The last time we reviewed music from Harry Taussig was in 2017 when Tompkins Square released The Music of Harry Taussig and Max Ochs, featuring new recordings he made in December 2016 and of Ochs in January 2017. The album marked the 50th anniversary of Contemporary Guitar – Spring ’67, which was released on John Fahey’s Takoma label and also featured Robbie Basho, Bukka White and Fahey.
Two years prior, Taussig had released a short-run private press LP in 1965, Fate Is Only Once, which would be later reissued by Tompkins Square in 2006. Talking about that album, Tompkins Square note that at the time of Fate, acoustic musicians were still largely stuck in a rigid “folk” mindset, and examples of the exploratory guitar sounds were hard to come by.
It would be many years before Taussig returned to music – “he spent years as an educator, published instructional guitar books, and traveled extensively to photograph weird museums.” In 2012, he released his first album in 47 years, Fate Is Only Twice –
…and followed with Diamond of Lost Alphabets, Too Late To Die Young, a split album and tour with fellow Takoma pioneer Max Ochs, and a remix album by Kid Millions (Oneida).
His new album ’80’, will be released on his 82nd birthday, March 31st, 2023, via Tompkins Square.
Harry Taussig on ‘80‘ :
“With a perspective of about 60 years, I finally understand what I’ve been trying to do in my musical compositions over these six decades. I grew up with two musical streams – at home it was European classical music, at college it was American folk music. And I bathed in both streams.
Like several of my contemporary guitarists, I wanted to extend the American folk guitar tradition into previously unexplored territories. Each found their direction: blues, psychedelia, etc. Mine was using the theories of classical musical forms, both traditional and contemporary.
One of the delights of classical music is that the composer will constantly play with the listener, allowing him or her to guess where the music is going and then surprise them by not going there at all, but going to another place unexpected but equally logical. This seems to be the throughline in my musical heroes: Bach, Schoenberg, Glass, and many others. I have adopted many of their structural schemes, rhythmic devices, and harmonic stratagems to counter the comfort and predictability of folk (and popular) music. I delight in the response, “You can’t do that … oh, I guess you can.”
More details soon via Tompkins Square