Latest Album -

reeds - Geof Bradfield(1), Scott Burns(4), Jim Gailloreto(3), Aaron McEvers

trumpets - Victor Garcia(10), Brian Schwab, Nick Sednew(3)

trombones - Raphael Crawford, Ryan Miller

keyboards - Paul Mutzabaugh(5)

guitar - Chris Siebold(5)

percussion - John Corkill, Bob Garrett, Tom Hipskind, Brandon Podjasek

voices - Alyssa Allgood, Enrico Bellomo, Leslie Beukelman(6), Natalie Chami, Bethany Clearfield(3, 8), Andy Distel(5), John Elmquist, Quinn Flagg, Michael Hawes, Garrett Johannsen, Anne Katzfey, Chaz Lee, Lexie Levy, Wilbur Pauley, Daniel Riley, Cheryl Wilson, Sarah Marie Young(4)

violins - Cristina Buciu, Elliott Cless, Lauren Cless, Katherine Hughes, Eric Pidluski, Songhea Sackrider, Andrea Tolzmann, Drew Williams

violas - Amanda Grimm, Dominic Johnson, Michael Lieberman, Rebecca Swan

cellos - Sara Sitzer, Victor Sotelo

bass - Christian Dillingham

composer/conductor - John Elmquist

tracked and mixed at Transient Sound by Vijay Tellis-Nayak

mastered by Rich Breen

art - Nathan Tolzmann

special thanks to Grayson Elliot Taylor and David Goodman Edberg

*(-) = solo

Tracks:

1.   Homage a Antão               4:25

2.   Fract Ions                          4:32

3.   Breath                               6:45

4.   Sugar Booty                      3:49

5.   Dealing in Parts                5:30

6.   I Own an Ion                     5:08

7.   Mister Green                     4:08

8.   1441                                  2:35

9.   Intellectual Proper D        3:14

10. Uti Possidetis Iuris            5:05

WurdZ

1. Homage a Antão

Gonçalvez, Antão e Nuno Tristão para Infante Dom Henrique. Navigante, Dom Navigique, Navigator.

The days were dark and sunny, driven by the unfunny. Patients zero, zero point one and point two for a six century infection.

One last run in the summer of ’41 looking for parties interested in leaving the sky behind. Everyone’s invited to get on the large garbage barge, or you can get on a larger garbager barger, behind that is the largest garbagest.

One trip is all you’ll need.

Hop on in our bucket of bark, a single item ark. Take a deep bow and an even grimmer stern.

Get on the large garbage barge. They don’t get any barger. Get on my piece of number two lumber, a larger garbage barger. We have got the largest of the garbagest bargest.

2. Fract Ions (piano symmetries)

Some parts are private, some parts are unknown, some parts are missing, but everything is for sale.

Three fifths plus nine tenths is thirteen.

Some parts are sacred and some parts are lost.

Three fifths plus nine tenths is thirteen.

Some parts are hidden and some parts are broken. Some parts are lost.

Parts in possession are nine tenths of nothing times three fifths of not one thing.

Selling each cell one by one, then divide by one.

Thirteen less ten under nine less five under three.

Some parts are going and some parts are gone.

Some parts are fragile and some parts are failing and some parts are whole, undividable, some parts are.

3. Breath

Breath: Mine.

Having purchased the rights to Elvis’s final breath,

Having purchased the rights to Elvis’s ultimate breath,

Having purchased the rights to Elvis’s very last breath, I set out to collect it 1.28 molecules at a time.

One just has to sort through the ones from Plato and Luther and Mao and Gilgamesh to get the 1.28 molecules from Elvis’s final breath.

4. Sugar Booty

From the coast of whatever place seems new and wild to the “lost” shores of any place you choose, move whatever is required to make a little less bitter the comfortable few.

Stick a straw in a world that’s new to only you, suck and siphon off whatever gives delight, because what the world needs most are petti fours.

So drain, funnel, grab and growl and go.

It’s a pleasant shock, it’s a little rush, a small confectionary treat.

Sugar baby burn way up in the head, knitting cotton candy boots and scarves.

We need a quick destiny kabuki to justify the whole kit and kabooty.

Sugar booty. Come on, we gotta have sticky treats.

Sugar booty. Good God, we gotta have smoky sweets.

Sugar booty, grab your sugar booty.

Sticky is the mind, sticky are the sweet, sticky are the fingers as they bring it all home.

If we thought there was sugar on the sun, we would figure out a way to go get it.

To validate giant loads of molasses simply offer up a few perfunctory masses.

Sugar shaker. It all feels pretty sweet running through your veins. Sugar shimmy. Sugar booty.

