HUMMING BIRD Digital Cassette Classics

HUMMING BIRD
Digital Cassette Classics

These are the first two releases of Humming Bird classic cassettes in digital format – available now for free MP3 download.

1) NEW WORLD MUSIC

Henry Kuntz – Indian snake charmer’s flute, Chinese musette, bamboo flute, tenor saxophone, bells / John Kuntz – ukulele, mandolin, harp

1. Snake flute – Ukulele (6:10) 2. Musette – Ukulele (4:36) 3. Saxophone – Mandlolin (4:27) 4. Flute – Harp (4:37) 5. Snake Flute – Mandolin (8:02) 6. Snake flute – Ukulele (11:12) 7. Musette – Harp (4:30) 8. Bells – Mandolin (5:54) 9. Flute – Mandolin (5:02) 10. Musette – Mandolin (4:16)

Note: At 1:45 of Piece 1 there is a 6-second dropout of the right channel that occurred during the performance.

Recorded in performance Saturday evening December 20, 1980 (Piece 7: December 21, 1980) at Woody Woodman’s Finger Palace Berkeley, California.

Recording engineer: Greg Goodman
P & C 1981, 2017 Humming Bird Records & Tapes

2) WHIRLS AWAY

The concepts, improvisations and all playing are by Henry Kuntz. Instruments are listed as they appear left to right on stereo speakers. These pieces were recorded on a Fostex X-15 4-track recorder.

Disc 1

1. Whirls Away (23:07) Balinese wood gamelan (15 keys over trough resonator – wood mallets), Balinese gamelan gender (10 iron keys over bamboo resonators – wood hammers), Mexican Indian violin, Balinese bamboo xylophone (11 suspended keys – rubber-tipped mallets)

Recorded: October 30,31,1989 Berkeley California.

2. Spirit Whirls (20:33) Balinese gamelan gender and gamelan selunding (8 large iron keys over trough resonators) played together with wood hammers), Chinese musette, Thai mouth organ, Balinese wood xylophone, bamboo xylophone, and African (Mali) balafon (10 wood keys) played together with rubber-tipped mallets

Recorded: November 1,2,1989 Berkeley California.

Disc 2

1. New Peace Balinese gamelan selunding (played with 2 wood hammers), African (Togo) “fetish gongs” (6 bell-like iron gongs) struck with metal rods, Balinese wood xylophone (wood mallets), Balinese gamelan gender (wood mallets)

Recorded: December 1,2,1989 Berkeley California.

2. Shadow Peace Smaller Balinese bamboo xylophone (11 keys played with rubber mallets), Voice, Bolivian bass flute, Balinese bamboo xylophone (played with rubber mallets)

Recorded: December 3,4,1989 Berkeley California.

November 22, 2015December 19, 2017

Henry Kuntz | Ten Names of Peace | Live Version 2006 | HBD 04/CDR 14

Henry Kuntz | TEN NAMES OF PEACE: LIVE VERSION 2006 | HBD 04/CDR 14

Henry Kuntz
Ten Names of Peace (13:08)
Listen online (excerpt) or Download for Free

Henry Kuntz: Tenor Saxophone, Tibetan Bowls, Javanese Bird Whistle, Voice

Live at 1510 Performance Space Oakland Ca April 14, 2006.

Recorded & originally mastered by Jim Ryan. Editing by Humming Bird. Composite photo created from Jim Ryan’s performance video. Henry with puppets photo by John Kuntz.

This is the musical portion of a live solo performance that featured the use of Balinese shadow puppets. The puppets awoke to enact a theatrical synopsis of an old Balinese tale, The Ten Names of Peace.

The tale is old, but a modern version was produced in Bali in 2005 to help relieve people’s trauma from the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings.

The moral import of the story is that we cannot confront violence with more violence. Only by preserving and strengthening the life-giving principles embodied in music, dance and ritual – originally gifts to humans from the gods – can we hope to restore harmony and balance to the world.

In the Oakland performance, the elaborately and colorfully painted leather puppets were dramatically animated in open space. The deliberately diaphanous and breathy quality of the saxophone was intended as an aural equivalent to viewing the puppets – as normally seen – in the negative space of the blank white screen where they appear only as shadows.

The live performance was relatively short – only about 20 minutes – and the musical portion is just over 13 minutes.

A few days later – in the same performance space – I recorded a longer studio version of Ten Names of Peace that can be heard on Wayang Saxophony Shadow Saxophone (HB CD 6).

C & P 2015 Humming Bird Records (HBD 04 /CDR 14)

READ MORE about the Balinese Ten Names of Peace Project here: “Wayang Consoles Grieving Community”. READ a summary of the Projects Script by clicking here…

August 24, 2015August 5, 2017

Henry Kuntz & Paul V. Kuntz | DOUBLE VISION | HBD 03/CDR 13

Henry Kuntz & Paul V. Kuntz

DOUBLE VISION | HBD 03/CDR 13
Free Download

Double Vision is the third release of music that actively attempts to extend the formal parameters of free improvisation. The first recordings were Envision New Music and Envision Ensemble Live at Berkeley Arts Festival.

The surface of this music will not feel unfamiliar, but the thinking behind it is different; the assumptions underlying it different.

Taking off from the idea of “festival form”, the music embodies a kind of meta-archetype. It is less a confluence of interests, musical or otherwise (the archetypical norm), than a confluence of Being – or beings. It moves toward a more inclusive and expansive ideal.

Double Vision follows its own idiosyncratic path toward that ideal.

DOUBLE VISION Total Time (48:23)

1. Sunflower Buttercups (14:07)
2. Bluebonnet Poppies (11:17)
3. Redwood Oaks (11:12)
4. Sagebrush Tumbleweeds (7:21) 5.Lotus Cactus (4:25)

FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD Available HERE

Henry Kuntz: Mexican toy violin (Paracho), Angel soprano recorder (Korea), Two Guatemala bamboo flutes, India bamboo flute, Chinese musette, Reed horn with resonant gourd bell (Indonesia). (The 6-hole reed horn is similar to an Indian snake charmer’s flute but without a drone tube.) Paul Kuntz: piano, prepared piano, small percussion.

Recorded: 1-4: April 7, 2015; 5: April 6, 2015 Houston Texas. Recorded and mastered by Paul Kuntz. Musician photos by Paul Kuntz.

On Double Vision, Paul and I began with the concept of “festival form” as showcased by the Envision Ensemble Live at Berkeley Arts Festival. At Paul’s suggestion, we expanded the bounds of the sonic fairgrounds to include: on Bluebonnet Poppies solo music of mine from the LP Ancient of Days, Light of Glory; on Redwood Oaks duo music by myself and John Kuntz from the cassette New World Music; and on Sagebrush Tumbleweeds generic crowd noise which is always an integral part of any festival sound field.

C & P 2015 Humming Bird Records (HBD 03/CDR 13)

Buy DOUBLE VISION | HBD 03/CDR 13: (CD or MP3) here…

Paul Vincent Kuntz

In addition to his musical pursuits:
Paul Vincent Kuntz is an award winning photographer whose work has been exhibited in fine art galleries internationally. His photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Museet for Fotokunst (Odense, Denmark), and in various private collections including that of the late Helmut Gernsheim (Lugano, Switzerland). Most recently, his work was featured in the photographic exhibition “The Birth of Photography – Highlights of the Gernsheim Collection” at the Reiss-Englehorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. He is also featured in the companion book to the exhibition of the same name.

Visit Paul’s new website, with photos from “Inside Houston’s Third Ward”