November 2005

Sublingual Ensemble
Listen to "Bone People " mp3 (requires audio plugin)

 Church, Michalowski, Cornish, Nastos and Crozier

As the Cicada Breathes, performed by the Sublingual Ensemble (Abzu Recordings, 2004, $12.92).

Piotr Michalowski , the George G. Cameron Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, has played a variety of musical instruments since his boyhood in Poland and England.

An expert on the mythology, magic, arts, culture, archaeology, language and history of ancient Mesopotamia, Michalowski earned two MAs at the University of Warsaw in 1968 and his PhD from Yale University in 1976.

The polyphonically profound and perverse Sublingual Ensemble plays an unusual variety of instruments on As the Cicada Breathes. In addition to Michalowski on soprano sax, sopranino sax and bass clarinet, the group includes James Cornish (trumpet, flute, violin and percussion), Rob Crozier (chromatic harmonica, steel drum and acoustic bass), Elijah Church (ba-hu [a Hindi stringed instrument], recorder, whistles, guitars and electronics) and Michael G. Nastos (drums/cymbals, hubkaphone [a xylophone made of hubcaps], bells, wood whistles, Tiger squeak toy, voice, shakers and percussion ).

In his review in Improvijazzation Nation71, Rotcod Zzaj stated that Cicada "will hold the listener intrigued from the opening bar, and that's 'saying something' for music that's as heavily improvised as this is.…
[O] ne of the most interesting listens I've had this year, and gets a Most Highly Recommended from our ears."

Sublingual Ensemble website

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