Available March 1st at Bigmo.com, CD Baby, Amazon and Itunes These recordings were made in the Upper Connecticut Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire. All of the musicians reside in Vermont and New Hampshire with the exception of Adam Larrabe (mandolin, guitar, banjo) of Charlottesville VA. The collaboration is known as “Eddy and the Esotériks” and the members include: Guitar: Ed Eastridge, William Ghezzi, Adam Larrabe, Draa Hobbs, Pablo Fanque Cello: Linda Galvan, Accordion: Gerry Grimo, Flute: Hilary Owen, Harmonica: Johnny Bishop, Vocalist: Laurie Janney, Oboe: Anne Greenawalt, Viola: Claude Richter, Violin: Julie Baker, Mandolin/ Banjo: Adam Larrabe Satie sought refuge from the world in his dingy apartment at the “House With Four Chimneys” in Arcueil for over 27 years. He never allowed anyone to enter the rooms and it was not until after his death that they were discovered to be so desolate. Darius Milhaud recalled entering the rooms after Satie’s death, “It was with a feeling akin to awe that we approached it now. What a shock we had on opening the door! It seemed impossible that Satie had lived in such poverty. This man, whose faultlessly clean and correct dress made him look rather like a model civil servant, had literally nothing worth a shilling to his name.” Satie lived in self-imposed poverty. As his brother Conrad noted, “How many people cultivate the arts only so as to get their hands on worldly goods and satisfy their vanity? Satie, on the other hand prefers to follow his thoughts in poverty rather than live with out them in a state of material satisfaction; his works are made single-mindedly for the sake of art. As John Stuart Mill has said, ‘Writings one lives by will not live.’ Though Satie created much of his art in his mind, often spending years to formulate his pieces, he would ultimately set them to paper in his unique style, (without bar lines and accompanied by his quirky instructions to be read only by the performer). Apparently he did much of this writing in his rooms in Arcueil. So I titled this homage to the master of Arcueil the “House With Four Chimneys” as a testament that something so lovely could germinate in such a lowly place. Ed Eastridge February 2009 Liner note excerpts: Were the daily walks a pastime, an economic necessity, a ritual creating a rhythm to Erik Satie’s life and his music? Most days beginning in the winter of 1898, Satie walked slowly, taking small, deliberate steps, from his room in the House with Four Chimneys located in the Paris suburb of Arcueil to Montmartre or Montparnasse and back. Traveling by foot, he would begin his daily journey midday, returning to his room late at night. When in Paris, he visited friends at their homes or in cafés to compose and converse quietly or eat and drink heartily. Impeccably dressed, he donned a bowler, wore a smile and tucked an umbrella under his arm. He walked in the hot summer sun or dreary spring rain, even stepping through the snow on bitter cold winter days. On the return home, he would pause under the streetlights to jot down his ideas. The ten-kilometer trek each way was punctuated by frequent stops at the cafés en route with libations often delaying his return home into the wee hours of the morning. “Art? It's a month now and more since I was able to write a note. I no longer have any ideas, and don't want to have. So?” Your old friend, Erik SATIE In one of the weekly letters from her “grandpa” and friend written in August of 1918: Valentine Hugo, `Le Socrate que j'ai connu', ReM, 214, June 1952, pp.139-144 Often penniless, begging a two-franc piece as needed to partake at a café, Satie lived for his music with no respect for the accumulation of money. He collected his ideas and not much else. He had not allowed anyone to enter his room at the House with Four Chimneys where he had lived for twenty-seven years. After his death, his family was shocked to see the level of poverty Satie lived in. They found nothing of value except the music he pioneered, only tattered furniture, a wired together piano and an array of letters and unopened gifts. They found piles of newspapers, a cigar box containing thousands of little pieces of paper with his drawings and notes, old hats, walking sticks, dozens of umbrellas, and a dozen identical velevet suits. An eccentric with a bizarre wit, dry sense of humor and dislike of music critics, Satie has been described as the precursor to much of the avant-garde movements of the 20th century including minimalism. He is said to have influenced Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and many to follow. Regarded as ahead of his time and timeless, many believe his work appears in the major movements in classical music composed during the fifty years after his death. Satie is known for short compositions with a repetitive musical beat. A movement takes less than two minutes to play as he believed a composer should not take more time than necessary and should not bore an audience in any way. His most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies, contain similar pieces divided into variations on the theme. He is quoted as saying, “I enjoy measuring a sound much more than hearing it.” Could the variation within the repetition in Satie’s music be attributed to his daily walk back and forth over the same route with small, deliberate steps—jotting down rather than hearing his ideas? Kirsten Gehlbach, September 28, 2008 |