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Balmorhea

Pendant World

Deutsche Grammophon
Release Date: June 16, 2023

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New Conditions (ft. Joseph Shabason and Jason Treuting)
1 Nonplussed  
2 Oscuros  
3 Step Step Step  
4 Desiderium  
5 The Bright Door  
6 Loess  
7 New Conditions  
8 Held  
9 Range  
10 Fire Song  
11 Violet Shiver  
12 Elsewhere  
13 Depth Serenade  
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Haunting melodies and exquisite sound colours run through Balmorhea’s keenly awaited second album for Deutsche Grammophon. Pendant World retains the essential spirit of the Texas-based group’s music while transporting it to fresh creative territory, thanks to collaborations between founders Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller and an exceptional line-up of guest artists. Above all, its thirteen tracks cross genre boundaries to explore heartfelt forms of expression. Pendant World is released digitally, on CD and on vinyl today, 16 June 2023.

Joining Lowe and Muller on the new album are regular collaborators violinist/vocalist Aisha Burns and cellist Clarice Jensen, and an equally distinguished line-up of guest artists, including experimental jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel, Joseph Shabason on tenor saxophone and flute, clarinetist Jonathan Sielaff, percussionist Jason Treuting and vocalists Steph Jenkins and Lisa Morgenstern. The music was recorded in ideal conditions in rural Vermont in collaboration with three-time Grammy-winning engineer and producer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift, Sufjan Stevens).  

The title Pendant World derives from a quotation Lowe discovered while reading Lyall Watson’s book Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind. He was struck by a line from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, in which one of the principal characters contemplates death and compares it to being “imprison’d in the viewless winds, / And blown with restless violence round about / The pendant world”. Thoughts of a world suspended, its fate to be decided, took root in Lowe’s mind.

  • Balmorhea's 'The Wind' made a strong impression. 'Pendant World' is even stronger / Sequenza21/
    Posted At: July 7, 2023
    Haunting melodies and exquisite sound colours run through Balmorhea’s keenly awaited second album for Deutsche Grammophon. Pendant World retains the essential spirit of the Texas-based group’s music while transporting it to fresh creative territory, thanks to collaborations between founders Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller and an exceptional line-up of guest artists. Above all, its thirteen tracks cross genre...

  • Balmorhea - The Wind makes Andrew Dansby's rock and jazz albums of 2021 / Houston Chronicle
    Posted At: December 30, 2021
    Houston Chronicle's Andrew Dansby writes….Live music began to trickle back in 2021. And recorded music kept doing what it was doing prior to the pandemic, but with a slightly different vibe. Maybe it was me, maybe it was the artists, but the music that connected with me over the past year was largely music created by people focused on the notion of environment — whether that environment be a setting for a s...

  • Texas Public Radio - Classical Connections chats with home town gents; Balmorhea
    Posted At: April 17, 2021

    Copious creative influences run through 'Balmorhea's' Deutsche Grammophon' debut album. Released on April 9, 'The' Wind' comprises a dozen tracks inspired by meditations on the natural world and its fragility, an ancient tale of a saint who carried the wind to an airless French valley, and thoughts of climate activist Greta Thunberg crossing the Atlantic on the catamaran '...

  • With 'The Wind,' Balmorhea captures that essence, renewing valleys with music that thrives in its delicate and patient nature / TREBLE
    Posted At: April 12, 2021

    TREBLE's WILLIAM LEWIS writes.....Saint Caesarius was a sixth century Archbishop of the French city of Arles. Though not a man of great fame, his common touch made him beloved by the people of the region and he garnered an almost mythic reputation as a man of miracles. In one tale, a valley in the region is in the grips of terrible drought, its people hungry and the land parched and fruitless. Caesar...
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