“An Anarchic Young Composer’s Masterpiece…. some of the most original and playful classical
music of this decade.” – New York Times
“Simon Hanes’ GARGANTUA, a head-spinning mash-up of blaring brass, eruptive blast-beats
and vocal ornamentation that was totally sui generis.” – The Gig
“perhaps the season’s most bombastic release.” – A Closer Listen
“GARGANTUA is hectic, amusing, stressful and loaded with delicious details. But what lingers
is the uncomfortable, eruptive quality of its playfulness. David Breskin’s remarkably muscular
and legible production draws you in rather than confronting you, the instruments wrapping
around the listener’s headspace, a trap of beguiling texture and silliness that is always on the
edge of snapping shut and crushing from all sides.” – The Wire
GARGANTUA IS:
Voices:
Priya Carlberg
Isa Crespo Pardo
Jolee Gordon
French horns:
Kevin Newton
Noah Fotis
Blair Hamrick
Trombones:
Jen Baker
Jacob Garchik
Colin Babcock
Basses:
Anna Abondolo
Jesse Heasly
Trevor Dunn
Drum sets:
Jon Starks
Matt Bent
Kevin Murray
Composed, arranged, and conducted by: Simon Hanes
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
GARGANTUA is scored for large ensemble, consisting of 3 drum sets, 3 electric basses, 3 trombones, 3 french horns, and 3 high voices. This instrumentation came into my mind during a long, beautiful hike I took in Molde, Norway with a couple friends during the Molde Jazz festival in 2022 (my thrash metal trio Trigger was performing that year). I had already had the idea of a sextet (3 basses, 3 drum sets) in my mind for several years, but during that hike, some combination of the surrounding Nordic forestry, the calm introspective repetitive act of hiking, and the profoundly stellar view of the fjords at the summit of Varden (famous for its vista of 222 mountain peaks) struck me to my core. I became overwhelmingly inspired by the orchestrational possibilities which would result from adding brass and high voices to my low-end heavy ensemble. I can’t say exactly what it was that brought the sonic image into my mind’s ear so clearly at that moment… It’s possible that I was just in the right frame of mind to receive the idea, and I couldn’t think of anything else for quite some time afterwards.
The title of the work is inspired by Rabelais’ 16th century pentalogy “Gargantua and Pantagruel” – A series of novels chronicling the adventures & exploits of a giant named Gargantua and his son, Pantagruel. The work is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, and features a great deal of erudition, vulgarity, and wordplay. Considered extremely obscene by Rabelais’ contemporaries, the series of books is long-since considered a classic of satirical literature, and Rabelais has frequently been named as the world’s greatest comic genius, in retrospect. On a personal level, reading Gargantua & Pantagruel (in phases) throughout my 20s always left me feeling deeply inspired, as if a psychic door had been opened which connected my mind and soul to a centuries-old transgressive artistic unconscious. That inspiration is what set the spark to create an ensemble that could sonically capture and musically explore the epic, monumental and bombastic extremes – both terrifying and joyous – that Rabelais conjures so deftly.
