Guest
This fan video captures one improvisation of several performed by David Torn on guitar at the intimate Streamside House Concert in Arden, North Carolina. David's performance was in support of his improvisational solo album, “only sky“ out on ECM Records. This video is more about the audio aspect than and effects straight from David's amp, no PA or house board. All audio improvised live. Audio recorded on a Zoom Q3HD as the primary audio located 12 feet directly in front of David's amp, JVC shotgun mics on cameras and a Digital Reference DR-CX1 as a room mic at about 24 feet back powered by and recorded on one of the cameras. Video recorded with 2 JVC GY-HM150U HD 1080p cameras (These cameras require indoor lighting to achieve broadcast quality.) David was informative, a gentleman and answered all questions on his approach and perspective to modern guitar, improvisation and production. Torn is a must have in any serious collection! All copyright rights to David Torn. Press release below. Guitar Legend David Torn To Tour US In Support Of New Album “only sky” Date: May 07, 2015 Posted by: William James Contact: glassonyonpr@ 8283508158 P.O. Box 18254, Asheville, NC 28814 Los Angeles - Ever-intrepid guitarist, producer, improviser, film composer and soundscape artist David Torn will embark on his first solo tour of the US since the mid-nineties (see itinerary below). The 22-city tour is in support of “only sky” - an album that explores the far sonic edges of what one man and a guitar can create, a solo recording of almost orchestral atmosphere. “only sky” is Torn’s first ECM release since 2007’s acclaimed “prezens”, a full-band project, with Tim Berne, Craig Taborn and Tom Rainey, that Jazzwise described as “a vibrating collage full of shimmering sonic shapes, a dark, urban electronic soundscape – a potent mix of jazz, free-form rock and technology that is both demanding and rewarding.” Many of those same descriptors apply to “only sky”, with its hovering ambient shadows and vaulting flashes of light, its channeling of deep country/blues memories and Burroughsian dreams of North Africa. Recorded in the acoustically apt hall of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in upstate New York (and then sorted and mixed in Torn’s own mad-scientist lair), “only sky” is an album to get lost in, over and again. Says David, “For the 'only' sky tour, I'll be performing as I did for the recording: playing the electric guitar, bending its effect to how I might hear it fit these early days of the 21st Century; maybe I'll even convince it to kick some ass, too! Stranger things have happened.” Across his career, Torn has worked with jazz improvisers (Jan Garbarek, Tim Berne, Don Cherry), film composers (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Carter Burwell) and art-pop singers (David Bowie, David Sylvian). He has also composed music for several films including “Friday Night Lights”, “Lars and the Real Girl”, “Everything Must Go”. “Torn has a knack for creating music that is at once ethereal and gestural…Torn’s integration of ephemeral realism and celestial surrealism is palpable, providing the true ebb and flow of only sky’s dramatic arc.” - Wilbur MacKenzie – The New York City Jazz Record “To call him a hero of the electric avant-garde would be accurate but incomplete.” - Nate Chinen, The New York Times
