Calendar by Zachary Paul

Zachary Paul is a violinist and composer currently living in New York. Having played in orchestras for most of his life, his beautiful violin work has recently emerged in the new music scene on the East and West coasts. Recently collaborating with musicians like Simon Scott and Patrick Shiroishi, Zachary has long been a “session violinist” for many Recital releases (including Simple Affections and Autumn Fair). It’s with great pleasure to finally release a full length solo album of his work on Recital.

Calendar is a collection of unfinished demos, compositional experiments, and edited re-released tracks which span the past 8 years. Recital operator and composer Sean McCann took 7+ hours of Paul’s music and edited it down to these 8 tracks over 50 minutes, folding them into themselves and into one another. The editing is also sometimes crude and immediate, with creases and torn edges. Zach said, “I’ve struggled to release music since 2020 and the process of crafting this album with Sean has taught me that perfection is often my greatest obstacle. The process of overworking ‘works in progress’ led to stagnation.”

This album reflects trying to break one’s perception of time into its smallest parts, watching the seconds pass, and freezing these snapshots into saturated memories and moods. Zach explains, “when I listen to each piece on this album, I’m flooded with memories of the particular time and place it was recorded, and the people around me in that period of my life,” and he encourages the listener to craft their own story from these pieces and their dates.

“Wind of midnight” is a pastoral quartet piece (two horns, cello, and violin) that breathes slowly, not unlike an Ingram Marshall work. While “Fear” conjures up memories of Los Angeles at night, an imagined soundtrack for a hazy Michael Mann-ish cobalt landscape. A gust of smog on "Possessor" interrupts this vaporous scene, getting swallowed up in tape destruction, then settling back into the underlying pastel dusk of Calendar's unhurried chamber ambience.

On a personal note, in addition to his violin contributions for the label, Zach was actually the one-and-only Recital “intern” for a few months in 2015. Not having much for him to do (other than assist in frantically emailing members of The Lost Jockey in hopes of reissuing their material,) we quickly became friends and would just hang out and listen to music. And nearly a decade later we are here still together, delighting in his music.

Founded in 2012 by Sean McCann.
Focusing on abstract and beautiful music.
Sometimes just one of those things and sometimes both of those things.

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