Water Names – Daniel Grabois

This is the fourth and final album in Daniel Grabois’ “Names” series. The title of the first release in the series, Air Names, came from a nonsense poem he wrote with the help of some very ineffective dictation software years ago. The rest of the recordings ran with the theme of the ancient elements: Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. Water is slippery, ever-changing, impossible to pin down.

GENRE: Classical/Electronic/Chamber/Horn
COMPOSERS: Daniel Grabois, Jean Laurenz

The players:
Daniel Grabois: French horn, Continuum Fingerboard, Minimoog Voyager, Digibrass Tilt,
Komplete Kontrol Keyboard, JamKat, cast iron skillet

John Ferrari: drums and percussion
Jean Laurenz: voice and vocoder (on Carpe Bidet)

Grabois knew he wanted Water Names to be an album with no holds barred, purely experimental, with a heavy emphasis on what could be created with electronics. The French horn is a prominent voice but does not appear on every song. Grabois’ two collaborators, John Ferrari (percussion) and Jean Laurenz (vocoder), brought the music to a new level.

Daniel Grabois is the Professor of Horn at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has been a member of the award-winning brass-and-percussion group Meridian Arts Ensemble since 1989, releasing sixteen recordings to date. He had a busy freelance career in New York City before moving to Wisconsin, where he now plays in the Wisconsin Brass Quintet and in the klezmer bands Tsuzamen and MaD Mentshn. He began engaging with electronic music upon his arrival in Madison in 2011, and has produced four solo albums since then: Air Names, Fire Names, Earth Names, and the present Water Names, all released on Summit Records and all featuring the French horn.