GLENN BRANCA

For New and Upcoming Concerts, scroll down

"This music does somehow seem to take on the aspect of an event in nature or an act of God." (Richard Buell BOSTON GLOBE)

"Branca conducted with so much passion that his life could have depended on it. When science fiction writers describe the 'Music of the Future' one can imagine Branca's music -- shimmering and heavenly, and stark, physical and austere." (Lynden Barber MELODY MAKER)

"Just occasionally, new music comes as a real shock, a jolt to the system, a reminder that it is possible to go out to a concert and hear something really unexpected, really wild and dangerous. Alongside memories of Hendrix or watching the Sex Pistols there is now the Glenn Branca experience." (Robin Denselon THE GUARDIAN, London)

"There were sounds I'd never heard before, never imagined. The music itself seemed to combine raw sexual energy and massive sacred passions into a single irresistible force" (Mark Swed LA WEEKLY)

"Branca had me shaking." (John Cage CHICAGO SUN-TIMES)

"Branca makes a noise you've always imagined but never expected to hear." (Kristine McKenna L.A.TIMES)

"Glenn Branca may emerge as the most important new composer of our time." (Jim Gustafson DETROIT WEEKLY)

"The most intense music you'll ever hear in your life." Jim Fouratt

"He is an inspired American original" (Robert Palmer NEW YORK TIMES)

"The effects and texture Mr. Branca achieves are really remarkable, and the sound is unlike anything in music." (John Rockwell NEW YORK TIMES)

"Branca stretches his music further than is normally deemed acceptable or even possible in the world of rock, frequently reaching a plateau of sustained intensity rarely achieved outside of the spiritual or sexual encounter. If anyone else described their music as forcing you 'far back into the subconscious to find out what it is you are hearing' they might appear pretentious; when Branca makes this kind if statement it merely seems modest, inadequate." (Lynden Barber MELODY MAKER)

"Glenn Branca is a rock 'n roll renegade who has left the standard rock circuit behind to become a trailblazing new music iconoclast. Branca's music is absolutely hypnotic, building with an enormous cascading crescendo that seems nonstop and nonstoppable. It's absolutely riveting, completely devastating." (Rob Barker NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)

"Branca's music calls to mind such works as Penderecki's "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" and Luigi Non's "Como una ola de fuerza y luz". His music equals such works as these in the expression of contemporary passions. It is primal and cathartic, sexual yet dispassionate. In its effects on the listener it is a new expansion of musical awareness. Branca has a real and radical talent as a composer." (Louis K. Morra WKCR)

"Bells are ringing, Loudly, A celestial choir screams in epiphanic ecstasy. The music unrolls like a blistering juggernaut, spiked with scalding tempos and latticework of overtones and textures that conjure voices, horns, violins and cathedral chimes from thin air. Three hundred years earlier Branca would have been hanged for witchcraft." (Ted Drozdowshi MUSICIAN MAGAZINE)

"Branca's symphonies are more than just thunderous explosions of sound. He is interested in dissonant chordal structures that recall the sound-mass explorations of Ligeti and Penderecki. His primal, ritualistic power conjures up images of a berserk Varese. His symphonies have an orgiastic, ecstatic sense of climax - a primitivist power that surges forward in a brazenly romantic manner." (K. Robert Schwarz HORIZON MAGAZINE)

"I don't think I will ever be quite the same. I've never seen a performer like him. Branca may as well have put on a full scale production of WAR AND PEACE playing all of the characters by himself. That's about how much energy he put out. Or he could have climbed K-2. That's how high he took the audience." (Rebecca Moore EAR MAGAZINE)

"Visually and aurally enthralling, it was subtle, it was blatant, it was beautiful, and it is a complex, brilliant symphony." (Katherine Ludwig NEW YORK TALK)

"Glenn Branca's music burns through stylistic barriers like a blowtorch. The sounds generated by his electric guitar ensembles weld the manic energy of heavy metal onto the large forms and massed sonorities of the 20th-century orchestra, Branca is indeed creating new music." (Ted Greenwald KEYBOARD MAGAZINE)

"These unprecedented sounds are so complex that the music opens up into hallucination. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks of this music, just as it doesn't matter what anyone thinks of the sun. It was more like witnessing an event in nature than attending a concert." (Cole Gagne OPTION MAGAZINE)

"Sculpting Mount Rushmore-sized sonic bedrock into epic symphonies, Glenn Branca's work consistently cuts through artsy gutlessness with the assurance of a Black and Decker circular saw. This is live art of the highest caliber, sacral, ragged and devastatingly honest in a scenario where honesty is the one brand name missing from the record racks, supermarkets and concert halls." (Mark Dery HIGH PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE)

"This megamusic is not just an aural assault but a cathartic conjunction of pleasure and pain intended to disrupt fixed ideas and emotions. It confuses the distinctions in intent and experience that are commonly used to characterize and classify art. It is at once visceral and cerebral, anarchistic and controlled, hellish and sublime. Branca's entire creative output has, in this way, a grasp of sanity and a touch of madness, a way of standing perfectly still and yet be throbbing all the while." (Carlo McCormick ARTFORUM)

"Glenn Branca's fire-breathing music is a turbulently successful mix of sonic pioneering and experimental melodics with rock-solid, butt-kicking guitar thrash. Branca was out front directing, breathing and lurching with the pulse, extracting some of the most incredible chord combinations ever known to the guitar." (Tristram Lozaw BOSTON ROCK)

