Composition written for the Tim Berne album Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill) (1993). The archive includes a score in Berne’s hand.
Found on: Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill).
Diminutive Mysteries
Unknown, The
Composition for alto and baritone saxophones, guitar, cello, and drums. This work was written for the Tim Berne album Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill) (1993). The archive includes a score in holograph.
Found on: Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill).
From Marty Ehrlich: This is one of the more extensive works Hemphill wrote for this recording. The score includes instructions regarding the form the piece should take in performance.
Sounds in the Fog
Composition for soprano and baritone saxophones, guitar, cello, and drums. The archive includes a score in Tim Berne’s hand. This piece was written for the album Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill) (1993), a collaboration with Tim Berne.
Found on: Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill).
Serial Abstractions
Composition for soprano and baritone saxophones, guitar, cello, and drums. This piece was written by Hemphill for Tim Berne’s album Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill) (1993). The archive includes a score in holograph.
Found on: Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill).
From Marty Ehrlich: This score is marked “slow” and “quietly,” and indicates that the drums should use mallets on toms and cymbals. After the release of Diminutive Mysteries, Hemphill told me how inspired he was by the uniqueness of the sound Tim Berne got with his ensemble. He speaks to this point in the liner notes he wrote for the recording.
Rites
The Julius Hemphill Papers has a number of different scores for this composition, which was first recorded on Hemphill’s debut album Dogon A.D. (1972). On that album, it is played by an ensemble of saxophone, trumpet, cello, and percussion. Music Manuscript Notebook 2 (MMN2) includes an arrangement for alto saxophone, trumpet, guitar, and bass, with the title “Original Rites.” Hemphill also arranged “Rites” for big band (five saxophones, two trumpets, two trombones, two French horns, two guitars, bass, and drums), though it was not included on the album Julius Hemphill Big Band (1988). The Julius Hemphill Papers includes a score in holograph for the big band version, as well as professionally copied parts in manuscript. There are numerous instrumental parts for various ensembles, including some for string instruments from an unknown performance. Some parts appear in MMN7, 8, and 9.
Found on: Dogon A.D., Dogon A.D. (2011 reissue), Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill), The Hard Blues: Live in Lisbon.
From Marty Ehrlich: Hemphill brought the big-band arrangement of “Rites” to the rehearsals for the Julius Hemphill Big Band recording, and we tried it once at the warm-up gig we did at the Village Gate before the recording session. The arrangement was complicated, a real re-imagining and extension of the work. I think we ran out of time to make it happen, with the recording session up ahead.