You
are listening to "Thawing Spring" by Palm Fabric Orchestra
PALM FABRIC ORCHESTRA
Purchase Full Length Album here: A sublime all instrumental record. Pure natural music.
Featuring Frank Orrall, Ellen fullman, Kit Ebersbach, Mark Willams,
Abra Moore, Susan Voelz, Max Crawford, Paul Mertens,
Malford Milligan, El John Nelson and other
Members of PDP.
1. Time And Gravity 2. Thawing Spring 3. Angelika
Suspended 4. Window Down, Still Far From The State Line 5. Wood Box And Block Of Ice 6. The
Garden 7. Rounding The Trees By The Forest Edge 8. Coda: Lover's Reprise
photo credit: John Fago
photo credit: Theresa Wong
Ellen Fullman and the
“Long String Instrument”
We
met Ellen Fullman in Austin back in 1989. I was awestruck by her and an instrument that she created and built called the “Long String Instrument”. I was so carried along by the beautiful,
ethereal sound she created with it, that I asked her to play on the "VoloVolo" recordings "Entrance" and
"Endtrance".
We enjoy'd working together so much that we then went on to collaborate together with Kit Ebersbach (from Hawaii)
to create the music for the
In 1981 Ellen Fullman began developing the “Long String Instrument,”
in which rosin-coated fingers brush across dozens of metallic strings, fifty or more feet in length and installed in a performance
space. Listening to the instrument has been compared to the experience of standing inside an enormous grand piano. Her work
explores natural tunings based on the overtone series and the physics of vibrating strings. A unique notation system choreographs
the performer’ movements, exploring the influences of sympathetic resonance and sonic events that occur at specific
nodal point locations along the string-length of the instrument. The music has a multi-dimensional quality: threads of resultant
melodic fragments emerge and intertwine, unfolding with a natural logic.
Fullman has recorded extensively with
this unusual instrument and has collaborated with such luminary figures as composer Pauline Oliveros, choreographer Deborah
Hay, the Kronos Quartet, Keiji Haino and Francis-Marie Uitti. In 2000 she was awarded the prestigious DAAD Artists-in-Berlin
residency. Her music was represented in The American Century; Art and Culture, 1950-2000 at The Whitney Museum, and she has
performed in venues and festivals in Europe, Japan and North America including: Instal, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Other
Minds, the Walker Art Center and Donaueschinger Musiktage. Her CD release “Ort”, with Berlin-based collaborator
Jörg Hiller, was selected as one of the top 50 recordings of 2004 by The Wire (London). She has written articles on her
work published in Experimental Musical Instrument (1985 and 1998), MusikTexte (Cologne 2002), and MusicWorks (Toronto 2003).
Fullman has delivered lectures and conducted workshops for many venues including the Songlines series at Mills College, San
Francisco Conservatory of Music, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle and Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart. Her collaboration with percussionist
Sean Meehan at Instal 2006 was the number one downloaded track from the festival and was released on Cut (Switzerland). In
2007 she was awarded a 5-month Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission/NEA Fellowship for Japan where she studied the Ainu tonkori,
sho and koto. Fullman was awarded an Aaron Copland Fund grant for her CD release with trombonist Monique Buzzarté on
Deep Listening, February 2008. Fullman has been awarded a Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito) residency from September
through December, 2008, where she will install her instrument in what was once the old gymnasium. A segment of the Music for
People and Thingamajigs Festival is planned for September 20 at the Headlands featuring her compositions and collaborations.
