Vitamalisms/Revitalism by Ben Zucker

A new release from multifaceted composer/performer Ben Zucker, combining composition, improvisation, production, and mallet performance into a dynamic split single.

Vitamalisms (for mallet quartet and electronics) was composed for Third Coast Percussion, and premiered in April 2022 at Northwestern University.

Revitalism is a live electronic reworking of Vitamalism's fixed media files, produced in the process of composition.

"Not minimalism, though there are sections of repetition, rhythmic propulsion, and sparsity.

Not maximalism, though there are some undeniably harmonically thick and noisy parts to this piece.

An ‘ism’ with reference to ‘elan vital’, an elemental impetus for self-organization and change (loosely in the manner proposed by Henri Bergson).

Here there are 5 or 6 different ‘forms’ of life, activity, and process, with a great deal of musical time flexible relative to the performers’ listening
(especially in the multiple-pulse-driven middle section),
and an electronic background offering sound marks for locating one’s self in the score. Coordination and ensemble becomes a matter of emergence,
the co-productive site of intuition and rationality
always already at play in the musician as a force for creative evolution."

"Between thought and expression, lies a lifetime"

(Velvet Underground)

benzuckersounds.com