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In the Valley

by Todd Marcus

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Audio album on compact disc with 12 page booklet containing liner notes by Todd Marcus, clarinet great Don Byron, and Egyptian saxophonist Mina Nashaat. Full of photos of the band and Egyptian sites that inspired the album's compositions.

    Includes unlimited streaming of In the Valley via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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1.
Horus 09:12
2.
The Hive 09:46
3.
4.
Final Days 08:24
5.

about

Liner notes

Recent years have been important for me musically and socially as I've explored the incorporation of Middle Eastern music into jazz. This has stemmed from my own journey to dig deeper into my Egyptian ethnicity (my father was Egyptian) and I think it is an insightful reflection of both my American culture (through jazz) and Egyptian culture (through Middle Eastern music). This effort has been a challenging one though as jazz and Middle Eastern music are constructed very differently. While the harmonies in jazz are a crucial element that define its sound, traditional Middle Eastern melodies typically do not use harmony and focus more on unison themes. So in many ways my efforts to merge these two musics is a good metaphor for me as an individual who continues to explore and integrate his American and Egyptian cultures.

My early efforts to incorporate Middle Eastern music came years ago after I asked my father for samples and he gave me an album by one of the great Egyptian vocalists Abdel Halim Hafez. This had a major impact on me and led to initial compositions merging Middle Eastern music and jazz. A couple years later, the Arab Spring movement took place in Egypt starting in 2011 and was largely focused in Tahrir Square in Cairo. I closely followed these events as they unfolded both with interest in Egypt’s future as a country and out of concern for my family members that still reside in Egypt in the cities of Cairo and Alexandria.

As a musician watching Egypt’s Arab Spring movement since 2011, I worked to capture different phases of the movement with multiple compositions. My resulting album Blues for Tahrir was released in the spring of 2015 and included tour performances in the US and Egypt.

In 2015 and 2018 I was able to perform some of this music during tours in Egypt. Between these and additional trips to visit family, I was able to reconnect with the country after my many trips nearly two decades earlier. These visits fostered inspiration for new compositions that are part of my new album In the Valley. While not all of these compositions use Middle Eastern harmonic content, they are all influenced by some aspect of Egypt, our culture, and my family.

Horus – Named after the ancient Egyptian deity Horus who has the head of a falcon and body of a man, this composition evokes the sounds of classical Middle Eastern music by using sounds modeled after maqams (Middle Eastern scales). Though Horus is an ancient deity of the sky, he remains a part of modern Egyptian culture including as the logo of Egypt Airlines.

The Hive - A composition meant to evoke the feel of modern-day Cairo and its frenetic intensity between the people, traffic (that has no lanes or traffic lights), buildings, and boats on the Nile. To western eyes, a city like Cairo may seem chaotic but there’s an order to the madness. Just like a bee hive brimming with tons of activity, Cairo has an inner system that is beautiful and amazing.

Cairo Street Ride – This composition aims to capture the streets and chaotic traffic in Cairo today. Sections of the piece capture the pitch of a car’s tires on the road as it speeds up and slows down, the car engine shifting gears, car horns beeping at each other in a sort of above ground sonar mode, and music actually replicated from an actual cab driver’s radio during my 2015 visit.

Final Days – I wrote this piece in the winter of 2016-2017 during my last visit to the home where I’d grown up in New Jersey and my father had passed away a few months earlier. I thought of one of the main themes as I was going to bed one night during this visit and thinking about how it would be my last time being there and the end of my family’s time there after so many years. I later added sections to try to capture the winter wind blowing over snow on the yard and shadows of trees falling on our home of 40 years.

In the Valley – a composition that attempts to capture the grandeur of ancient Egyptian sites like the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Kings. It also gives a nod to typical music soundtracks commonly used under documentaries about ancient Egypt that strive for a sense of grandeur reflecting the ancient sites.

These compositions and their inspiration are deeply personal and show the continuing evolution of my work as a composer and bass clarinetist. On top of this, the wonderful musicians in my band do incredible work performing this challenging material. The result brings me joy and I hope it does the same for you!

Todd Marcus
Baltimore, July 2021

credits

released July 1, 2022

Todd Marcus – bass clarinet
Greg Tardy – tenor sax
Brent Birckhead – flute & alto sax
Russell Kirk – alto sax
Alex Norris – trumpet
Alan Ferber - trombone
Xavier Davis – piano
Jeff Reed - bass
Eric Kennedy – drums

Recorded June 17, 2019 at Blue House Productions, Silver Spring, MD
Produced by Todd Marcus

All compositions by Todd Marcus (Dark Voice Music, SESAC)
Todd Marcus endorses clarinets by RZ Woodwind Manufacturing and mouthpieces by Syos


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about

Todd Marcus Baltimore, Maryland

Bass clarinetist/composer Todd Marcus is one of the few artists worldwide to focus on the bass clarinet in modern straight- ahead jazz.
His compositions feature ensembles from 2-10 musicians and often incorporate Middle-Eastern sounds from his Egyptian-American heritage.
Marcus balances his music by running Intersection of Change, a nonprofit addressing poverty issues in Baltimore, MD.
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