GORDON BEEFERMAN

FOUR PARTS FIVE

Innova 934

Part 1 (5:01)

Part 2 (10:14)

Part 3 (6:59)

Part 4 (8:09)

Total 30:33

Gordon Beeferman – piano, Hammond B3 organ

Peter Hess – alto saxophone, flute, bass clarinet

Anders Nilsson – electric guitar

James Ilgenfritz – double bass

Adam Gold – drums

about FOUR PARTS FIVE:

Gordon Beeferman and I first met in the early aughts when I was invited to perform
at a gig on the Lower East Side with his trio Rara Avis. We all drew from jazz, rock,
and unscripted in-between languages in improvising. Since that gig, Gordon and I have played together sporadically in a few settings and his signature quick-mindedness and interestingly developed ideas are instantly recognizable and familiar. Fast-forward to his half-hour quintet composition FOUR PARTS FIVE, which he described to us players as
a rhythmically virtuosic, hair-raising, unsettling, and densely harmonious piece made for the brain and the body. Several of us, used to all kinds of situations, agreed that
in a sense this was the hardest music we’d ever played and performed. Unorthodox amounts of concentration were needed, as the music requires razor-sharp execution to hold together, but it’s also exciting, fun, haunting, moody, beautiful, eyebrow-raising, and motion-inducing, and at times really groovy! From the onset of the piece until the final chord, this music of Gordon’s has a striking distinctness, relentlessness, tension, and drama, all generated by an immense focus and compositional playfulness with its eye on the moment and what’s to follow. It’s a master plan of epic variations on the musical building blocks at hand, never compromising the insistent rhythmic activity and drive permeating the music.

Upon repeated listens, take a step back and find that beyond the sagacious compositional face of it, the music is gripping and powerfully evocative in its shifting colors
and shapes, perhaps bringing to mind a trippy road movie through streets, rivers, earth, and space, alarms, clocks, dreams, wonder, obsession, fascination, absurdity, release, freedom, unity, control, wants, reflection and more and more… To me, the music presents a matrix in sound and with eyes closed evokes an easily visualized web of pliable grids, colors and shapes. I’d love to see people dance to this.

What does this music sound like to you? Jazz? Chamber music? Soundtrack asking
for a movie? Psychedelic? Twisted funk? Maybe it’s birthed in between all these places
and other ones too. Enjoy! We did.

— Anders Nilsson, January 2015

Music composed by Gordon Beeferman (BMI), © 2015. All rights reserved.

Recorded October 15, 2014 by Peter Karl at Peter Karl Studio, Brooklyn, NY

Edited by Gordon Beeferman

Mixed by Gordon Beeferman, Kato Hideki, and Anders Nilsson

Mastered by Kato Hideki

Cover art: “Walk 51 in 16 Panels” by Laurie Frick (www.lauriefrick.com)

Graphic design: Leah Beeferman

Produced by Gordon Beeferman (www.gordonbeeferman.com)

innova Director: Philip Blackburn

Operations Director: Chris Campbell

Publicist: Steve McPherson

innova is the label of the

American Composers Forum.

www.innova.mu

innova is supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation.