provocation. It's as if every thought becomes a small, yet incredibly elaborate diorama that we get to peer into. This made for some pretty inspiring points of departure for us.”
The Sad Machinery of Spring does indeed do full justice to Schulz’ extraordinary descriptive gifts. At various moments poignant or antic, pastoral or ominous, edgily dissonant or ravishingly melodic, the compositions and the performances combine to create a stunning landscape of the imagination.
Reflecting on where Tin Hat has been and where it’s going, Kihlstedt notes that “There have always been contradictory/complimentary aspects to Tin Hat, which is what makes it interesting for me both as a writer and as a player; there are aspects that touch on folk traditions, aspects that give a nod to more contemporary classical music, aspects that are inherently filmic... these same things exist in the band today, but the balance between them is always shifting.”
On The Sad Machinery of Spring, Tin Hat continues to maintain that exquisite balance, and to embrace those exhilarating changes.
Hannibal/Rykodisc HNCD 1524
Release Date: 30 January 2007
