New album, “Sumptuous Branching”, out on April 10th!
EMILY RACH BEISEL is a Chicago-based improviser, composer, educator, curator, and woodwind specialist. Known for visceral performances, blending extended vocal and instrumental techniques with analogue electronics, their music centers on the bass clarinet and incorporates voice, electronics, extended techniques, and other wind instruments creating a complex and nuanced soundscape in which the origins of sounds are often obscured. A Jazz Noise wrote, “heavy stuff, sounds retrieved from the deeper places… BEISEL pokes around in the sonic depths and brings leviathans out to play.” BEISEL holds a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University, is a member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 10-208 and is honored to be a 2024 3Arts Awardee in Music.
Sumptuous Branching sees EMILY RACH BEISEL performing all music, with bass clarinet, vocals, piccolo, and electronics coalescing in a singular, intriguing, somewhat theatrical flow. The album was recorded at Marmalade in Chicago by Bill Harris, mixed by Harris and BEISEL, mastered by Edward Hamel, and completed with artwork by mrfox.img and design by Harris and BEISEL.
“Sumptuous Branching is born from late medieval chant. This is the thread that runs through the record – multiple voices that are both intertwined and independent,” EMILY RACH BEISEL reveals. “Early chant doesn’t have strictly codified rules in place yet, so it has a wild freedom and rich density that I find so compelling. The work in Sumptuous Branching is my imagining of this replete style in my own voice. Each track represents a different facet of that imagining, with the tracks themselves functioning as distinct voices within a larger chorus. Performing chant as a single musician posed a challenge I found provocative, and each track explores the tension between solo performance and the interplay of many voices, considering what it means to contain multitudes.”
The movements captured on Sumptuous Branching were inspired by the likes of Emily Wilson’s new translation of Homer’s The Iliad, Guillaume de Machaut’s La Messe de Nostre Dame – the first complete, unified setting of the Mass – and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House Of Leaves.
BEISEL continues, “As my sophomore solo album, I approached this process differently than my first record. The album is conceived as a unified set that can be performed live – I toured the material before recording it, with the session taking place after my Spring 2025 tour. I love albums that offer an intentional journey and reward listening from beginning to end. This record very much falls into that category, and it’s my offering to others who value that kind of experience.”
(Photograph by Alejandro Quilles)
https://www.emilybeisel.com
https://www.instagram.com/beisel_m_
