Many have been taken by the works of New Orleans’s Byron Asher and NYC’s Tomas Majcherski, but few have heard them as the Sonic Chambers Quartet. Joined by rising bassist (and frequent collaborator) Matt Booth from North Carolina and NOLA’s beloved avant-garde drummer Doug Garrison, the new group has teamed up with 577 Records to release its debut album, Kiss Of The Earth. It’s a beautiful, thought-provoking arrangement of emotion, creativity, and freedom that soothes your soul.
Though not official until 2023, the Sonic Chambers Quartet has been unknowingly in the making for over a decade. When fate brought Asher and Majcherski together, they bonded over their creative passions and strikingly similar life paths that meandered through avant-garde theater and formal studies in philosophy and religion. These shared experiences turned out to be highly valuable to their collaborations. Equally gifted on the clarinet and saxophones, the two performed together all over NOLA’s music scene and beyond. In their new project, the emotional impact of their work is nuanced by Booth’s and Garrison’s talents and contributions.
Sonic Chambers Quartet’s first release, Kiss Of The Earth, was forged from diverse improvisational and compositional techniques. Unique woodwind instrumentations emphasize colors and textures, deepening the sounds and their interpretations. The first two tracks convey the pioneering results of Asher and Majcherski’s perpetual experimentation with collaborative composition. Others blend Black American avant-garde and European chamber music traditions, as is most noticeable in the title track (an arrangement of the first movement of Part One of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, reduced to “an improvisatory vehicle”).
Kiss Of The Earth was recorded in rural southwestern Louisiana at Dockside Studios. There, Sonic Chambers Quartet joined forces with Brian Seeger (a longtime mentor to each of the four members), who produced and mixed this album. It will be available on 200 first-edition CDs or digital download starting April 11, 2025.
