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Rynhart Speakers - Michael Dervan The Irish Times  31 Jul 2010

Rynhart Speakers

MICHAEL DERVAN

NCH Kevin Barry Room

Who, you might be tempted to ask, are the Rynhart Speakers, who made their debut in an Irish Composers Collective concert at the NCH Kevin Barry Room on Tuesday? That, however, would not be the right question. They’re a what, not a who. Composer Dylan Rynhart has updated the Leslie speakers, the loudspeakers that give the Hammond organ its special tremolo effects, and brought them into the digital age. The Leslie speakers distribute higher frequencies through a rotatable horn, mounted on top of the speaker cabinet. Actually, what’s mounted there is a pair of horns, but the second one is included only for physical balance during rotation.

The rotation of the horns in a Leslie speaker can be set to medium, fast, or off. Rynhart has made the speed infinitely variable within its working range, and is also able to reverse the direction of the spin.

The Hammond organ tremolo is the result of what’s known as the Doppler effect, familiar from the fall in pitch of ambulance sirens when they pass you by. But tremolo is not what interests Rynhart the most. The spinning horns also spatialise the sound by sending it off in different directions to be reflected or absorbed by whatever it encounters. It’s the spatialisation that’s been firing him up, so much so, that he’s not bothered at all with the low-frequency aspect of the Leslie speakers, and he uses a separate, unmodulated sub-woofer in his setup.

The Rynhart Speakers are presented in a four-unit layout, in which the spinning of all four speakers – placed not at the corners of a listening area, but at the sides – can actually be kept in synch (or not, if that’s what a composer wants).

Well, then. What does it all sound like? Before Tuesday’s concert at the NCH Kevin Barry Room, Rynhart made a short presentation. The impression in rapidly moving music or in speech was of fragmentation and blurring. The familiar Hammond organ effects came most obviously into play when the sound was more constant. The spatialisation was, well, hit and miss.

Rynhart opened and closed Tuesday’s programme with works of his own. Components is an edit of separate performances of a piece that calls on players to improvise, with all of the performances piled on top of each other – a good opportunity to sample the speakers’ effects on individual lines. Spin Cycle comes from the Fuzzy Logic Ensemble’s Mouthpiece album, and provided the opportunity to hear the spinning speakers transforming co-ordinated, jazzy ensemble writing and voice.

It was useful to have such clear reference points from the speakers’ developer at either end of the programme. A number of the evening’s pieces were drone compositions, Piaras Hoban’s newmorningwintervlight getting heavy and dirty and detailed, Francis Heery’s Glean[edit] clearly concerned with stasis, and offering an almost dimensional shift as the horns began to rotate slowly, and Adam McCartney’s Troposphere-AMDG bringing the sound of a “dilapidated” pipe organ into the electronic domain for slow transformations.

Three other works were performed on conventional speakers, Matthew Whiteside’s Youth tantalisingly blended not always readily decipherable recorded speech with the sounds of what might have been a fan or a gentle vacuum cleaner. Ian McDonnell’s Spear Fragment was a recorded improvisation, playing with sine tones and taped scratching sounds, and espousing a sense of narrative that most of the other works seemed to shun. And David E McCarthy’s Performance VII offered a sonic assault with punitively loud drum-kit effects synched to strobe lighting – the composer provided a health warning, and himself chose to exit the room before the performance.

As to the Rynhart Speakers? Are they an important development, or just a tool waiting for a task? Time alone will tell.

Mouthpiece album review - Cormac Larkin The Sunday Tribune  25 Oct 2009

Dylan Rynhart/Fuzzy Logic Ensemble
Mouthpiece

Composer and keyboardist Dylan Rynhart has been leading his nine-piece ensemble for the last seven years and it just keeps getting better. Mouthpiece is their second recording and marks a considerable advance on their first, New Hat. The leader's writing has become more assertive, with stronger melodies and more space for the soloists, and he has drawn into the ensemble several players, including guitarist Joe O'Callaghan and saxophonist Brian Wynne. Produced by German conductor Florian Ross and featuring top UK trumpeter Tom Arthurs, Fuzzy Logic now rate among the most daring and original musical ensembles working in Ireland today.

