Barrett Martin

Grammy-winning producer and percussionist, Barrett Martin, presents his 11th studio album, “Atmospheric Tremblings." Here the group enters new territory with an album of 15 ambient compositions inspired by Barrett’s work on the Condor Deep Space Telescope in southern New Mexico. After assisting in the assembly and alignment of the telescope, Barrett noticed that some of the distant star formations captured in the telescope’s photos, looked more like musical notations. Drawing from John Cage’s theory that music often appears in natural landscapes, Barrett took blank music staff paper and laid it over the star photos. He then sketched out these "star melodies," which became the foundational ideas for the album. Referencing the earliest Arabic names for the stars, these compositions feature Barrett playing a variety of instruments including: piano, upright bass, kalimbas, gamelans, and an unusual, bowed vibraphone technique. Assisting him in the studio are percussionist Lisette Garcia, trumpeter Dave Carter, saxophonist Skerik, and Arabic oud performances from Iraqi legend, Rahim Alhaj, and Chilean-American virtuoso, Alain Johannes. “Atmospheric Tremblings represents a more mystical, experimental side to my compositional style, in this case, working directly with astrophysicists and astronomers to create music based on star formations and extragalactic structures in deep space. It feels like the most adventurous and beautiful solo album I have ever made.” -Barrett Martin