1.- DIFERENCIAS SOBRE EL PAPELERO DE PÉREZ PRADO / GUILLERMO GONZÁLEZ PHILLIPS (1960) (6:54)
2.-LORO / EGBERTO GISMONTI (1947) (2:38) (Arreglo / Arrangement: Guillermo González Phillips)
3.- IMPROVISACIÓN: VISITANDO AL GITANO / 3NSAMBL3
TRES CANCIONES POPULARES MEXICANAS / MANUEL M. PONCE (1882-1948) (Transcripción / Transcription: Guillermo González Phillips) (8:03)
4.- La Pajarera (1:15) 5.- Por ti mi corazón ( 3:27) 6.- La Valentina (1:47)
7.- IMPROVISACIÓN: ENCUENTRO MINIMAL / 3NSAMBL3 (5:25)
8.- UNCLE MEAT / UNCLE MEAT VARIATIONS / FRANK ZAPPA (1940-1993) (©1969/2014 Zappa Family Trust dba Munchkin Music. Arreglo de / Arrangement by Guillermo González Phillips con autorización / with permission. All rights reserved.) (5:19)
9.- IMPROVISACION: VISITÁNDOSE A UNO MISMO / 3NSAMBL3 (7:27)
CINCO PIEZAS / HERMETO PASCOAL (1936) (Arreglos / Arrangements: Guillermo González Phillips)
10.- 23 de Dezembro de 1996 (5:17) 11.- 12 de Setembro de 1996 (1:38) 12.- 23 de Maio de 1997 (1:13) 13.- Santo Antonio (3:34)
BONUS TRACK ATTACCA
14.- 10 de Julho de 1996 interpreta / performed by: 3NS4MBL3 (3nsambl3 y / and Ernesto García de León) (1:54)
Grabación / Recording: Enero / January y / and Julio / July 2014. Producción Ejecutiva / Executive Producers: Modesto López, 3NSAMBLE. Producción Artística / Artistic Production: 3NSAMBL3. Grabación / Recording: Jesús Serrano. Locación de grabación / Recording location: En ca'lturriaga. Edición / Edition: Jesús Serrano y / and Fernando Mariña. Asesores de edición / Edition advisers: Ernesto García de León y / and Guillermo González Phillips. Masterización / Mastering: Jesús Serrano. Fotografía Portada / Cover Photograph: Víctor Flores Oléa; Collage: Héctor Santos. Fotografía 3NSAMBL3 / 3NSAMBL3 Photograph: Carlos García de León. Diseño / Design: Héctor Santos. Revisión y traducción de textos / Text revision and translation: Aurora Flores Oléa de Mariña y / and Víctor Mariña. Texto Semblanza de 3NSAMBL3 revisado y traducido por / 3NSAMBL3's resemblance text revised and translated by: Pablo Cordero. Agradecimientos / Thanks to: Yuriria Iturriaga, Clara Huitrón, Gabriel Serrano, Héctor Santos, Erika Rivera, Carlos García de León, Erika Mues, Ernesto García de León, Raquel Pérez, Gail Zappa, Melanie Starks, Chris Watford y / and al perro cuando guardaba silencio / the dog when being in silence.
3NSAMBL3
Since mid-2011, the 3NSAMBL3 guitar trio came together with the purpose of building an original repertoire, based on unique and unpublished compositions, arrangements, and transcriptions, as well as fostering improvisation (in spite of this characteristic being more often associated with jazz projects).
In this context, we have worked on original music (particularly the Frippeanas homage to Robert Fripp - as well as Diferencias sobre El Papelero de Pérez Prado, by Guillermo González Phillips) as well as arrangements of pieces by Frank Zappa, Egberto Gismonti and Hermeto Pascoal (among others).
