Volume 1 by Secular Music Group

This album was originally released by Chicago label "Love all Day" in 2024, to which we are greatly thankful for the opportunity to reissue it. Secular Music Group emerged from the home workshop of Christian Ruggiero, a renowned composer for film and television with a passion for classic recordings and legacy studio technology. He teamed up with long-time collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Yannis Panos to make a record in the old way; as a group of musicians in a room playing live to magnetic tape. This record would channel their shared interests in free-jazz, library music and American minimalism. The group was made whole by the essential additions of guitarist Ted Morcaldi, reedist Greg Lapine and percussionist Tim Walsh.

Each of the players brought several sketches to the sessions, which served as the central point of departure for these improvisations. This record can thus be seen as a truly collaborative effort. Ruggiero payed tribute to a recently departed friend, capturing the proceedings on a vintage tape machine bequeathed to him. The results are deeply inspired, echoing the pastoral grace of UK jazz, the starkness of the European avant-garde, and the inspiriting sounds of the great ‘60s and ‘70s instrumental ensembles, as well as contemporary compatriots mining somewhat similar terrain, such as Hampshire & Foat, Natural Information Society, and Matthew Halsall’s Gondwana Orchestra.

Ruggiero summarizes the process of making the album here:

"Panos and I have done a lot of film and TV work in the studio together, as well as a few very unusual performance pieces, both on-stage and live on the radio. We often talked about how we wanted to someday make a studio album that combined our love of old ECM records, spiritual Jazz, and 70s Italian library music. Nothing ever came of it, though, until one day Ted saw some videos that I had made of live tape-loop performances and told me “let’s record with that setup when I’m back in town!” Ted is a serious and accomplished jazz player, and had recently left the area for England. I can barely read music and certainly can’t play jazz, but we shared a love of classic electro-acoustic minimalism – Terry Riley, Harold Budd, etc. Knowing that Panos is a big fan of Ted’s playing, I realized that this was my chance to make a record with these guys.

I had just recently gotten to know Greg, as the pandemic briefly brought him back into the area after years of living in NYC. Knowing that Greg had done a lot of work with Ted, I figured that it would all gel easily. Tim Walsh joined for day two of the sessions. Tim is one of the busiest musicians in the state and we have all logged countless hours with him, he’s just an ace at whatever you throw at him.

The album happened at the intersection of this shared desire to explore new terrain, and a sad passing that I wanted to pay acknowledgement to. I was able to wrangle together the four best instrumentalists in the area and make a record that exists in an idiosyncratic non-genre-space where our disparate interests aligned. And I was compelled to make this recording in the same way that the most interesting progressive music of the 60s and 70s was made: live, to an analog tape machine, in a casual environment. In this particular case, the tape machine had belonged to a friend who had recently passed away. He made 100s of recordings on this Teac 3340 in the 1970s, at his home in New Jersey, with an endless evolving cast of musicians and across a wide range of styles. But always weird, and always searching for something new.

There wasn’t any real prep for the session; we all were able to clear three days on the calendar, and I asked each guy to bring two or three ideas. When everyone arrived at my house, we stood around the kitchen table and I suggested just a few things: try to avoid idiomatic language, and try to make every gesture applicable to three states simultaneously: the sensual, the spiritual, and the psychedelic. "

Greg LaPine delivers performances on tenor saxophone, alto saxophone and flute. The role of the woodwinds on this recording was shaped by the sensitivity and vulnerability necessitated by the material. The record is colored by a delicate balance achieved between the woodwinds and brass, both in the written heads and in the improvisations rendered individually and in tandem. Compositionally, Greg offered The Deer and the Birds Were Told, which is a mood piece that features the classical guitar, framed by a motif set by the flute and flugelhorn horn. He delivered Hundrath, which is a sonic group meditation inspired by some of the works of Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley.

Ted Morcaldi plays electric and classical guitar, GR-500 guitar synth, and live-looping electronics on SMG Vol.1. His compositions for the record stemmed from explorations with Messiaen Modes of Limited Transposition and a solo guitar piece arranged for the group.

Yannis Panos played trumpet, flugelhorn as well as acoustic and electric piano on SMG Vol. 1. Yannis brought in the opening and closing tracks for the album, which serve to organize and harden the overall sound of the record toward the common threads that SMG came together initially with : the broad ranging sounds of Spiritual Jazz and library music of the 70’s.

Tim Walsh appears on percussion on several of the tracks. Walsh’s minimalist approach and gentle dynamics helps render the percussion in a way that straddles the line between rhythm and texture.

Fine sound selection

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