Copenhagen Clarinet Choir - Organism - LP

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Organism is the debut album from Copenhagen Clarinet Choir. With track titles like ’Flocking’, ‘Hive Mind’ and ‘Water Piece’, the work is situated at the intersection of composition and improvisation, and at the nexus of nature and music.

Led by Irish woodwind player and composer Carolyn Goodwin, the clarinet sextet takes an egalitarian approach in the way it assembles its players. In the music of Organism, interdependent parts find an overall shape as organically as a living entity. Much like a choir, the individual voices of the six homogenous instruments are synergized, creating a warm, pulsating body of sound.

Organism strikes an often elusive balance between what is pre-determined and what is spontaneous, a balance that classically trained Goodwin admits is a constant occupation for her and is what led her to form Copenhagen Clarinet Choir. Exploring compositional ideas within the field of improvised music, she uses the ensemble to experiment with various sound concepts such as the representation of patterns found in subaquatic movement, swarming of insects and flight patterns of birds, and to investigate the ever-dissolving line between her role as composer and performer.

Connecting with her Irish roots, the final track on the album is a setting of a traditional folk melody, made famous by its use in a setting of the William Butler Yeats’ poem ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’, originally called ‘An Old Song, Re-Sung’.

Intimacy prevails throughout the music of Organism. At times the listener is drawn into what seems like a hushed conversation between friends; at other times the music takes on an otherworldly quality, offering something greater than the sum of its parts.