The Names’ “Four Names and a Song”

Good afternoon,

The cover is “Angela Davis (Grey)” (gouache, 2021) by Iris Kensmil

Happy April! NO JOKE: I am so very pleased to announce the release of Four Names and a Song by The Names, a new collective ensemble formed by dear friend Koen Nutters. The debut album was recorded in (and around) Amsterdam and Berlin with compositional frameworks by Koen. The release also includes a beautiful essay by Matt Marble called “Our Greater Potentials” so I will let his words tell a bit more about the album.

Four Names and a Song is an encoded love letter addressed to a vital intersection — that of the traditions of AACM jazz and Cagean aleatoric composition, on the one hand, and that of racial injustice and white responsibility, on the other. Using his own musical cipher, Dutch composer and bassist Koen Nutters first translated the names of ensemble members and social justice icons into musical pitches. Each person's unique ‘melodic code’ then naturally gives rise to their own melodic and harmonic figures. In his arrangements Nutters also found inspiration from 1960s jazz harmony, which he abstracts into musical question marks. Chord progressions are slowed down into atmospheric textures suspended in parenthetical silences. Though the music takes on a disembodied character, it doesn't feel escapist. Almost ceremonial, it is more like the construction and adornment of an altar.” Marble goes on to say, “The music of The Names does not provide any solutions to the injustice they meditate upon, nor do they completely fulfill the white responsibility which Angela Davis suggests. But Four Names and a Song is a radical ambience in which to reflect on these powerful voices and on what that responsibility might entail.”

Four Names and a Song is available as both CD and digital versions.

For now,

Jordan

Album preview!