Album Notes

Jay Cloidt’s latest CD features the premiere studio recordings of two ambitious and diverse works for string quartet, Spectral Evidence and eleven windows, performed by the Cypress String Quartet.

Spectral Evidence begins with a straightforward performance of the first two minutes of a Mozart quartet. At first subtly then radically, the piece is broken down into parts and reassembled into a series of ten new movements. Meticulously recorded at George Lucas’s SkyWalker Ranch, the music is solely based on the deconstruction and reconstruction of the melodic materials found in the original opening section. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Jay Cloidt's exceptional score, a Mozart string quartet and its subtle deconstruction and transformation into something ominous, tracks the choreography every step of the way… the Cypress String Quartet... performs Cloidt’s score masterfully."

The Kronos Quartet originally commissioned and premiered eleven windows, written for string quartet, recorded sound environments, and electronics. The work incorporates sound elements collected from around the world by the composer — the swoosh of an electric door from a Seville hotel, the buzz of a Pachinko parlor in Nagoya, a Balinese farmer shooing birds, and more. The sounds of the Cypress Quartet, sometimes electronically treated, are dexterously woven through and melded with these sound environments to create otherworldly sonic landscapes.

Jay Cloidt is a composer and sound designer working in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has collaborated with many performing groups, such as the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, California EAR Unit, and Kronos Quartet. Cloidt’s works have been performed at major venues such as New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Festival Hall, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. His earlier Kole Kat Krush CD was released by Starkland to widespread acclaim. Stereophile awarded 4 Stars to the CD, stating that Cloidt is “one of the few composers in the post-sampler era to fully develop that tool’s fascinating and witty potential.”

The Cypress String Quartet has been praised by the Washington Post for their “beautifully proportioned and powerful” interpretations, and they have won the prestigious Aaron Copland Award in recognition of the quartet’s work championing contemporary music.