Today’s full album premiere on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN comes from composer Mario Diaz de Leon and his fascination with the mystically-oriented modernisms of Stockhausen, Scelsi, Messiaen, and Dumitrescu.
Sanctuary is an album-length piece created in collaboration with TAK Ensemble in which Mario Diaz de Leon presents his most unified offering to date. Featuring soprano voice, flute, violin, bass clarinet, marimba, and the composer’s own synthesizer work, the album is a hypnotic and ritualistic journey through realms of angelic and demonic experience.
Mario Diaz de Leon described the process of collaborating with TAK Ensemble on Sanctuary:
In the summer of 2015, MDdL and TAK Ensemble convened for a group residency at Avaloch Farms in New Hampshire. In this living Sanctuary, spirits were raised, unhinged emotions held forth, and experiences of alien beauty were cultivated. These group sessions provided the basis for MDdL’s first album length classical work, where modernist and minimalist elements are balanced to create a singular experience of hybrid electronic and acoustic sound.
The album will be released on September 29th on Denovali, but you can preorder it here.
About Mario Diaz de Leon
Born in Minnesota, Mario Diaz de Leon has lived in in New York City since 2004, and received a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University in 2013, where he currently teaches. He currently leads the metal band Luminous Vault as vocalist and guitarist, whose “Charismata” EP was released on Profound Lore Records in spring 2017. From 2012-2016, his solo electronic project Oneirogen (o-NI-ro-jen) toured internationally and released three full length albums on Denovali.
Mario Diaz de Leon collaborated with director Zev Deans to create the score for Alien: Biotic, a short film commissioned by Fox as part of the o cial Alien: Covenant campaign. In 2016, the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned and premiered his “Lightmass” for their “Noon to Midnight” festival of contemporary music. He has also collaborated with Nate Young of Wolf Eyes on “Standard Deviance One”, which they recently performed at Tectonics Festival Glasgow with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
About TAK Ensemble
TAK is a quintet that delivers energetic and virtuosic performances of contemporary classical music. The ambitious NYC based ensemble “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity — and, well, just a dash of IDGAF as they slay the thorniest material like it’s nothing” (Q2 Music). Their debut album “Ecstatic Music: TAK plays Taylor Brook” was released by New Focus Recordings in September 2016, to critical acclaim; it was featured as Q2 Music’s Album of the Week by WQXR, and was listed in the Top 10 Classical Albums of 2016 by The Boston Globe, which praised the “young, fearless players… fluid grace and confidence.”
Upcoming projects include a collaborative commissioning project with the Montreal-based percussion quartet Architek, a several-week run of “The Power of Emotion” with TELE-Violet Theater, the “Iceland in New York” festival at Scandinavia House with Errata Collective and NYC-based quartet loadbang, and a Canadian tour featuring ten world premieres.
TAK Ensemble–Photo by David Bird