The Trilogy Tapes’ first CD presents a studio recording of Jack Sheen’s Solo for Cello, a 35’ work written for Anton Lukoszevieze, the cellist, artist, and Director of the group Apartment House, renowned for their recent recordings of John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Jim O’Rourke, amongst many others. 

“Jack Sheen’s Solo for Cello and fixed audio is an extended exploration of the resonant body of the cello, but also a kind of flickering, glitchy and incessant ‘moto perpetuo’, of extreme intensity and a delicate beauty. The cello has a particular scordatura tuning, which creates an enigmatic harmonic ‘space’ to its sounding throughout the work. I am reminded of Horatio Radulescu’s sound icons, which are grand pianos laid on their sides and bowed, creating strange and ethereal webs of microtonal harmonic fields.

As the cellist constantly bows the heavily muted cello with various arpeggiated freneticism's, the instrument emits a particular halo of harmonic resonances creating a spectral and ghostly effect, deceptive and illusory. The work gradually morphs into different sections, each with their own particular motivic identity, at times accompanied by an audio playback of various densities. The latter sections of the work have a baroque-like lightness and ornamental quality, but do not allay the dramatic incisiveness of the the work, which ends with a final enigmatic spasm of sounds.”- Anton Lukoszevieze