Mouthpiece album review - Kevin Stevens The Journal of Music  1 Oct 2009

BIG MOUTH
Ideas you don't often encounter in a big band


FUZZY LOGIC ENSEMBLE
Mouthpiece

FUZZY LOGIC ENSEMBLE is Ireland's largest and longest-running big band - or "contemporary improvising ensemble" as composer and founder Dylan Rynhart prefers to describe the group. This distinction is important. "Big band" can connote music of the swing era or a conventional reeds-and-brass, riffs-and-solos approach that is far from Fuzzy Logic's sound range and musical vocabulary. Yet the band is very much part of a jazz tradition that goes back to Duke Ellington, using extended forms and varied instrumentation to create a broad range of sonorities and textures. Like Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer, Rynhart writes music with a compelling balance of highly arranged orchestral passages and carefully chosen solos. And like Brookmeyer's protégé Maria Schneider, he searches out non-traditional rhythmic and ethnic influences to create twenty-first-century music that is both sharply executed and expressively open-ended.

Mouthpiece is the ensemble's second recording, and its flowing lines and tight sound are evidence of the band's longevity and its success in articulating its founder's vision. Much credit is due to Rynhart, who continues to drive the group with hard work and good-natured advocacy. Credit must also go to Florian Ross, conductor and musical director of the pieces on this album, and of course to the musicians, whose collective dedication is matched by inspired execution and inventive soloing.

The album's centrepiece is the title track, which takes as its point of departure a fragment of a speech recording of Rynhart's mother, Justine, in which she speaks of a painting done by her stepmother. Her words carries themes of family, creativity and legacy into the piece, but they also allow Rynhart, who transcribed his mother's voice musically and arranged the tune's melodies around its rhythms, to explore the dimension the spoken word brings to music - hardly a new concept, but one you don't often encounter in the big-band tradition.

The shifting, multi-textured density of "Mouthpiece" is very satisfying and characterises the album as a whole, especially "Flip Shuffle", with its lilting melody and intriguing rhythms; the Zappaesque "There is so much to Smile about", featuring Joe O'Callaghan's fluid guitar and Sue Rynhart's airy vocals; and the quirky "Dusty Time", which surprises at every turn. Rynhart sticks mostly to Fender Rhodes on this outing, and it would have been good to hear more of his swirling Hammond organ, which enlivens tenor saxophonist Brian Wynne's piece "Order Later". Nick Roth's composition "pliARS", with Roth's ferocious alto sax weaving through the tune's Middle Eastern rhythms, is also a highlight. The musicianship is brilliant throughout, particularly Roth and guest soloist Tom Arthurs on trumpet.

FUZZY LOGIC ENSEMBLE has been a prominent feature of the local Dublin scene over six years, so it is appropriate that the album has been so handsomely packaged and presented by Fuzzy Music and the Improvised Music Company, who have both done so much to document this very productive period in Irish jazz.

Mouthpiece album review - Ray Comiskey The Irish Times  4 Sep 2009

DYLAN RYNHART: FUZZY LOGIC ENSEMBLE

Mouthpiece

On this second CD by composer/ keyboardist Dylan Rynhart's Fuzzy Logic, his writing, though clearly by the same hand (six pieces are his, two by ensemble members Brian Wynne and Nick Roth), is an obvious advance on his fine debut. The voicings are richer and more varied and there's a particularly deft sense of proportion to the development of texture and counterpoint. Replacing cello, French horn and clarinet with tenor, soprano and electric bass has enhanced the ensemble, while solo options are increased not only by Joe O'Callaghan (guitar) and the brilliant Tom Arthurs (guesting on trumpet and flugelhorn), but also by Wynne (tenor) and Cathal Roche (soprano). And the complex ensembles, thanks to conductor Florian Ross, are among the best executed by an Irish jazz ensemble. Standout examples of a uniquely conceived project include Flip Shuffle, Dusty Time and The Difference between Light and Hard.

RAY COMISKEY

The Sunday Tribune - Cormac Larkin  16 Aug 2009

Putting together a jazz band is a quixotic affair at the best of times. But putting a large ensemble together, and keeping it together for the best part of a decade, is a feat of the most sublime optimism. Eternal optimist Dylan Rynhart founded his ten-piece FuzzyLogicEnsemble in 2002 to perform his own compositions and since then, the ensemble has toured extensively and in 2005, released its first album, New Hat, to great acclaim.

