R.I.P Harold Budd
In this month of December avant-garde composer and poet passed away due to a stroke on November 11, 2020, where he contracted COVID-19. He died on December 8, in a hospital in Arcadia, California, aged 84, due to complications from COVID-19.
Budd studied music at the University of Southern California, under the tutelage of Ingolf Dahl, graduating in 1966. Budd's work of this period was primarily minimalist drone music influenced by John Cage and Morton Feldman, as well as the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, with whom he corresponded.
"The road from my first coloured graph piece in 1962 to my renunciation of composing in 1970 to my resurfacing as a composer in 1972 was a process of trying out an idea and when it was obviously successful abandoning it. The early graph piece was followed by the Rothko orchestra work, the pieces for Source Magazine, the Feldman-derived chamber works, the pieces typed out or written in longhand, the out-and-out conceptual works among other things, and the model drone works (which include the sax and organ Coeur d'Orr and The Oak of the Golden Dreams, the latter based on the Balinese 'Slendro' scale which scale I used again 18 years later on 'The Real Dream of Sails')."
- Harold Budd[
In 1972, while still retaining his teaching career at the California Institute for the Arts, he resurfaced as a composer. Spanning from 1972 to 1975, he created four individual works under the collective title The Pavilion of Dreams. The style of these works was an unusual blend of popular jazz and the avant-garde. His 1972 work Madrigals of the Rose Angel was sent to English composer Gavin Bryars who passed it on to Brian Eno. Eno contacted Budd and brought him to London to record for his Obscure Records label.
!I owe Eno everything, OK? That's the end of that... I was plucked from the tree, and suddenly I had flowered. I was just waiting. I couldn't do it on my own. I didn't know "anything.
Harold Budd
Budd resigned from the institute in 1976 and began recording his new compositions, produced by Eno. Two years later, Harold Budd's debut album, The Pavilion of Dreams (1978), was released. The first performance of the piece was at a Franciscan church in California conducted by Daniel Lentz."
The work with Eno led Budd to shift his focus to studio-led projects, characterised by use of synthesisers and electronic treatments, often collaborating with other musicians.[14] Budd developed a style of piano playing he deemed "soft pedal," which can be described as slow and sustained.[12] While he is often placed in the Ambient category, he emphatically declared that he was not an Ambient artist, and felt that he got "kidnapped" into the category.[15]
His two collaborations with Eno, 1980's The Plateaux of Mirror and 1984's The Pearl, established his trademark atmospheric piano style. On Lovely Thunder, he introduced subtle electronic textures. His thematic 2000 release The Room saw a return to a more minimalist approach. In 2003, Daniel Lanois, a producer for U2 and Bob Dylan, and occasional collaborator with Brian Eno, recorded an impromptu performance of Budd playing the piano in his Los Angeles living room, unaware; it was released in 2005 as the album La Bella Vista.
He had a long-running collaboration with guitarist Robin Guthrie. They worked together initially when Budd worked with Guthrie's band The Cocteau Twins on their 1985 collaboration The Moon and the Melodies. The record was released by 4AD under all the collaborator's names (rather than being a Cocteau Twins/Harold Budd record), with Budd being listed first as it was an alphabetical listing. In November 1986, the record charted on the UK Top 75 album chart, spending a week at number 46. Budd and Guthrie subsequently released several albums together, including two soundtracks to the Greg Araki films Mysterious Skin (2004) and White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), with the last, 2020's Another Flower, released four days before Budd's death
Harold Budd - The Pavilion of Dreams (Full Album)
Tracklist:
00:00 Bismillahi 'Rrahman 'Rrahman (18:25)
18:25 Two Songs: (6:26)
a. Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord
b. Butterfly Sunday
24:51 Madrigals Of The Rose Angel (14:20)
a. Rosetti Stone
b.The Crystal Garden And A Coda
39:11 Juno (8:27)
Rest in peace man.
Enjoy
Budd studied music at the University of Southern California, under the tutelage of Ingolf Dahl, graduating in 1966. Budd's work of this period was primarily minimalist drone music influenced by John Cage and Morton Feldman, as well as the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, with whom he corresponded.
"The road from my first coloured graph piece in 1962 to my renunciation of composing in 1970 to my resurfacing as a composer in 1972 was a process of trying out an idea and when it was obviously successful abandoning it. The early graph piece was followed by the Rothko orchestra work, the pieces for Source Magazine, the Feldman-derived chamber works, the pieces typed out or written in longhand, the out-and-out conceptual works among other things, and the model drone works (which include the sax and organ Coeur d'Orr and The Oak of the Golden Dreams, the latter based on the Balinese 'Slendro' scale which scale I used again 18 years later on 'The Real Dream of Sails')."
- Harold Budd[
In 1972, while still retaining his teaching career at the California Institute for the Arts, he resurfaced as a composer. Spanning from 1972 to 1975, he created four individual works under the collective title The Pavilion of Dreams. The style of these works was an unusual blend of popular jazz and the avant-garde. His 1972 work Madrigals of the Rose Angel was sent to English composer Gavin Bryars who passed it on to Brian Eno. Eno contacted Budd and brought him to London to record for his Obscure Records label.
!I owe Eno everything, OK? That's the end of that... I was plucked from the tree, and suddenly I had flowered. I was just waiting. I couldn't do it on my own. I didn't know "anything.
Harold Budd
Budd resigned from the institute in 1976 and began recording his new compositions, produced by Eno. Two years later, Harold Budd's debut album, The Pavilion of Dreams (1978), was released. The first performance of the piece was at a Franciscan church in California conducted by Daniel Lentz."
The work with Eno led Budd to shift his focus to studio-led projects, characterised by use of synthesisers and electronic treatments, often collaborating with other musicians.[14] Budd developed a style of piano playing he deemed "soft pedal," which can be described as slow and sustained.[12] While he is often placed in the Ambient category, he emphatically declared that he was not an Ambient artist, and felt that he got "kidnapped" into the category.[15]
His two collaborations with Eno, 1980's The Plateaux of Mirror and 1984's The Pearl, established his trademark atmospheric piano style. On Lovely Thunder, he introduced subtle electronic textures. His thematic 2000 release The Room saw a return to a more minimalist approach. In 2003, Daniel Lanois, a producer for U2 and Bob Dylan, and occasional collaborator with Brian Eno, recorded an impromptu performance of Budd playing the piano in his Los Angeles living room, unaware; it was released in 2005 as the album La Bella Vista.
He had a long-running collaboration with guitarist Robin Guthrie. They worked together initially when Budd worked with Guthrie's band The Cocteau Twins on their 1985 collaboration The Moon and the Melodies. The record was released by 4AD under all the collaborator's names (rather than being a Cocteau Twins/Harold Budd record), with Budd being listed first as it was an alphabetical listing. In November 1986, the record charted on the UK Top 75 album chart, spending a week at number 46. Budd and Guthrie subsequently released several albums together, including two soundtracks to the Greg Araki films Mysterious Skin (2004) and White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), with the last, 2020's Another Flower, released four days before Budd's death
Harold Budd - The Pavilion of Dreams (Full Album)
Click to viewTracklist:
00:00 Bismillahi 'Rrahman 'Rrahman (18:25)
18:25 Two Songs: (6:26)
a. Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord
b. Butterfly Sunday
24:51 Madrigals Of The Rose Angel (14:20)
a. Rosetti Stone
b.The Crystal Garden And A Coda
39:11 Juno (8:27)
Rest in peace man.
Enjoy