The history of the characters which make up this group is interwoven in a tradition which is intimately linked to its final aim: Fernando Mariña and Ernesto García de León had worked as a duo, touring nationally and internationally, whose work was documented in the CD "Los Espíritus de la Selva" (also released by PENTAGRAMA), in which they played music for guitar duo written by García de León, as well as significant improvisational segments. In 2010, Guillermo González Phillips and Fernando Mariña recorded the 3NSAMBL3 CD "Música Mexicana para Guitarra" with guitarist Gabriela Alvarado (who left the group and is now based in Belfast, Ireland), also released by PENTAGRAMA, which features Guillermo González Phillips' "Frippeanas", works by other Mexican authors, as well as improvised tracks.
Guillermo González Phillips has also participated since 1983 as a guitarist and composer in the improvisation and collective creation workshop BANDA ELÁSTICA, with whom he recorded 3 LPs and 7 CDs in which individual and collective creation is intertwined with improvisation into the final result.
The addition of the young Mexican guitarist Jesús Serrano (replacing Gabriela Alvarado) not only endowed the project with new blood and energy, but also increased its creative potential considerably due to his virtuosity, which has led him to win first awards at national and international guitar competitions. He also allowed the group to be technologically independent, since his studies in audio engineering and recording gear have let him record the group with outstanding results.
To sum up, the aim of 3NSAMBL3 is, on the one hand, to raise awareness on the work of authors who are not often played in a classical music environment, and on the other, to reclaim the playful character in a type of music which has been unfairly drawn away from the taste of a general public by encasing it in a sheath of artificial and pompous solemnity.
Guillermo González Phillips (Mexico, DF, Mexico; 1960), accomplished his higher Guitar education with maestros Maricarmen Costero and Manuel López Ramos between 1976 and 1985; this last year he receives his college certificate. From 1978 up to 1991 he takes part in different chamber music groups: Movimiento Perpetuo (1978-1983), Cuarteto de Guitarras Manuel M. Ponce (1983-1986) and Trio A. Tansman (1987-1991). Along with such groups he performs in national and international tourneés. In 1983 he creates the composition and improvisation workshop Banda Elástica with whom he has released three lp's and seven compact disks. Likewise he has achieved national and international tourneés on this project (Perú, 1989; Madrid, 1992; New York, 1994; and Norway, 2006). He has also composed music for dance, theater, short, and full length motion pictures. Under the backing of Ricardo Benet's Noticias Lejanas he was nominated for the Ariel in the category of best original music. He has also worked in an interdisciplinary manner along with Susana Frank (Theater: El Silencio de las Sirenas, 1988; Los amantes del Trapecio, 1997; La Cazuela y el Cucharón, 2000; and Penelopéa, 2005); as well with Ignacio López Tarso (El caballero de la triste figura, 2005; and Macario, 2007). In 2005 he was convened by John Zorn for the premier of Cobra in Mexico. He has developed an intense activity as a soloist in the whole of Mexico outstanding his participation several times at Festival Estatal de San Luis Potosí, Festival Internacional de Guitarra de Morelia 2002, Festival Internacional CNA 2003, 2011, and Festival Internacional de Guitarra Pachuca 2010.
DIFERENCIAS SOBRE EL PAPELERO DE PÉREZ PRADO is a work written in 2010. In the piece we can listen a very interesting counterpoint sometimes as a counterpart between two guitars, while the third guitar maintains the rhythm as a double bass. In the same way, we can hear the remembrance of the "brass section" performed by the orchestra of the creator of Mambo. With three open spaces for soloing, the piece ends with an edification of triads in the moods of a danzón.