Sugar shackle, sugar booty. New world, old world, any world will do when you have got sugar booty taking care of you.

Sugar shooter. Sugar booty.

Sugar shipper, sugar booty. The booty may be bloody but it’s bloody well ours. Sugar booty.

5. Dealing in Parts

For what would you part with half your heart?

How much would I owe for you to sell me a toe or two?

What would be the fee for me to stream every dream?

What would you take in kind to give me a piece of your peace of mind?

I would probably let you die just to own one working eye.

Is it me that owns all this blood and all these bones? I would not part with half of my heart, my chambered artery art.

And I would like to keep what happens in my sleep.

For what would you part with half of your heart?

6. I Own an Ion

Own I an ion?

Own an ion I?

Own I my own eye?

Own I even my own odd eye?

How might I own an ion of my own?

I have my eye on one.

Do we even own our own even or odd eye?

Well, well, well we won.

Now we own one of our own!

I’ve got my eye on one ion that arrived from Orion.

I own an ion.

Got to keep an eye on my ion and another on Orion.

I’ve got my irises trained on the iron ions in the iron ion zone of Orion and Zion.

I got my eyes on Zion’s ion zone.

Own I an ion?

Own an ion I?

Aye, an ion I own.

I got my eye on owning an ion and on.

I got my eye. I got it in my head and on the road and on the ion that I own because it is mine.

7. Mister Green - an arrangement of a transcription of a dialogue between Ronald Reagan and Jon Breen (not Green), Editor of the Nashua Telegraph at the 1980 New Hampshire Republican primary debate. Many people believe that this performance propelled Ronald Reagan to the nomination.

Breen: If, if we may have the first question.

Reagan: Mr. Green, before the question, you asked me if you could make an announcement first. And I asked you permission to make an announcement myself.

Breen: Would the, uh, would the sound man please turn Mr. Reagan’s mic off.

Reagan: Is this on? Mr. Green…

Breen: d'ja turn that microphone off please.

Reagan: You asked for me if you would.....I am paying for this microphone Mr. Green!

Breen: If, if we may have the first question.

8.1441

Flies in the jungle got a whole lot larger in 1441.

Snakes in the canopy thick, thick, thick.

Seventy score (four of four) and one past four.

Swarmed and swept and made the sky go dark.

Ten cubed plus twenty squared plus six point three two four five squared plus one cubed

Swaggered and swindled all across the savanna

Seven score and forty four less two and one more

Rodent creatures with human features

One forty teen four one ten and four before and one

One person’s tremor is another’s action plan

One before four and four after four and one

Intercontinental (subdominant) labor resource reallocation

MCDXLI

Flies in the forest got a whole lot fatter in

I IV IV I

Worms working deepest from far away

Mil quatro cientos cuarenta y uno. 1441!

It was begun in one four four and one, run up a score from nine to four, one thousand plus one hundred from five hundred from fifty plus one more.

9. Intellectual Proper D

I claim exclusive rights to a musical event. It is an A, a certain A played as certain way in thus and thus a mode, specifically spelled and sounded, by a special note array surrounded. Consider my special A with its custom sloped decay presented and expressed in a most distinct, uncommon and singular way. This A is special and unique because it is a D. Thoughts were formed and through words expressed, the order of which is mine. The way they are phrased, accented, stressed, inflected and shaped is also mine. The lines are mine. And what’s between them is mine. Any clues or signs are mine. And what they imply, hint at, point to or suggest; mine, miner, mine-est. Any abstraction, inference, interpretation, summary, description, hidden meaning or accidental secret code are all part of the same and included in the claim. You’ll know these lines when you hear them. They go like this: D. Also, what was left unsaid, whatever I think of but forget, I claim as mine if another thinks of it later. Any wish I may have made or any wish I wish I’d made, and that of which I ought to have thought can be bought from me, exclusively, if it goes: D. Oh, and by the way, if you are somehow moved to say my words in the prayer you pray, you may atone for this intercessory thought crime if you pay before you pray. You’ll know it if it sounds like: D. And remember if you see and A that is a D, it belongs to me.

10. Uti Possidetis Iuris

Uti Possidetis Iuris.

Non possumus, non possidebunt terram, mare et caelum.

Non possumus, non posidebunt omnia omnibus.

Non possumus, non possidebunt terram, mare et caelum.

Uti Possidetis Iuris.

Uti Possidetis Iuris is a legal principle by which national boundaries are established. The remainder of the text an attempt to express that borders are irrational and that the human ownership of anything is fleeting and, ultimately, impossible.