Gravikords, Whirlies and Pyrophones - Abridged version

Book by Bart Hopkin with an introduction by Tom Waits, with audio CD containing recordings by 19 featured artists.

CD-sized, hardbound 96-page book with audio CD. Generously illustrated with color photographs.
Published by Ellipsis Arts, 1998. EMI item #407A

Available again! (but only a few dozen copies)

For several years this collection has been unavailable except for used copies at high prices from resellers. Just recently the publisher located a couple of boxes that had been overlooked in a corner someplace. He sent them our way and we're once again making them available to you

This package is an abridged, smaller-format re-release of the original boxed set of the same title. The boxed set is no longer available. This smaller edition includes all of the original recordings on the CD, but the book is not as extensive.

Gravikords, Whirlies and Pyrophones is a book-and-CD package devoted to new and unheard-of musical instruments. The book is full of magnificent photographs and informative text; the CD is full of great music; every page and every track overflows with ideas and originality. 19 of the world's most interesting and inventive musical instrument makers appear in the book, with music from each of them included on the CD.

A few examples:

The opening track on the CD is Hans Reichel's Daxophone. It's a more developed and elegantly crafted version of the ruler firmly held overhanging the edge of the desk, played, in this case, with a bow. Hans gets an incredible circus of sounds from this arrangement with irresistible musical results.

The late Jamaican mento musician Sugarbelly Walker plays his bamboo saxophone with facility, style, passion and joy.

Susan Rawcliffe produces strange and hauntingly beautiful sounds on oddly shaped and acoustically complex ceramic wind instruments inspired by pre-Columbian flutes and whistles.

Music and instruments from the great mid-century iconoclast Harry Partch are included, as well as the earlier Theremin, played by the leading virtuoso of its day, Clara Rockmore.

Technical aspects of the instruments are not covered in depth in this release; rather, the purposes and personalities of the makers come to the fore while the photos and sounds are allowed to speak for themselves.

Artists included in the book and CD: Hans Reichel; Phil Dadson; Qubais Reed Ghazala; Jean-Claude Chapuis; Don Buchla; Ward Hartenstein; Harry Partch; Sugar Belly; Darrell De Vore; Leon Theremin; Barry Hall; Jacques Dudon; Ken Butler; Thomas Nunn; Sarah Hopkins; Robert Grawi; Susan Rawcliffe; Wendy Mae Chambers; Michel Moglia.