Charlie Morrow - America Lament (2020)

America Lament is a panoramic musical survey of legendary experimental composer/event-maker Charlie Morrow’s eclectic works. At just over 40-minutes, America Lament is mysterious, beguiling, and jubilant, comprised of pieces employing everything from hand-made electronics to Irish lap pipes, ecstatic jazz to Schubert recompositions, ambient flutes, and a string quartet. Charlie Morrow and Recital’s Sean McCann excavated 50 years of Morrow’s bottomless archive, from 1970 to 2020, to present this follow-up to 2018’s Recital release Toot! Too.

Charlie Morrow (b. 1942 in Newark, NJ) is a composer, sound artist, performer, and innovator. With concert performances and ad jingles (including Hefty trash bags – “Hefty, Hefty, Hefty! Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!”), city-wide events and film soundtracks, museum sound installations and hospital sound environments, Morrow’s work has been experienced by a wider audience than most creative artists can claim.

Charlie’s music has a melody and depth to it that I feel is absent from a lot of avant-garde music. His keen interest in all musical styles seem to inform this harmony. Charlie’s drive to interconnect people and ideas is contagious and affirming, and working with him has been one of the pleasures of my life. We have forthcoming releases in 2021 by Alison Knowles, Jerome Rothenberg, and a box set of the 1980 International Sound Poetry Festival.