Seastones Ned Lagin with Phil Lesh
This ground-breaking album features the composer Ned Lagin with an all-star cast including Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, David Crosby, Grace Slick, David Freiberg, Mickey Hart and Spencer Dryden. Fascinated by the complexity of nature and especially the seashore, Lagin spent four years composing this work. Before anyone ever heard of New Age or computer electronic music (two categories that SEASTONES might fall into today), Lagin was pioneering the use of computers and synthesizers to express his artistic vision.
SEASTONES explores the mystical connectedness and separateness of all things, inspired by the countless stones and pebbles cast upon the seashore. In the liner notes, Lagin describes the structure of his work: "Expressive musical materials (rhythms, pitches, notes, melodic fragments, harmonic clusters, chord patterns, sung and spoken words) were composed into a score of self-contained but musically connected 'moment-forms' or timescapes, in many ways metaphorically like the wild sea stones on the seashore." Using the most advanced electronic technology of the day, Lagin was nonetheless striving for organic expression. This expanded version features an unreleased 1975 performance of SEASTONES as well as the original studio version.
Tracks: * The December 1975 version (previously unreleased) * The Original February 1975 version
Growing up in New York in the 1950s and 1960s gave Lagin the opportunity to experience and participate in the jazz and modern art avant garde, as well as in the rich classical and popular musical traditions found in New York. While gaining degrees in humanities and biology from MIT, he studied composition with John Harbison, played in several jazz big bands and small groups, and performed solo piano in concerts and clubs. He subsequently studied composition and jazz arranging at the Berklee School of Music, piano with Dean Earl (an occasional sideman of Charlie Parker), improvisation with the jazz saxophonist Lee Konitz, and musicology and analysis with Josh Rifkin, Arthur Berger and Seymour Shifrin.
In 1971 he received the Irving Fine fellowship to study composition at Brandeis University. There his works included a symphony for orchestra, a string quartet, two dance theater works, several pieces for jazz orchestra, works for clavichord, solo violin, cello, and horn, and several electronic tape compositions (as well as more conventional "tunes").
He began his involvement in the seminal San Francisco rock movement playing piano and early synthesizers, and started working with the pioneering concept of combining computers and musical instruments into networks as a way to create and perform new (as well as conventional) musical forms.
Around this time, the influence of the sea started to play a major role in Lagin's artistic life. He began sketches, which over four years would eventually evolve into SEASTONES. Using live instruments, synthesizers, primitive sampling techniques, and computers, Lagin recorded this landmark album.
------------------ Tue, 01 Aug 1995 18:17:00 rec.music.gdead Re: Seastones question lester@gandalf.sp.trw.com Jeff Lester at Berkeley dead-flames to USENET Gateway ... From Ihor Slabicky's discography (available at gdead.berkeley.edu)
Sea Stones - Phil Lesh and Ned Lagin (Round RX 106) Released in October, 1975. This album was released in SQ-Quad.
Sea Stones - Ned Lagin (Rykodisc RCD 40193) Released in January, 1991. This CD includes the original nine section "Sea Stones" (42:34) from February, 1975, and a live, previously unreleased, six section version (31:05) from December, 1975. The December, 1975 live version consisted of nine segments, six of which are included here.