The ambient-neoclassical duo of pianist DUSTIN O'HALLORAN and electronic musician ADAM WILTZIE — collectively A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN — have a name that not only sets them apart, but needs some explanation.
As you might expect for two Americans who met in Italy while touring, their music has more to do with European art than their roots in California and Texas. It starts with the Greek goddess Nike, who became the Roman goddess of victory, conveniently named Victoria. She's familiar to students of art history as a triumphal winged figure on coins, jewelry, and architecture. Her most famous monument is The Winged Victory of Samothrace, now in the Louvre—a masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture and the very classical embodiment of the spirit of triumph.
So it's a stroke of post-classical genius to address their work to "the sullen," and a shrewd way of managing the expectations of a possibly cynical post-modern audience: the regal pace and transcendent beauty of their music brings a feeling of quiet reassurance. They're members of a popular group of modern classical composers with an integral ambient sensibility. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, reassuring neo-classical ambient for trying times, on a program called SOLEMN HOPE.
Music is by A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN, TERJE RYPDAL, BEN LUKAS BOYSEN, JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON, JEFF GREINKE, VOLKER BERTELMANN & DUSTIN O'HALLORAN, and SLOW MEADOW.
[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]
Comments