Egberto Gismonti (Carmo, Brazil; 1947), is a composer, pianist and guitarist. His music has received diverse influence from the academic or cult music, from popular and folkloric Brazilian music (batucadas, choro, bossa nova, forró, frevo, baiäo and maracatú); from jazz (from bebop to experimental jazz); from aboriginal music, etc... He is in possession of an extraordinary and unusual technique as well as a personal style; he is also recognized as an eminent and innovator pianist and guitarist. Gismonti starts formal musical studies at the age of five, learning theory and piano; later clarinet, flute and eventually guitar, starting with 6 string classical guitar. Afterwards, used to generate a complex jazz harmony in piano, with a total use of treble and bass sounds registers, he approached to the 8 string guitar and soon after to the 10 string guitar. Throughout two years, he practiced different tunings and tones by using aboriginal flutes, kalimbas, sho, voices, bells, etc. During 15 years Gismonti studied with maestros Jacques Klein and Aurelio Silveira; When he was already a teenager, he attended the Nova Friburgo Conservatory where he was granted a scholarship at the Viena Conservatory at the age of 20. Nevertheless he declined the scholarship because he was interested in deepening his learning concerning popular music. In 1968 he travelled to Paris where he studied with the legendary composer and orchestra director Nadia Boulanger with whom he learned orchestration and analysis. With composer Jean Barraqué he learned dodecaphonism. The encounter with these two eminent icons was very useful in order to find his own musical language by mixing up the European avant-garde with Brazilian music, as well as the popular music and the cult one. Gismonti has recorded more than 60 discs together with some of the greatest international musicians, and also has written and composed music for movies.
The LORO alludes to a bird and it is a very lively and organic piece of music based on a Brazilian rhythm called baiäo. Among Gismonti's discography, this piece may be performed under diverse versions: as a solo (piano), in a group (at least two versions) all of which differ in its interpretative mode (timing, dynamics, etc...) but not in its essence. All versions offer a space for improvisation. In addition, during Gismonti's life as a performer, he also has as many versions played with diverse instrumentation.
Manuel M. Ponce (Fresnillo, Zacatecas-Mexico DF, Mexico; 1882-1948), composer, pianist, investigator and orchestra conductor. Among his studies, we can mention the ones he undertook at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico, at the Musical Lyceum in Bolonia, Italy, and at the Normal School of Music in Paris, France. He is, without doubt, one of the most important composers of Mexico. His extraordinary genius led him to create a marvelous musical production mainly inspired in Mexican folklore themes. With great talent, he enriched those simple forms taking them to the concert halls of the whole world transforming them in compositions of great aesthetic value. Ponce composed for almost all instruments and his production embraces practically all musical forms: etude, prelude, fugue, mazurka, gavotte, duet, trio, quartet, a capella choir, symphonic works, concerto for soloist and orchestra, etc.
The TRES CANCIONES POPULARES MEXICANAS were originally written for piano and voice, recalling the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century. It is remarkable that among the vast song catalog composed by Ponce, many of its verses were not written by him. In several cases, he used to create the music for verses written by others. These songs were transcribed for classical guitar by the eminent Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia. Such transcription displays a great technical difficulty for the solo guitarist which contradicts the apparent simplicity of the songs. Nevertheless, the transcription we offer here for three guitars makes the music flow in a natural and organic manner.
Frank Zappa (Baltimore, Maryland-Los Angeles, California, USA; 1940-1993), was a composer, guitarist, singer, producer, discographic and film director. During more than thirty professional years, Zappa composed rock, jazz, blues, electronic, classical and concrete music as well. He also worked as movie and video clip director and designed album covers. Moreover, he was in charge of the production of more than the eighty albums that he recorded. Zappa grew up under the influence of avant-garde composers such as Edgar Varese, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, R&B groups and doo wop, as well as modern jazz. The varied social and cultural mixture in Los Angeles zone was significant for his underground music formation and also responsible of his later abhorrence for social, political and music generalists. Zappa frequently criticized and ridiculized musical styles such as phsycodelia, rock opera, or disco music. He was an autodidact musician and composer and somehow almost impossible to classify due to the variety of musical options that he created.
