Works 2018 - 2023 | Michael Bonaventure | Unexplained Sounds Group

Works 2018 - 2023

by Michael Bonaventure

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Anthology Of Contemporary Music From Far East, Unus et Trinus, A Touch of Despair, IDIL Music Award 2024, Unexplained Sounds Group - 9th Annual Report, Integrale Sui Cammini, Revision, Transcendent, and 94 more. , and , .

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1.	Omega 06:27		buy track
2.	Focus #1 03:42		buy track
3.	Tetramorph 08:41		buy track
4.	Focus #8 03:41		buy track
5.	Astromorph 12:02		buy track
6.	Seven Black Notes 09:38		buy track
7.	Giant Glass Green 10:49		buy track
8.	The Land Of Silence 10:56	info	buy track

about

The music in this new collection of Bonaventure’s work since 2017 displays the ongoing synthesis and/or particularisation of genres, extra- musical influences and fields of intuitive awareness that have always been at work in his music. All of these being subject to the natural flow of evolution that comes through continual artistic exploration never to be constrained by convenient labels such as ‘classical’, ‘experimental’ ‘avant garde’ or ‘dark ambient’ etc. For example, a lot of the music in his endless cycle of ‘Preludes, Interludes & Postludes’ for organ is informed as much by phenomena that occur in electronic & digital sounds and processes as it is by the splendour, gestures and harmonic idioms of ‘normal’ contemporary organ music. His natural inclination to explore both fields simultaneously - electronic & acoustic - is rooted in his youth when he was playing on a Hammond organ with Leslie speaker, and a basic synthesiser, as well as learning to play the ‘real’ organ and exploring the (then) contemporary repertoire that fascinated and inspired him to create. In this regard, his main tool was the recording of improvisations and sonic explorations, not just with the organ but with anything that potentially had music in it. And it still is. The process of recording and transcribing is the very bedrock of his practice. The skills learned through classical musical training - something that has as much in the way of benefits as it has in cultural and technical brainwashing - are simply the tools with which to channel and shape music, simply because it is satisfying to have music exist here in the 3D realm in convenient structural forms.
Encouraged by the response to his 2017 ‘Works 2008 - 2017’ retrospective album released by Unexplained Sounds Group and 2019 ‘In Tenebris Ratione Organi’ album released by Eighth Tower Records, and through engaging with many inspiring artists in other fields new to him, his output grew and broadened in scope. When in 2020 the world went silent, the sudden constraints and (apparent) need to live indoors provided more inspiration and the series of short electronic pieces ‘FOCUS’ was born. This in turn led to the discovery of new sounds and another broadening of idiom, perhaps away from the darker worlds of sound to lighter or simply freer and more fantasy-like ones.

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released May 25, 2023

REVIEWS

Avant Music News
avantmusicnews.com/2023/06/03/amn-reviews-michael-bonaventure-works-2018-2023-2023-unexplained-sounds-group

Michael Bonaventure (b. 1962, Edinburgh), composer, organist and collaborator in new and experimental music projects; based in Edinburgh & Amsterdam.
In recent times he has been producing work in the Dark Ambient field of electronica, as exemplified in the CD album In Tenebris Ratione Organi, released in 2019 by Eighth Tower Records. An earlier survey of his electronic & organ music, Works 2008 - 2017, was released on the Unexplained Sounds Group label in 2017, and in 2020 he co-created with the Italian guitarist & synthesiser musician Loo(p)cy (Lucia Caiazza) a new album entitled Across The Blood, released digitally in October 2020. Most recently he has formed a duo,’PNEUMA’, with the Scottish-based flautist, composer & improviser Richard Craig in which a new dimension of artistic practice is being explored through the synergy of flute, organ and amplified sounds in new compositions, improvisation and the adaptation of existing repertoire. Bonaventure’s own sonic universe derives its inspiration from mysticism and ritual, natural and imaginary worlds, astronomical and supernatural phenomena; much of his work is rooted in a personal kind of ‘adapted minimalism’ and in improvisation.
Recent works are: Omega (2023) for organ & fixed media, Prayer & Exaltation (2022) for organ, Odd, Even & December Union (2021) for music box, both written for Joseph Kudirka; Mavisbank (2021), an electronic track created for Hauntology in the UK, a CD album released in December 2021 by Eighth Tower Records; The Land Of Silence (2021), a setting of Ernest Dowson’s poem “Beata Solitudo” for soprano, live electronics & organ, premiered in Montréal in May 2021 by Kimberley Lynch & Adrian Foster; an adaptation of Giant Silver (a track from In Tenebris Ratione Organi) with new material for organ, premiered by Lauren Redhead & Alistair Zaldua at the BBC Tectonics Festival in Glasgow in 2021; and Giant Glass Green (2020), an electronic work commissioned by Earth World Collaborative and funded by Canada Council for the Arts. A number of his electronic works have been used in video art created by the Dutch-based artist Thomas Mohr and shown at various film/video art festivals in Europe in recent years, including at Berlin Atonal.
His music has been played in Canada, USA, Russia, UK, New Zealand, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium & The Netherlands as well as on BBC Radio 3, Concertzender (Netherlands), Radio Onda Rossa (Italy) and Resonance Extra FM.
As an organ soloist (with and without electronics) Bonaventure is also a seasoned interpreter of new & experimental music, with innumerable composer collaborations since the early 1980s. To date he has given over 200 premières and concertized in churches, cathedrals, universities and at festivals throughout the UK, in Europe & USA, on BBC Radio 3 & Radio Scotland, and on 7 solo CDs. These include four volumes of ‘Contemporary British Organ Music’ on the sfz label and the later organ cycles of Olivier Messiaen for Delphian Records, including a widely-acclaimed rendition of the massive Livre du Saint Sacrement, released in 2008.

Published by Unexplained Sounds Group
Music by Michael Bonaventure
Mastering by Raffaele Pezzella (a.k.a. Sonologyst)
Artwork by Christian Voyce
© 2023. All rights reserved.

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Unexplained Sounds Group Italy

Global Network of Aural Disorientation curated by Raffaele Pezzella

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