"The Reality of People" and Other Works for Reed Organ

by Brendan Glasson

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Minimalist digipack CD edition with "paste-up" art and layout from Brendan himself.

Includes unlimited streaming of "The Reality of People" and Other Works for Reed Organ via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$10 USD or more

	1.	Awakenings 05:44
	2.	The Five-Sensed World 06:21
	3.	The Reality of People 07:36
	4.	Dispossession 08:02
	5.	The Hands of Others 09:02

about

Brendan is a musician from Providence, Rhode Island who currently resides in Oakland, California working as the Technical Director at Mills College, which continues to be a stalwart source of artists in the experimental and underground music scene. Previously he studied at Mills with renowned musicians Maggi Payne, John Bischoff, and William Winant.

Brendan's new album is a collection of pieces built around the reed organ, an instrument that was once ubiquitous in the United States around the turn of the 20th century. Brendan has a deep passion for reed organs and has acquired two of them, both of which he found on Craigslist. One is a Carl Fischer "Pipe Tone" folding reed organ made in 1904, and the other, which this album was recorded on, is an Estey "Model O" chapel organ made in 1912. He is also a member of the Reed Organ Society, a community of enthusiasts who love these historical instruments. He has a deep understanding of the mechanics and history of the reed organ and often does his own repairs, maintenance, and tuning. Brendan likens the organ to a synthesizer, with tone generators in the form of brass reeds and the "swell" that acts as a low-pass filter cutting off high frequencies as a gasket or door opens and closes.

The pieces were built around the moments he found when playing the reed organ at home, where certain combinations of pitches would activate the instrument, and sometimes a prominent overtone would resonate, or a loose screw would start rattling, or the whole instrument would start vibrating sympathetically.

Conceptually, Brendan has drawn inspiration from Oliver Sacks' idea that one's sense of reality is constructed by "the reality of people" and Helen Keller's essays on sense perception. He aimed to make music that activates that kind of augmented deep sensory experience.

credits

released February 17, 2023

Recorded on a 1912 Estey "Style (O) 94" Reed Organ

Mixed at The Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College

Mastered by Xopher Davidson

Oakland, California

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Brendan Glasson Oakland, California

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