“Rothenberg pushes sonic and spatial barriers… as he explores combinations of vacillating intervals and knotty melodic kernels, and balances evolving patterns with ripe arpeggios and colourful harmonics.” – Fred Bouchard, DownBeat
“Rothenberg reconciles an unapologetically cerebral approach with accessibility and emotional expression. No mean feat, indeed.” – Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
Hailed as “America’s most intimate composer and improviser” (All Music Guide), multi-instrumentalist Ned Rothenberg has evolved a singular and deeply personal language on an array of woodwinds – primarily alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and shakuhachi flute – over the course of four and a half decades of investigatory musicianship. On Looms & Legends, his first solo recording since 2012’s clarinet-focused World of Odd Harmonics (Tzadik), Rothenberg once again reveals himself to be a captivating storyteller and an unparalleled sonic architect.
To be released on September 5, 2025 via Pyroclastic Records, Looms & Legends hints in its title at the fundamental elements that make Rothenberg’s unaccompanied excursions so compelling: its deft, multi-hued weaving and the spellbinding eloquence of its unfolding narratives. “I think of those elements as the X and Y axes of my approach,” Rothenberg explains. “In my improvisations, there are the more melodic pieces that have a definite sense of starting at a certain place and taking you along a storyline. Then there are the ‘loom’ pieces which present the listener a rich and atypical aural environment in which to weave their own subjective narrative.”
Each piece on Looms & Legends is a journey, from the aspirational miniature “Brief Tall Tale,” which charts its ascending course in just over a single minute, to the borealis-like multiphonics of the eight-and-a-half minute “Urgency,” its shimmering colors colliding, submerging and shifting like tectonic plates. The ephemeral clarinet melodies of “Fra Gile” unfurl like delicate tendrils, tentatively probing the world around them, while the percussive “BellKeyBell” reduces Rothenberg’s alto sax to its component elements, molding an image of the instrument from the sounds of clacking keys and tidal resonance and again evoking the notion of a shared intimacy. “With this recording,” he says, “I’m trying to bring you right into the room with me.”
Rothenberg’s travels have taken him across five continents, he has studied deeply the diverse traditions of African and Asian musics, and has communicated his discoveries to students through his Global Perspectives course at The New School. He has so imbibed this never-ending research that it resists the lure of pastiche, instead emerging as something uniquely his own, an embrace of the idea of “future primitivism.”
As he explains, “I like to imagine my music as the indigenous sounds of a country that hasn’t been discovered yet. I love the idea that there’s some weird culture out there whose traditions are built on circular breathing through reed instruments, and it sounds like what I’ve been doing in New York since the early ‘80s.”
Until some intrepid explorer discovers proof of this convergent musical evolution, Rothenberg continues to craft his elegant improvisations from the rich vocabulary that he’s honed over decades – often graceful, sometimes abrasive, ever pulsing with an inner rhythm born of dance musics, even when not impelling listeners to move themselves. It’s evident in the propulsive throb of opener “Dance Above,” in the gravity-daunting sway of “Tender Hooks, or in the trumpet-mute spirals and wavers of “Plun Jah.”
Otherwise wholly improvised, Looms & Legends also includes a pair of carefully selected compositions. The album closes with Thelonious Monk’s immortal “’Round Midnight,” played by Rothenberg with mournful beauty on the shakuhachi and sounding more timeless than ever. Rothenberg’s own “Resistance Anthem” proceeds with a marchlike determination, its steely defiance echoed in Rothenberg’s notes for the album, in which he ponders, “How and why do we continue to make art in this bizarre time?”
While he stops short of offering Looms & Legends as an outright political statement, Rothenberg does allow that it is an oasis of concentration and immersion at a moment when our culture is oriented to short attention spans and instant gratification. “I feel like musicians who are doing work of depth need to push back against the TikTok culture,” he says. “In many ways an album like this goes against the grain of our current culture, where music has to grab you in 30 seconds. I can unapologetically say that’s never what I’ve been about.”
*** BIO ***
photo © Veronique Hoegger
Ned Rothenberg
Composer and performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 40 years on five continents. He performs primarily on alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and the shakuhachi. Rothenberg’s solo work utilizes an expanded palette of sonic language, creating a kind of personal idiom all its own. In an ensemble setting, he leads the quartet Crossings 4, with Sylvie Courvoisier, Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara, as well as his longstanding trio Sync, with Jerome Harris (guitars) and Samir Chatterjee (tabla). He has collaborated around the world with fellow improvisers including Evan Parker, Marc Ribot, Sainkho Namchylak, Masahiko Sato, Samm Bennett, Kazu Uchihashi, Paul Dresher and John Zorn. Notable recordings include Lockdown, with Courvoisier and Julian Sartorius on Clean Feed; Quintet for Clarinet and Strings with the Mivos Quartet, World of Odd Harmonics, Ryu Nashi (new music for shakuhachi) and Inner Diaspora, all on John Zorn’s Tzadik label; and Live at Roulette with Evan Parker, The Fell Clutch, and Are You Be on Rothenberg’s own Animul label.
Pyroclastic Records
Pianist-composer Kris Davis founded Pyroclastic Records in 2016. By supporting artists in the dissemination of their work, Pyroclastic empowers emerging and established artists to continue challenging conventional genre-labeling within their fields. Pyroclastic also seeks to galvanize and grow a creative community, providing opportunities, supporting diversity and expanding the audience for noncommercial art. Its albums often feature artwork by prominent visual artists—Ellsworth Kelly, Julian Charriére, Dike Blair, Raymond Pettibon, Sharon Core and Gabriel de la Mora among recent examples.
2025 Pyroclastic projects include albums from Ingrid Laubrock, Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson, Ned Rothenberg, Trio of Bloom (Craig Taborn, Nels Cline, Marcus Gilmore), and Patricia Brennan.
Ned Rothenberg – Looms & Legends
Pyroclastic Records – PR 41 – Recorded Dec. 18, 2024 and January 24, 2025
Release date September 5, 2025
nedrothenberg.com
pyroclasticrecords.com
pyroclasticrecords.bandcamp.
nedrothenberg.bandcamp.com
# # #