David Chesky's new album: Urbancity
David Chesky is well known in the audiophile community for the development of new recording processes, and numerous classical, jazz and world music releases. In 1986, with his brother Norman, David co-founded Chesky Records, known throughout the world as one of the leaders in the advancement of technological research on recording methods, creating new, advanced recording techniques.
Less well known is David Chesky's position as a contemporary classical composer. He has earned great respect for his body of unique, eclectic orchestral work that span jazz and classical genres. He currently holds the position of Composer in Residence for the National Symphony of Taiwan.
David Chesky's new work was released in the album: Urbancity: The Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra. The album features L.A.-based guitar prodigy Bryan Baker, who graduated the Berklee College of Music in 2006 with a degree in Music Synthesis and Performance. Baker is know for a panoramic range of music styles, spanning from rock, electronic, funk, jazz, to blues, indie, punk, soul, and pop.
The album's only real physical instrument is an electric guitar. Every other instrument comprising the Urbancity Orchestra of New York is virtual. Chesky spent many years assembling engineers and programmers to create a computer system capable of playing symphonic works using the "Sibelius composing program". According to Chesky, it took years to accurately replicate tonality, timings, spacial cues, dynamics, phrasing, and the timbre and envelope of each instrument, ... an enormous amount of challenging work, but this technique allowed Chesky to nail contrapuntal and rhythmic textures in a whole new way.
The album is available from HDTracks. Using the following code one can receive a 50% discount on either the 24/48 (FLAC) or 16/44.1 version of Urbancity: compAudioUrban
The piece presents a major challenge to even the best guitarists wishing to perform the guitar parts of this concerto. Chesky is challenging guitarists around the world to test their own ability to perform this rock guitar concerto by making the Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra available as a feature-packed Special Edition download allowing the buyer to study the guitar parts and play along with the concerto’s movements.
The download features the complete album download including Bryan Baker’s challenging guitar playing in CD quality with the full liner notes written by Bill Millkowski; a bonus special mix download of the concerto without the Baker’s work in a music minus one format to allow guitarist the opportunity to test their own abilities to perform the guitar parts of the Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra; the solo guitar parts in standard notation PDF file; the solo guitar parts in Tab PDF file; the full musical scores of the three parts.
The normally priced Special Edition $39.98 is being offered to guitarists up to the challenge for only $9.98 com through July 12, 2011 from HDTracks. The code is: urbanGuitarSE