JB Floyd, raised in provincial Texas and classically trained,
absorbed boogie-woogie and jazz during his formative years.
Transporting Transmittance (Mutable, 2003) contains
The 3-D Picture of Death,
A Transporting Transmittance for Transverse Flute and Disklavier, a duo with flautist Lisa Hansen,
two improvisations on Robert Ashley's opera El Aficionado for piano and voice
(baritone Thomas Buckner), and the
boogie-woogie Solos and Sequences II for "disklavier" piano.
A 1975 performance with David Rosenboom appears on
Suitable for Framing (Mutable, 2004).
In Crossing the Busy Street (Mutable, 2009)
contains the namesake eight-song cycle for baritone (Thomas Buckner) and piano, and
a six-part improvised "jam" on its leitmotiv (with drummer George Marsh).
Another Time and Place (Mutable, 2011) collects compositions spanning
three decades.
Prince of Pentacles (1979) is a slow, bluesy, dissonant meditation
in which the piano is simulated the bubbling sounds of the Buchla synthesizer.
Variations 1979 has the feeling of a Schubert-inspired romantic fantasia
adapted to a cocktail lounge.
Waves The Ebb and Flow (1981), instead, masterly evokes the pattern
(if not the sound) of the waves rolling onto the beach.
The change that came during the more recent music is represented by the
ferociously spinning crescendoes of the piano sonatas:
Tribute for my Father (1991) and
Solos and Sequences I (1999),
despite their pensive and somewhat fatigued beginnings.
Floyd delved into equatorial atmospheres for
Another Time and Place (1993) for "disklavier", virtual instruments, percussion and solo pianist, that hints at ethnic music and jungle sounds, an odd
hybrid of ambient new-age dance music that seems out of context here.
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