If there was a concern, it was that with such a young group, there were no mature soloists who could do justice to the scores Rynhart was putting in front of them. The addition of saxophonist Brian Wynne - himself a formidable composer but also a player of great depth - and the recent arrival of virtuoso guitarist Joe O'Callaghan have added considerably to Rynhart's palette.

For the group's second album, Mouthpiece, which will be launched at the National Concert Hall on Wednesday night, the composer has also drafted in some special guests, including the highly-regarded German pianist and composer Florian Ross as producer, and up and coming British trumpeter Tom Arthurs to add some bite to the horn section.

www.fuzzylogicensemble.com.

The Irish Times - Arminta Wallace  15 Aug 2009

Defying definitions of logic

The Arts : Dylan Rynhart's jazz ensemble breaks many moulds, with his innovative compositions and unusual juxtaposition of instruments - including a voice - in the 10-piece orchestra

JUST about the last place you expect to find a jazz musician is on the River Shannon, doing a spot of sailing. "Hi. I'm dry," says Dylan Rynhart. "The sun came out. It's been so windy all day - we've been reefing sails and we got absolutely soaked. But it's a nice way to spend a week. The Shannon is a lovely place to be."

His words conjure up an image which is light-years away from the heavy-drinking, smoky-bar jazz stereotype. But then we don't have smoky bars any more, jazz ain't what it used to be and this young man - voted Best Young Irish Jazz Artist at the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival four years ago, when he was just 24 - is accustomed to demolishing preconceptions. He describes himself as a composer rather than a performer; and when, almost a decade ago, he came to set up a band to play his music, he eschewed the trios and quartets he saw around him and established a 10-piece orchestra. Why? "I think it's the sound," he says. "When you've got a trio, okay, there's great things you can do. But when you're trying to deal with sonority and musical texture, which is what interests me - well, I mean, there's so many different sounds that every instrument can make. When you multiply that by 10 it just becomes massive."

Besides, he adds, no one else is doing it - at least, not in quite the same way. "There are a few people who are doing big bands, and are actually playing big-band scores, and that's great. But it's not necessarily what we're doing. I would consider Fuzzy Logic Ensemble to be a contemporary music ensemble that improvises, rather than a jazz band as such. I don't want people to think they're coming to a big-band gig. It's very different."

WELL, YES . There's a clue in the name. Who came up with Fuzzy Logic? "I did, actually. We had our first rehearsal, and I was driving some of the lads to the Dart station, and we were, like, so what are we going to call this band? And for some reason I had written ‘fuzzy logic' into my phone because I liked the words. I liked the idea of making decisions - about writing, for example - in a kind of illogical way. It was only afterwards that I discovered it's a mathematical term. The way I had it described to me is that if your microwave is open, then it's open - and if it's closed, then it can work. In fuzzy logic it can be closed enough to work, but not really closed."

Difficult mathematical abstractions are not, in any case, what Rynhart's music is all about. "I love the idea of surprise in music," he says. "I think it comes across in the way I write things. I love to change the context all the time - which probably makes my music a bit crazy and not as cohesive as it might be."

It's also attractive, easy-going and - according to reviewers who are expert in these matters - highly distinctive in the sonority department. This is partly because of the way Rynhart structures his pieces and partly because of the way Fuzzy Logic Ensemble juxtaposes classical jazz instruments - with a central trio of Cathal Roche on soprano sax, Nick Roth on alto and Brian Wynne on tenor - with more untypical instruments such as Kate Ellis's cello and Lee Tobin's electric guitar. Most distinctive of all is the role played by the voice of Rynhart's wife Sue, a classically-trained soprano who has studied with Emma Kirkby and is a lay vicar choral at Christchurch Cathedral.

"Our use of voice makes the ensemble sound very specific," says Rynhart. "The voice is prevalent in any mix - whether you listen to live or recorded music, your hearing automatically gets drawn to the voice as a kind of centrepiece." But Sue, he says, thinks of the group as a choir rather than a band with herself as "lead singer", which is a very different proposition.

The mellifluous voice of the English trumpeter Tom Arthurs is also a centrepiece of Fuzzy Logic's new album, Mouthpiece , which will be launched with a live performance at the National Concert Hall next week.

The album is, in Rynhart's words, "a collection of music written for trumpet and ensemble . . . inspired directly and indirectly by speech, patterns, emotion and expression". He describes Arthurs, who was commissioned to write a piece for this year's BBC Proms which will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 on August 31st, as "a superb trumpet player - someone you can rely on being 100 per cent on-it all the time - a fantastic performer".

The title track of the new Fuzzy Logic album, however, features someone much closer to home. "The inspiration for Mouthpiece was an interview I did with my mum," says Rynhart - whose interest in jazz is also something of a family affair. His uncle Ivor Carroll, now deceased, was a tenor saxophonist and his cousins Justin and Roy Carroll are major players on the scene. "I want to hang on to the family stories because some of them are really, really bizarre," he says.

HIS GRANDFATHER moved to Ireland from England as a young man, moved into the Shelbourne Hotel and lived on the second floor. "It was all very lavish." In the Mouthpiece interview, Rynhart's mother speaks - with great affection, it must be said - about her step-Grandmother "Bessie."
"All kinds of people have played with the idea of speech in music, from Steve Reich to Zappa to the piano player Jason Moran," Rynhart says. He took the recording of his mother's voice and transcribed it musically, mapping the pitches on to the stave, writing down the rhythms, then arranging the melody for the band in various different ways.

"I think one of the most important things when you're writing music is to try and think about the relevance to people," he explains. "If you're used to hearing a lot of polkas, say, and I put a polka into the music, it will be a reference point for you. Speech is an interesting one, because everyone hears people talking all the time - but they don't generally associate it with music. With my mum talking, my idea is that she has an accent that I'm familiar with. So when I hear her ‘speech melody' in the music, it's an anchor point for me because in some sense I would feel I've heard it before.

"The strange thing is that the meaning in the words doesn't necessarily translate into music. When you record someone laughing - or saying something in a kind of a joyous way - sometimes it can really be sad musically. The intervals in the speech are exactly the opposite of what you might expect."

As a concept, speech transcription may seem to be a long way from the traditional jazz set-up of improvisation on basic, often familiar, melodies. But Rynhart insists that jazz itself has moved much faster than our preconceptions often allow.

‘IT'S SUCH A fascinating art form - it's so intricate and there's so much to it," he says. "And we've got to the point now where we're not just playing music which was popular in the 1930s and 1940s any more. As a composer, I spend a lot of time working arrangements; and I like the idea of written music as a starting-off point for improvisation.

"You learn all these rules when you're learning to compose," he adds. "And then it all goes out the window when you start putting pen to paper. Or finger to keypad. Getting going is the really hard bit. Getting started. I really want to write a piece for the album launch, because we have this fantastic piano player, Florian Ross, coming over from Germany. He was the conductor and musical director for the recording, and he has written a piece for the band - so I really want to write one as well."

He is, he says, toying with a new piece based around the medical card protests last October. "I was really angry about it, so I started gathering all these recordings of people getting really upset about the recession and how the Government was really squeezing the small people, or whatever. There was one woman who spoke in a very articulate way about how it was morally wrong."

Let me get this straight. Rynhart is planning to produce a new composition between, what, now and next week? "Okay, let's see," he says. "What day is today? Oh. Tuesday. So I have to write it by tomorrow fortnight - but I also have to score it and deliver the parts. I don't know if it will happen or not."

We'll just have to wait and see. But personally, I wouldn't bet on the likelihood of the terms "happen" and "not happen" being able to withstand a bit of determined fuzzy logical magic.

---

Mouthpiece will be launched in the John Field Room at the National Concert Hall in Dublin on August 19th at 8pm. The title track can be downloaded from fuzzylogicensemble.com

The JMI - Kevin Stevens  4 Jul 2008

Think Global, Play Local

Below is the review he gave of FuzzyLogicEnsemble's performance in the Royal Hotel:

"Fuzzy Logic's afternoon gig at the Royal, where the band was joined by British trumpeter Tom Arthurs, was a tight, engaging display of challenging pieces by leader and composer Dylan Rynhart. Rynhart prefers the term 'orchestral jazz' to describe the band's music, reflecting his investigation of a sound range outside the big-band tradition. Tunes like 'Reflected Reasoning' and 'Spin Cycle' are extended, segmented pieces that offer intriguing textures - a unison line of voice and guitar, say, against a march of horns and Hammond organ - that constantly surprise and yet are always organic to the structure of the piece. The band was powerful and well-rehearsed, with notable contributions from all, especially Arthurs and alto saxophonist Nick Roth. Guitarist Joe O'Callaghan, drafted late to replace Lee Tobin, played superbly."

This is only a small part of an excellent article, to subscribe to the JMI,
simply goto: www.thejmi.com

The Irish Times - Ray Comiskey  7 May 2008

Bray Jazz Festival
- extract -

There was much to admire, too, in Mouthpiece, at the Royal Hotel, where composer and orchestrator Dylan Rynhart's Fuzzy Logic teamed up with British trumpeter Tom Arthurs. Almost a week of rehearsals and touring had sharpened the ensemble's delivery of his demandingly inventive charts, all but one of which, Happy New Year , was new or relatively so.

Rynhart's pieces, crammed with ideas, melodic, contrapuntal and rhythmic, are full of incident, light and shade. But on the evidence of So Much To Smile About, Twist Your Shape and Flip Shuffle , especially, this abundance is being developed more cogently and impressively. And that, in a way, is an apt simile to describe the festival, which next year will be 10 years old.

They both deserve and require the chance to move on to the next level.

The Sunday Tribune - Cormac Larkin  27 Apr 2008

Bray Jazz Festival gets feather in its cap
- Quote -

Dylan Rynhart's excellent biggish band Fuzzy Logic are heard all too rarely on Irish stages

The Bray People - Colm Kelpie  16 Mar 2007

No rest for the talented Dylan as he rises to new heights with the group 'Fuzzy Logic' Life is full of 'all that jazz' for local musician

Dylan Rynhart has a busy life these days. He's just recently been conferred with a degree in music technology from Trinity, he teaches transition year students at his old secondary school, and he's planning his marriage which he hopes will take place in June.And then there's his upcoming show in the Mermaid, for which he is deep in rehearsals. Rynhart is the brains behind 'Fuzzy Logic Ensemble', a group of 10 jazz musicians which was set up in 2002, and which have been playing in some of the most prolific jazz festivals around, including the Cork festival for some years, where Rynhart won 'Best Young Irish Jazz Artist' in 2005.

'In the last three years we've done various things, like playing in Cork Jazz festival. We tend to do a series of concerts every so often,' he says.
'Last month we're in Dublin, this month in the Mermaid and I think next month we're back in Dublin again.. we move around the country quite a bit.'

Fuzzy Logic is made up of Sue Brady on vocal, Bill Blackmore on trumpet, Cathal Roche on soprano sax, Nick Roth on alto sax, Brian Wynne on tenor sax, Kate Ellis on cello, Derek Whyte on bass, Lee Tobin on guitar and Phil MacMullan on drums and then Rynhart on the hammond organ.

Already the group has won much acclaim from some of the most prolific critics in the business. 'A music quite unlike anything that has preceded it on the Irish Jazz scene, hugely enjoyable for its quirky beauty and rich orchestral palette.
A group to savour', said The Irish Times in a recent review, and, it's not an inaccurate appraisal.

Since its formation some five years ago now, the group has worked hard to develop its own unique style, setting them apart from most jazz bands with the flexibility and sonority of their unique instrumentation, and the orchestral harmony and rhythmic Balkan influence. A lot of that success should be attributed to Rynhart's compositional skills.

'Jazz is a funny thing in Ireland, in the centres there is a huge following for it..this is something that can't be stressed enough,' he says.
'In Ireland there is a definite trend in jazz. People generally talk about European jazz being different to American jazz, like that which would be in New York.
'It used to be popular in the thirties and nobody really listens to it that much, but now with this new generation of young musicians in Dublin, there's a huge following for it,' he says.

A native of Delgany, Rynhart's inspiration came at a young age, mostly from his uncle who lived and played with some of the great jazz artists in New York in the 50's. By chance, a CD was given to him one Christmas in his youth which impressed him to such a degree that 'he never looked back'.Rynhart attended East Glendalough School in Wicklow Town, before later studying music technology in Trinity. As fate would have it, he's now found himself back at his old school lecturing transition year students, an experience which he seems to find mildly odd.

'It's funny. I went back to my old secondary school to teach and it's just very strange going back to my old school. I was just in the staff room today and I feel odd sitting down with a coffee with people I've tormented for years,' he laughs.

The next few months will be busy for Rynhart, with an expected date for his marriage to fellow musician Sue Brady in June. For now though, he's deep in thought for next week's concert, particularly special as, for a change, he'll be playing in his home county. Featuring new music, the programme will be looking strongly to the future, with a view to the recording of a much anticipated second album following the release two years ago of 'New Hat', Fuzzy Logic Ensemble's debut effort, much heralded by critics.

Fuzzy Logic will take to the Mermaid stage on Saturday, March 24 at 8 p.m. Tickets are available from the Box Office on (01) 2724030.

The Irish Examiner  4 Jan 2006

Those who called the tune in Irish music during 2005
-Extract-

Dylan Rynhart - Musician

Born: Dublin, 1981

Rynhart began learning piano seriously in 1996 and started on the Hammond organ in 1998. Influenced by the infamous exploits of his uncle Ivor Carroll, who had a close association with Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk in New York in the 1950s, Rynhart developed a keen interest in jazz. He studied for three years at the Newpark Music Centre, on their jazz diploma program, and has since started a masters degree in music technology in Trinity College, Dublin. His Fuzzy Logic Ensemble, formed in September 2002, features 11 of Ireland’s finest young jazz and classical musicians. What set’s them apart from other jazz groups is the flexibility and sonority of their instrumentation.

Why included: An exceptional young talent.

The Sunday Tribune - Cormac Larkin  10 Jul 2005

Fuzzy Logic Ensemble New Hat - album review

One of the surest signs that the future of Irish jazz is in safe hands has got to be the emergence over the last couple of years of composer and organist Dylan Rynhart and his Fuzzy Logic Ensemble.

Most of this 10-piece group, that includes cello and voice as well as a clatter of horns, are still in their 20s, but they play the leader's quirky compositions with an assurance well beyond their years. Rynhart's deft arranging for this unusual line-up particularly impresses, recalling the master, Kenny Wheeler.

The Sunday Tribune - Cormac Larkin  13 Jul 2003

Festival electricity
- extract -

THIS year's ESB Dublin Jazz Festival may have been small but it was almost perfectly formed. The fact that it ended with two of the best, most musically satisfying concerts that I have seen in some years may have helped to put a better spin on the earlier concerts in the week, but I don't think so. In all, an excellent week featured 11 bands, with musicians from four continents and at least 12 countries that I counted.

The week began with a double bill of new Irish groups at Whelans. Dylan Rynhart's Fuzzy Logic stepped up another gear as the opening act of the festival and further enhanced their reputation. Then Michael Buckley presented a new group iFive, which combined new groove based melodies from the leader with the witty, sometimes wilful iconoclasm of the Carroll brothers, Roy and Justin, on samples and Hammond organ respectively.

The Sunday Tribune - Cormac Larkin  22 Jun 2003

A world wall of sound
- extract -

This year's ESB Dublin Jazz Festival brings musicians from as far as Vietnam, Brazil and Clondalkin

The festival opens on Tuesday 1 July with an excellent, allIrish double-bill at Whelans of Wexford Street. Dylan Rynhart's Fuzzy Logic have been causing quite a stir in Dublin over the last few months. The music is mostly composed by Rynhart, who also plays organ, and the strong band includes Colm O'Hara on trombone, Nick Roth on saxophone, Daniel Jacobsen on guitar and the justifiably ubiquitous Sean Carpio on drums, making the first of three appearances in the festival.

The Sunday Tribune - Cormac Larkin  1 Jun 2003

Storming the castle in the name of the bishop
- extract -

The Music Room, above the Firestone on Abbey Street, is an excellent room for jazz and runs a regular club on Friday nights.

The line-up for June is a mix of the young and not so young:

trumpeter Bill Blackmore will be presenting some new music with his group on 6 June; then on 13 June, pianist and composer Dylan Rynhart's excellent Fuzzy Logic return after their acclaimed appearance at the Helix last month.