released October 1, 1996

PERFECT WORLD
GERRY HEMINGWAY QUINTET

1) Perfect World 22:08
2) Little Suite 20:15
3) N.Y. (Quintet version) 5:26
4) Village of the Virgins 5:26
5) Sinsulu Song 7:23

Michael Moore - alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet
Wolter Wierbos - trombone
Ernst Reijseger - cello
Mark Dresser - bass
Gerry Hemingway - drums, sampler

All compositions by Gerry Hemingway (GEMA/BM I) published by Nagual Music (GEMA/BMI) except "Village of the Virgins" by Duke Ellington published by Tempo Music, Inc.
1.,2. recorded at the Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham, England on March 12, 1995 by Mike Walter for BBC Radio 3 and produced for radio by Derek Drescher (Pl BBC 1995.
Released by arrangement with BBC Worldwide Ltd. Released in association with BBC Worldwide Music.
3. recorded at the Bim Huis, Amsterdam, Holland on March 25, 1995 by Dick Lucas
4.,5. recorded at the Stadtgarten, Köln, Germany on March 28, 1995 by Gerhard Veeck
Digitally Mastered by Jim Hemingway
Liner Notes by Gerry Hemingway
Photo by Francesca Patella
Artwork & Design by Graewe/Moosdruck
Produced by Gerry Hemingway
Executive Producer: Georg Graewe
Special Thanks to Derek Drescher, Nick Purnell, Brian Morton, Dick Lucas, Gerhard Veeck, Saudades Tourneen and Jim Hemingway
Dedicated to my wife, Nancy, who has endured, more than anyone, the inherent flaws of my perfect world.

Liner Notes:

PERFECT WORLD

On the rainy night that we first dared to play "Perfect World" in Leeds, England, the reaction was a mixture of horror, enthusiasm and confusion. Not a bad premiere, thought I, capped by one concertgoer who was genuinely in search of a connection between the title and the music. "I can't understand why a 'Perfect World' is so ...... violent, intense." I guess, irony wasn't part of his repertoire.

Titles are mischievous some times. They often are taken as a kind of clue to the meaning of a work; a verbal comparative to an otherwise non-verbal world. Despite this pitfall I'm still drawn to titles that clearly make suggestions about a work's content.

Speaking of risks, 'Perfect World' was a term coined in my honor when it was noticed that my seemingly insatiable desire to stuff my day with a breathtaking set of projects, plans and logistics was reaching critical mass. Such behavior, well beyond consideration for any sane individual, was from my view in a perfect world, totally possible!

Given this information about the origin of the term, you might still find yourself no better off than our concertgoer in Leeds. That's why I'm writing these liner notes, I'm here to help. Okay, lets drop the title for the moment and look at some of the components of the piece.

An issue that I have been exploring in some of my work since 1979 is the layering of tempi. The more notable examples of how this concept has evolved in my quintet music began with "Outerbridge Crossing" and continued with "Special Detail" and "The Checkerboard laughed and eluded everyone". "Perfect World" is by far the most extreme probing of this concept. The theme, which appears in-between the bass solo that opens the piece and the trombone solo, has an A B C D form. The B part of the form is distinguished by a walking bass line, clarinet melody and gradually accelerating accompaniment of the cello and trombone. The A, C & D sections of the theme have an interdependent rhythmic structure that is centered around a pulse dictated by the bass drum. The cello and clarinet perceive the beat as a dotted quarter note. The trombone feels the beat as a half note and the bass continually shifts his relationship to the beat, using the bass drum pulse as an anchor.

What as a listener can you do with this information? You could ignore it and just dig the wild sounds, or when you figure out just where the theme occurs, you could focus your attention on the bass line and/or the trombone line and check out how each part is phrased with a different feeling. The different feelings associated with each layer of the theme are used separately as accompaniments for each soloist. In this way, a seat-of­-your-pants continuity is realized, which in it's way reflects my twisted notion of a perfect world.
I look at "Little Suite" as an extended ballad. It introduces the inclusion of my midi-­triggered sampling which opens up some new sonic areas for the quintet. As in the "Marmalade King" each member of the quintet has an unaccompanied solo, except for me. I keep everyone busy while I thrash it about towards the end of the work.

N.T. (Quintet version) follows up its quartet predecessor from the previous CD "Down to the Wire". From the player's perspective, once you have survived completing the theme, the rest of the music simply plays itself.

I wish I had written "Village of the Virgins". It is such a sweet piece. It comes from Duke Ellington's "The River" which was a score he did for the Alvin Ailey ballet company. My thanks to Michael Moore for bringing this piece to my attention as well as helping me to hastily transcribe and arrange it at the end of our tour in 1995.

This segueways directly to "Sinsulu Song" which is one of several pieces I have written in the feeling and style of a South African kwela.

So that about wraps up the verbal quotient of this disc you now own. At the time of this writing this quintet is about to launch into it's fifth tour and sixth year of performing together. I continue to count myself as lucky to have such noble savages in my employ. My most special thanks to Ernst, Mark, Michael and Wolter for their exceptional contributions to the creative process of making this music. And thank you for supporting our music. Enjoy the CD!

Gerry Hemingway, August 1996