Monthly Archives: July 2014

REVERSE ENGINEERING FOUNTAINHEAD

Posted on by
Reply

album_cover
I sang on the new Fountainhead EP, ‘Reverse Engineering’ (coming August 5, 2016). Fountainhead is the alter-ego of guitar player/composer/producer Tom Geldschläger. Here’s his official announcement:

I´m very happy to anounce that one of my favorite “new” artists, Gabriel Riccio of The Gabriel Construct will appear as guest-vocalist on the upcoming Fountainhead-EP, called “Reverse Engineering”. Gabriel is an amazingly talented multi-instrumentalist, composer and singer and being the huge TGC-Fan that I am, I´m proud to have his unique skills and personality on the new record.

Currently operating from his studio in Berlin, Germany, Tom has appeared on countless records as a guitar player, arranger, producer, mixing-engineer and sometimes keyboard player. He’s recorded and toured with artists like Obscura, Ray Riendeau, Marco Minnemann, Jimmy Pitts, Hannes Grossmann, Christian Münzner, Nader Sadek, etc. and has been featured in various magazines around the globe, most recently “gitar plus” and “gitarre & bass”.

‘Reverse Engineering’ also features bassists Ray Riendeau (Halford, James Labrie), Jacob Schmidt (Defeated Sanity) and Linus Klausenitzer (Obscura, Alkaloid), drummers Derek Roddy (Nile) and Yatziv Caspi (Orphaned Land), and Matthias Preisinger (Von Eden) on keyboards, strings, and harp.

Here’s Tom’s playthrough video of the title track. I sang the choruses on this one (as well as the coda, which is not included in this video), while Dan Sander provides the screams:

Here’s an isolated snippet of the vocals & keyboards from the final chorus:

Here’s the video for the first single from the EP. This is the instrumental version, but I believe my vocal version will appear on a future release.

Or check out a video from Fountainhead’s first EP, ‘Fear is the Enemy’:

A solo saxophone piece

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s a new video of a piece I wrote for solo saxophone in 2009.

‘Winding through Angles’ for solo alto saxophone was composed in the spring semester 2009 under the tutelage of Gerald Levinson. It is based on the ‘five note’ exercises – at any given point, the piece is centered around a group of five chromatic pitch classes contained in a major third. It modulates between different groups of five notes until all twelve pitch classes are used in the work. The first movement is a slow build, while the second movement is an exercise in frustration, simultaneously angry and mocking itself. I chose the saxophone because it is an instrument capable of great expression, largely underused in the classical world.

The piece was written for and premiered by Soren Larsen, who later performed all of the saxophone parts on Interior City. It was then performed by his teacher, who created this video. You can hear Soren’s debut performance of the piece here for comparison:

Sheet music for this piece can be purchased here or viewed below: