Today on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, we have an exclusive album premiere of TAK Ensemble‘s Oor. TAK Ensemble is Laura Cocks (flutes), Carlos Cordeiro (clarinets), Marina Kifferstein (violin), Ellery Trafford (percussion), and Charlotte Mundy (voice).
Oor is the third album from TAK Ensemble, but it is the first album to be released on their new record label, TAK Editions. Oor features works mostly written for the ensemble by Erin Gee, Ashkan Behzadi, David Bird, Ann Cleare, Tyshawn Sorey, and Natacha Diels.
Here’s what TAK Ensemble had to say about the album:
This album is like a bouquet of the most beautiful and strange flowers that have sprouted in our music-making garden over the first five years of the ensemble’s existence. Or maybe they’re fruits and vegetables because they have nurtured us, been an important part of our growth and development—and now we are so excited to have gathered them all up into a basket to present to the world.
The album is called Oor (roughly translating to naked) because these works, to us, share a sense of raw openness, unvarnished emotion, and urgency. This visceral collection of pieces, primarily written for the ensemble, highlights fierce virtuosity, uncanny blends, and otherworldly timbral landscapes.
Oor is out on TAK Editions on May 18th. You can pre-order the album here, and you can join TAK for their album release event at University Settlement in New York on May 18th.
About TAK Ensemble
TAK is a quintet that delivers energetic and virtuosic performances of contemporary classical music. The ambitious 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” (New Sounds, WQXR). Dedicated to the commissioning of new works and direct collaboration with composers and other artists, TAK promotes ambitious programming at the highest level, fostering engagement both within the contemporary music community and the artistic community at large. Their debut album Ecstatic Music: TAK plays Taylor Brook (New Focus) 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.” Their second album, Sanctuary (Denovali Records), with Mario Diaz de Leon, was described as “a ritualistic masterwork of modern classical music…with visionary intensity—21st century chamber music that combines crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” by WIRE Magazine. Their third album, Oor, will be released May 2019 on the TAK editions label and feature works by Natacha Diels, Tyshawn Sorey, Ann Cleare, Ashkan Behzadi, David Bird, and Erin Gee.
2018-19 engagements include residencies at Stanford University, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Saint Cloud State University, and the Delian Academy as well as performances at the Library of Congress, Cluster Festival, Look and Listen Festival, 113 Composers, and in their home of New York City.