Arnold Dreyblatt Ensemble, Excerpts from NBK Video, Berlin 2009 from Arnold Dreyblatt on Vimeo.
Arnold Dreyblatt: The Orchestra of Excited Strings, New York, 1991 from Arnold Dreyblatt on Vimeo.
Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings, Petöfi Csarnok, Budapest, October, 1985 from Arnold Dreyblatt on Vimeo.
Arnold Dreyblatt, the America-born, Germany-based Minimalist composer has got himself a Vimeo account. Dreyblatt's 80s and 90s works with the Orchestra of Excited Strings and his various other ensembles are notable for puting just-intonation tunings into some pretty novel rhythmic frameworks. When I first got turned on to this stuff I was rocking Otha Turner's drum and fife music pretty deep as well as Tony Conrad's Early Minimalism, so stumbling on to Dreyblatt via Matt Carlson was pretty serendipitous.
The vids' feature some of Dreyblatt's innovative instruments and playing methods including what appears to be a JI clavier you play with lil' mallets, lots of contrabass harmonics, a fucked looking high-hat, and a tympani-as-floor-tom deal for the drummer in the Bang on a Can performance. Not a lot of JI music you can get down to, even if it's more hoedown than house.
