Mike Svoboda: Phonometrie links Satie to Cage

Trombonist and Composer Mike Svoboda is presenting his personal vision on the work of Erik Satie with the release of his new album “Phonometrie”. The record offers both Svoboda arrangements of Satie-pieces, as well as Svoboda-originals written especially for inclusion in the context of a Satie-project. Eschewing the over-played “hits”, “Phonometrie” was inspired by a remarkable quote from the French enfant terrible: “Everyone will tell you I am not a musician. That is correct. From the beginning of my career I immediately considered myself a phonometrographer. My works are pure phonometry." Mike Svoboda has taken on the challenge of making this claim transparent and to uncover parallels with the work of John Cage and the Dadaist movement. In line with what Satie would probably have enjoyed himself, his own pieces have not been written in a spirit of pleasing, but are providing for necessary contrasts. “Phonometrie” is out now on Wergo.