The new release from Christopher Trapani on the venerable yet ceaselessly enterprising New World label is an astonishing creation. My response is profound and visceral… there are beautiful, moving songs here." —For The Record
An absolute knockout. A fascinating and deeply involving trip around the world that you won’t soon forget" —An Earful
The incredible music on Noise Uprising further splinters and fractures tradition, making fresh connections and dazzlingly strange hybrids, all reinforcing the transfixing power of sounds from another time. —Bandcamp Daily, Best Contemporary Classical Music
The versatile performances by both singers and the Belgian foursome Zwerm - which employs an immense instrumentation of guitars - only confirm the oceanic grandeur of this cycle. —De Standaard
All music by Christopher Trapani
Performed by Zwerm (Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Toon Callier, Johannes Westendorp & Christopher Trapani) and singers Sophia Burgos and Sofia Jernberg.
Recorded by Nicolas Rombouts (studio Caporal) in Studio 3, DE SINGEL, Antwerp.
Mastering by Paul Zinman, SoundByte Productions Inc., NYC
Cover photo by Christopher Trapani
Liner notes by Ian Nagoski and Christopher Trapani
About Noise Uprising:
Starting point for this songcycle is Michael Denning’s book "Noise Uprising", which chronicles the explosion of vernacular recording that took place in the late 1920s in port cities around the globe. The historical 78 rpm records of this era are the not-so-silent witnesses of the birth of son, jazz, samba, rembetiko, fado, tango, etc. They reveal a kind of B-side of music history, a people’s history of music-making driven by the bustling marketplaces of colonial port cities. Noise Uprising is a polystylistic atlas that unravels a subterranean, cross-cultural network far away from, and with a wider reach than, traditional concert halls.
In studying these 78s as primary source documents, Christopher Trapani transcribes and transforms their musical gestures. He uncovers hidden connections between geographically distant genres, but in doing so he always strives to create work that ultimately represents something more than a travelogue or a book of postcards. The short works he composed for this cycle are meant to call into question notions of cultural appropriation and authenticity, to challenge rather than to romanticize notions of the exotic, and to draw attention to the dangers of “overtourism” and the unreflective, superficial consumption of place.
The guitar, in all its possible variations, forms a common thread throughout the cycle. But also the human voice plays a central role in Noise Uprising. For this project, made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Trapani and Zwerm are joined by Swedish-Ethiopian soprano Sofia Jernberg and Puerto Rican soprano Sophia Burgos.
