READ ME by Ethan Braun

“A diaphanous haze of brittle string harmonics that drifts almost imperceptibly through smoky dissonances...a heady taste of pure weightlessness”
New York Times

Acclaimed LA composer Ethan Braun debuts on Shahzad Ismaily’s figureight records with the mysterious, profound READ ME, an album released as a printed manifesto.

“Each essay acts as program notes that describe, or circumscribe the music. They’re tethered to the music like the music tethers sounds to time,” Braun writes of READ ME’s unique presentation. A record released as a series of written texts (and published on an empty, screen-printed record jacket), READ ME is a deeply conceptual formation of musical ideas that appeals to many senses. It is written for ensembles of varying sizes, taking in instrumentation both classical and modern, and gently, delicately unfolds into a deft and singular experience.

With READ ME, Braun poses the question: “what is music supposed to be?” The album’s compositional process deliberately evades meaning and purpose, offering instead a transparent, level relationship between listener, music, composer and performer. In other words: anyone can determine what this music is for. And by framing them within a written text, these pieces can be read as if one and the same medium as the document.

Opening with an 18-minute exploratory dreamscape for bass clarinet, vibraphone, piano and cello, READ ME sets an early tone of acute attention to detail and minute, cellular sonics. Lead track “Me, Mi Relato” is a viola solo performed by Danielle Wiebe Burke. It dances and twists through incidental squeals and creaks, disguising a deep-rooted melancholy in its dynamic intensity.

Braun writes: “these works are not ambient. They are not passive. They are abstract, formal with their grids but opaque with their clouds.” There is a loose simpatico here with the fiercely intellectual work of composers such as Morton Feldman or Luc Ferrari, whose abstractions are also not associated with “ambient music”. Though minimal, sparse, eloquently hushed, READ ME evidences more than just “quiet calm”. It is stranger and more demanding than that.

Ethan Braun is a composer based in Los Angeles. His music occurs in the concert hall, the stage, and the gallery, involving electronic media, acoustic instruments, video, and theatre. His works have been presented by such institutions as Carnegie Hall, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hebbel-am-Ufer Theater (Berlin, DE), Kampnagel (Hamburg, DE), The Shed (NYC), and the Shanghai Symphony. He studied at UCLA, Peabody Conservatory, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and Yale University, where he is a doctoral candidate in music composition.