"There is nobody making music today who even faintly resembles him." (Allan Ulrich SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER)

"Stunningly dramatic, hypnotically throbbing, thunderously erotic, sensuously mystical. Branca seemed to pull monster glissandos from his band with his bare hands." (Mark Swed LOS ANGELES HERALD EXAMINER)

"Glenn Branca is one of a dwindling number of reasons not to commit suicide. He makes explosive, challenging music that pushes back the borders of what contemporary music can be." (Steve Albini MATTER MAGAZINE)

"HIS FORTE IS MASSIVE SONIC GRANDEUR"
"Whether this is 'serious' or classical or rock or all three, Mr. Branca is the leader of the most vital new trend to transform downtown new music since the minimalists. The unprecedented aural density sets up new acoustic and artistic ramifications: ringing harmonics, directional counterpoint from different loudspeakers, the inherent theater of this new kind of guitar orchestra. In an important sense, Mr. Branca is presenting neither classical music nor instrumental rock but a new kind of live electronic music. He uses electric guitars, not as artifacts of rock but as electronic-music instruments bent to uses that have their roots in Futurism, Dada, Varese and the 60's sound-colorists as well as symphonic music, free jazz and heavy-metal rock. However one chooses to categorize this music, the fact remains that it is part of a movement and that if anyone can claim leadership of that movement, it is Mr. Branca." (John Rockwell NEW YORK TIMES)

"Branca is now frighteningly good, one of the best composers alive; the exuberance, intelligence, and newness of his music can make everything else around sound stale and tame. Rock and Roll shocked and transformed the pop music world when it emerged; when Branca's work surfaces, the new music community is in for an equivalent surprise." (Greg Sandow VILLAGE VOICE)

NEW AND UPCOMING:

Schedule 2012-13

Performances by The Glenn Branca Ensemble (Guitars: Reg Bloor, Eric Hubel, Greg McMullen and Ben Miller. Bass: Arad Evans. Drums: Libby Fab. Conductor: Glenn Branca)

- July 8, 2012. MARSEILLE, France. MIMI Festival on Ile du Frioul

- July 24-25, 2012. SAO PAULO, Brazil. Mostra SESC de Artes

- August 24, 2012. NEW YORK CITY. Public Assembly, Brooklyn.

- September 30, 2012. WASHINGTON D.C. Sonic Circuits Festival.

- March, 2013. PARIS, France. Cite de la musique.

Performance by Crash Ensemble:
- November 2, 2012 DUBLIN and November 18, 2012. HUDDERSFIELD CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL, England. Crash Ensemble will perform world premiere of "Thought" by Glenn Branca.

Works In Progress:

"Symphony No. 14 (The Harmonic Series)" in five movements for full orchestra. The first movement of which has been completed and performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as commissioned.

"Crazy Opera" Full length opera with computer sampled orchestra, five major singing roles, small chorus and live chamber group. Libretto by Matthew Maguire.

"False World, Good Night!" (a symphony in seven movements for 100 violins and orchestral percussion).

1. I quit thee from my thought, My part is ended on thy stage.
2. My tender, first, and simple years Thou didst abuse and then betray.
3. In a soil hast planted me Where breathe the basest of thy fools.
4. Nothing is examined, weigh’d, But as ’tis rumour’d, so believed.
5. Every freedom is betray’d, And every goodness tax’d or grieved.
6. I will bear these with that scorn As shall not need thy false relief.
7. But make my strengths, such as they are, Here in my bosom, and at home.
Excerpts from the poem FAREWELL TO THE WORLD by Ben Jonson (published in 1616)

"The Smoke" (concerto for electric guitar with guitar ensemble and drums in three movements) for Arad Evans and the Glenn Branca Ensemble.

"Bounded In A Nuthouse" (a farce) Music Play for chamber ensemble.

"Still Waters and Crashing Waves" (solo orchestral percussion piece) for Sarah Mullins.

"Psychopathological Beast" music for primitive analogs of conventional instruments. (11 musicians).

"ASCENSION III"

1. A Theophany
2. German Expressionism
3. Lesson No. 4
4. Xoxo (for Mark Leyner)
5. Cold Thing (La Belle Dame sans Merci)
6. Ritardando

"Metal" Symphony in four movements for various cymbals, gongs, bells and other metallic percussion (20 percussionists).

Studio recording of "Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City)" in four movements for 100 electric guitars, basses and drums.

"Time And Timbre" a percussion piece for 6 PVC pipes and electronic reverberation.

The completion of these works is dependent upon funding which is either pending or waiting to be commissioned.

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Release of "Symphony No. 7" (for orchestra) Live in Graz 1989 on Cd and Mp3. Out now on SYSTEMS NEUTRALIZERS (links below)

Recently Released Vinyl of Branca's - "The Ascension" on LTD edition 180g white vinyl available directly at: www.fortissimorecords.co.uk - only 900 copies.

Some upcoming releases by Branca on Systems Neutralizers:

1. re-release of: "Symphony No. 9 (L'Eve Future)"
2. never released songs from late 70's no wave band: "THE STATIC"
3. early music: "Music from The Bastard Theater and The Dubious Music Ensemble"
4. "The Ascension: Three"
5. "Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City) for 100 guitars"
6. "Symphony No. 4 (Physics) live in Europe 1983
7. "Symphony No. 15 (Running Through The World Like An Open Razor)