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about

Written in 1993 this is the oldest tune on the album. In 1993 i was playing electric guitar, i was 4 continuous years in NYC having also spent 3 years in in NYC in 83-85. While having some memorable experiences playing with Ronald Shannon Jackson, Dewey Redman, Pharoah Sanders, Drew Gress and Phil Haynes and generally being opened to a lot of new sounds and ideas i was actually moving away from the guitar towards winds. This movement would eventually lead me to the Mevlevi Whirling Dervishes and the Ney. The Ney is an incredibly profound instrument, a simple sugarcane reed, some serious tuning math and the the fire residing in the human breathe converge to allow the hearts true intelligence to appear in the form of sound. It blew me away the first time i heard it played, no pun intended. It is a mystical and sacred instrument in the truest sense and the poet Rumi has a beautiful and famous poem about the Ney called The Song of The Ney. It's one of the oldest instruments in the world with depictions of the Ney being played in Egyptian temples. It's tuning naturally includes what is called the 1/4 tone which is a closer vibration to the natural way that sound propagates in nature through the overtone series, in other words: non-tempered.

The song was written on guitar and there are recorded versions on guitar unreleased. I've also played it on western flute and Saxophone. But again like the Oud version of Stepping Out of Circles on this album i find Hymn of Bridges to have transcended it's previous incarnations and found it's magic place with the Ney. The song has a hymn quality to it as well as an very slight New Orleans slow walking vibe. It seemed to me that each breathe of the melody was a bridge to a new sound world all it's own leading to the next with it's own and so on. The improvised section is a group effort and i love listening to everyone's ideas and how they communicate the melody's possible frontiers of exchange and expression.

credits

from Tomchess​-​Momentarily Endless, track released June 16, 2015
Tomchess-Ney, Composer
Dan Kurfirst-Drums/Perc.
Ryan Snow-Trombone
Will Mcevoy-Upright Bass

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Tomchess New York, New York

"...seriously: exquisite, introspective and exuberant, masterful and humble, funky & abstract, global and galactic ........... et f'n cetera."

-Charles Blass, Sun Radio, Zurich.

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