Slow Six
Slow Six are a classical crossover group based in New York City and led by composer/violinist Christopher Tignor. They released their debut album, Private Times in Public Places, on Western Vinyl on April 29, 2004, then switched to the classical label New Albion for their second, Nor'easter, released on July 31, 2007. By the time of their third album, Tomorrow Becomes You, which found them back on Western Vinyl, they were a quintet consisting of Tignor, Rob Collins on Fender Rhodes electric piano, Stephen Griesgraber on guitar, Ben Lively on violin, and Theo Metz on drums.
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Selected Press
Composer and computer musician Chris Tignor's Slow Six exists in a rarefied realm bordering on classical minimalism and post-rock chamber groups like Rachel's. The band's debut release, Private Times in Public Places, is a thing of rare, fragile beauty, urgently recommended to admirers of Brian Eno's ambient music and West Coast minimalists like Ingram Marshall and Harold Budd.
Each (song) has its own breath and life, and moves with a spirit that feels like a wise and aged soul...the music becomes more lovely with every replay.
Arvo Part meets King Crimson.
Instinctively marrying amplified classical strings, fender rhodes piano and electric guitars, which they process through homegrown software instrumentation, these classically trained musicians, led by composer Chris Tignor, conjure up melancholic chamber music that appears to gently ebb and flow through schisms in space and time, while the dramatic tension created between instruments cascades over you with cut-glass perfection...8/10
In these two releases, Slow Six accomplishes something very rare in creating spellbinding art music that's wholly accessible to the masses without suffering any compromise to its artistic integrity.
Uncommon serenity and lushness...a space of majestic respite from Lower East Side antics
Their music can be haunting, it can be thoughtful, it can be soaring, it can be resigned... But it is always good. If you thought you couldn't listen to classical beyond the obvious choice cuts from Wagner or Beethoven, Slow Six is a great excuse to delve back into orchestral music.
If you have a beating heart, working ears, and the patience to listen to half-hour long tracks that have the slow, careful, and unswerving dedication of minimalism, then you need to hear this album. 8/10