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Gene Pritsker

Composer Gene Pritsker has written over eight hundred compositions, including chamber operas, orchestral and chamber works, electro-acoustic music and songs for hip-hop and rock ensembles. His compositions employ an eclectic spectrum of styles, that are influenced by his studies of various musical cultures.

      He is the founder and leader of Sound Liberation, an eclectic hip hop-chamber-jazz-rock-etc. ensemble. He also Co-Directs Composers Concordance. Gene's music is performed all over the world at internationally recognized festivals and by highly respected ensembles and performers.

      He co-founded the Grammy-nominated Absolute Ensemble with Kristjan Jarvi and has been a composer in residence and guitarist since its creation in 1993.  He worked closely with jazz fusion legend Joe Zawinul and has orchestrated major Hollywood movies, including 'Cloud Atlas', for which he wrote additional music and composed his ''Cloud Atlas Symphony’. He is also the lead orchestrator for such TV series as Babylon Berlin, Jett, Netflix's Sense8 and Messiah. Gene is the lead orchestrator and has additional music in the 2021 film The Matrix Resurrections.

    “My music is extremely eclectic, for me music has no bounds - I view the world of music as one big genre. My motto for my art is ending the segregation of sound vibration.”

  Gene is also a guitarist/rapper/Di.J./ and producer he incorporates each of these musical attributes to create music that is “not designed for easy listening or to melt into the background. It is insistent. It demands attention and curiosity." - New York Newsday.

www.genepritsker.com


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49
Album Review

Gene Pritsker: William James's Varieties of Religious Experience

Read "William James's Varieties of Religious Experience" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose


William James's Varieties of Religious Experience is the long-awaited companion to Gene Pritsker's Varieties of Religious Experience Suite (Innova Recordings, 2010). On this album, the guitarist has almost completely re-imagined William James' 1902 book, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, as a chamber opera. The opera describes the spiritual experiences of several individuals near the end of the 19th Century as described to James, the celebrated philosopher and brother of the writer Henry James. The philosopher presented ...

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Performance / Tour

John S. Hall Of King Missile Strikes Sky Vault + Mike Visceglia, Gene Pritsker, Wayne Dumaine, Charles Coleman, Robert C. Ford & Carlinius M On March 29, 2024

John S. Hall Of King Missile Strikes Sky Vault + Mike Visceglia, Gene Pritsker, Wayne Dumaine, Charles Coleman, Robert C. Ford & Carlinius M On March 29, 2024

Source: Robert C. Ford

On Friday March 29, 2024, at 7:30pm EST an intimate salon concert will be held at Sky Vault in the Financial District of New York City. Featured performers include poets Robert C. Ford, John S. Hall (King Missile) and Carli Munoz aka Carlinius M (Beach Boys, Eddie Gomez), accompanied by baritone Charles Coleman (Paavo Järvi, London Symphony Orchestra) and musicians Mike Visceglia (bass—Suzanne Vega, John Cale), Gene Pritsker (guitar—Matrix Resurrections, Joe Zawinul) and Wayne Dumaine (trumpet—New York Philharmonic, Prince). John ...

4

Performance / Tour

Gene Pritsker's Sound Liberation Feat. Lara St. John At Joe's Pub Saturday, March 9, 2024

Gene Pritsker's Sound Liberation Feat. Lara St. John At Joe's Pub Saturday, March 9, 2024

Source: Robert C. Ford

On March 9th at 7pm (doors open 6pm), Joe's Pub and Composers Concordance present “Vivaldi's Hot House." This composition by Gene Pritsker (Matrix Resurrections, Joe Zawinul) is a starting point for this eclectic event with violin doyenne Lara St. John and Pritsker's ensemble Sound Liberation. The concert will feature a genre defying repertoire of music inspired by various composers from the past including Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mozart, reinterpreted with jazz, metal, hip-hop, etc. Featured singers include soprano Adriana Valdes, baritone ...

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Performance / Tour

Gene Pritsker's Sound Liberation At Nublu Sunday, February 25, 2024

Gene Pritsker's Sound Liberation At Nublu Sunday, February 25, 2024

Source: Robert C. Ford

On February 25, 2024 at 7:30pm, Composers Concordance presents The Sound Liberation Trio at Nublu (151 Avenue C, NYC). The trio is comprised of Gene Pritsker (Matrix Resurrections, Joe Zawinul) guitar, Adam Holzman (Miles Davis, Steven Wilson, Brave New World) moog/synth and David Cossin (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) drums in a program of eclectic trio compositions. Joining the trio are trumpeter Franz Hackl (Outreach Music Festival) and trombonist Dick Griffin (Sun Ra's Arkestra) as well as poets Kelsea Brunner, Robert ...

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Performance / Tour

NYC Salon Concert With David Soldier, Jason Kao Hwang, Gene Pritsker & Robert C. Ford Set for Thursday January 11, 2023

NYC Salon Concert With David Soldier, Jason Kao Hwang, Gene Pritsker & Robert C. Ford Set for Thursday January 11, 2023

Source: Robert C. Ford

On Thursday January 11, 2023, at 7:30pm EST a concert will be held at the Sky Vault in the Financial District of New York City. It will feature original music and poetry by world class performers in an intimate salon atmosphere. This event is private but a free livestream is available via the Ticket Link below to the Facebook event page. Featured performers include David Soldier violin/acoustic guitar, Jason Kao Hwang violin, Gene Pritsker electric guitar and Robert C. Ford ...

‘Gene Pritsker: Varieties Of Musical Experience’ "Gene Pritsker is a modernist at heart. If there is something new to be said to describe an old form or even a formless old thing – as old as yesterday, that is – this extraordinary musician will be among the first to say it…All of his music is of the highest quality, audacious and witty, joyous and elevated, and incomparable to anything written and recorded. In all of this Gene Pritsker has created a singular vocabulary, spoken not only by someone deeply schooled in music but also in history, theology, and philosophy." The New York Times described him as "...audacious...multitalented." Joseph Pehrson, writing in The Music Connoisseur, described Pritsker as "dissolving the artificial boundaries between high brow, low brow, classical, popular musics and elevates the idea that if it's done well it is great music, regardless of the style or genre"

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Composers
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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Footprints of Steel

Composers Concordance Records/Naxos Distribution
2024

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CompCord@40

Composers Concordance Records/Naxos Distribution
2024

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Puzzle Complete

Composers Concordance
2024

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Better Now

Composers Concordance Records/Naxos Distribution
2023

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The Music Between Us

Composers Concordance Records/Naxos Distribution
2021

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Protest

Composers Concordance/Naxos Distribution
2021

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