Freak Out!, his 1966 debut album made with The Mothers of Invention was a mixture of conventional rock songs with unachievable improvisation and sounds generated in the recording studio. His later albums were a combination of experimental and electronic music, wheather it was rock, jazz or classical music. Zappa usually recorded his live performances, and then used such versions to overlap the studio material and vice versa. Afterwards, he started to combine recordings from different compositions in order to create new works. He called this procedure "xenochrony" (odd synchronizations). Zappa also created the term "conceptual continuity", meaning that any project or album was part of a larger project. Everything was connected and musical themes and words appeared in different forms in later works. This conceptual continuity is found all along his vast works. He made use of another technique named "sprechgesang" (spoken song), applied by composers like Arnold Shoenberg and Alban Berg. Zappa wrote the words of all his themes, frequently in a humorous way. He was a critic on political and religious matters and a great sponsor of freedom of expression as well as abolition of censorship. He obtained some commercial success mainly in Europe, which allowed him to be an independent artist most of the time while his career lasted. Posthumously, he was included in the Rock an Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and in 1997 won a Grammy award for his whole career.
UNCLE MEAT / UNCLE MEAT VARIATIONS belong to the soundtrack of the film "Uncle Meat" performed by "The Mothers of Invention" from which Frank Zappa was a musician as well as main composer. This work signified an evolution in his career by approaching more to jazz and classical music. He has diverse versions with different instruments including one for symphonic orchestra. Begining with the first version from the soundtrack and completing with the last version of the Ensemble Modern from Frankfurt, we can find many versions within Frank Zappa's discography, alongside multiple posthumus versions carried out by other musicians.
Hermeto Pascual (Arapiraca, Brazil; 1936), is an arrenger, musical producer and a virtuous instrumentalist (mainly pianist, bandoneon player, flute player, saxophonist, and guitarist) who has professionally performed with around 50 instruments, adding to those constructed by himself with almost any object he finds at his disposal. Furthermore, he uses animal grunts as well as toy sounds for his compositions. Pascoal has been regarded as one of the most important figures in Brazilian musical history. He is worldly recognized as an eminent orchestrator, and also as one of the best contemporary improvisers and innovators. Outstanding mainly in the creation of complex melodies, harmonies, and rhythms, he also includes all types of instruments, as well as a personal style for musical language, which he named "universal music". His fascination for nature and sound has characterized him since an early age. He was a part of the Quarteto Novo group along with Airto Moreira, one of the most important instrumental music ensembles in the history of Brazil. He colaborated in the legendary Miles Davies' group that gave birth to jazz rock. The record Lagoa da Canoa, Municipio de Arapiraca (1984) signifies an essential step in Hermeto's musical searching, since he includes what he calls the "aura sound" which implies the daily sounds and verbalization of city life. This composition incorporates the sports chronicler Osmar Santos, from whom he "took away" the melody of his narration for a theme's composition. Hermeto Pascoal has recorded around 3000 themes and another 1000 already written but not yet recorded. Among others, The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philarmonic and the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra have played his compositions. He has been one of the most influential musicians during the second half of the 20th Century. Hermeto Pascoal has performed with the greatest Brazilian and international musicians. He is now 78 years old, nevertheless he keeps active as a composer and interpreter. His discography includes around 32 discs, issued as own projects and also as colaborations with outstanding internationally known musicians.
23 DE DEZEMBRO DE 1996, 12 DE SETEMBRO DE 1996, 23 DE MAIO DE 1997 and 10 DE JULIO DE 1996 belong to "Calendario do som" (Sound Calendar) which is an ambitious creative undertaking: to compose a daily theme during a whole year. So, between June 23rd, 1966 and June 23rd, 1997 Hermeto wrote 366 musical pieces. One for each day of the year, in the most diverse genres and created with highly regarded steadiness. His idea was that each person would have a birthday's piece of music offered by him. The publishing of this beautiful legacy took place in 1999, daring many musicians all over the world to interpretate, instrumentalize and analyze his themes, having Hermeto's approval and causing his contentment for propitiating such enterprises.
SANTO ANTONIO, dedicated by Hermeto to his parents, reveals what a festival is in his native city where the saint master of marriages is honored.