Ars Nova Workshop Presents: David Torn at Philadelphia Art Alliance

The Philadelphia Art Alliance and Ars Nova Workshop are proud to present this special performance by influential guitarist and producer David Torn.

David Torn (a.k.a. "splattercell") is a film composer, texturalist, guitarist, and produce of international stature, renowned for his unique musical voice which seems to span a broad range of idioms and styles. His characterful and compositionally textural work has had material impact and influence upon both film scoring - through his own scores, in addition to his creative contributions to the scores of Carter Burwell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Howard Shore, Mark Isham, and others - and, generally, upon contemporary electric, electro-acoustic and electronic music. Torn's creative contributions have also graced the works of other musical artists-of-note as diverse as David Bowie, Jeff Beck, Sting, David Sylvian, John Legend, Tori Amos, Tim Berne, Madonna, Jan Garbarek, Jarboe, Manu Katché, Laurie Anderson, Don Cherry, Tony Levin, Dave Douglas, and many more. Torn was educated by Leonard Bernstein ("Music for Young Composers"), and privately by John Abercrombie, Pat Martino, Paul Weiss & Arthur Basile....

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The Philadelphia Art Alliance and Ars Nova Workshop are proud to present this special performance by influential guitarist and producer David Torn.

David Torn (a.k.a. "splattercell") is a film composer, texturalist, guitarist, and produce of international stature, renowned for his unique musical voice which seems to span a broad range of idioms and styles. His characterful and compositionally textural work has had material impact and influence upon both film scoring - through his own scores, in addition to his creative contributions to the scores of Carter Burwell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Howard Shore, Mark Isham, and others - and, generally, upon contemporary electric, electro-acoustic and electronic music. Torn's creative contributions have also graced the works of other musical artists-of-note as diverse as David Bowie, Jeff Beck, Sting, David Sylvian, John Legend, Tori Amos, Tim Berne, Madonna, Jan Garbarek, Jarboe, Manu Katché, Laurie Anderson, Don Cherry, Tony Levin, Dave Douglas, and many more. Torn was educated by Leonard Bernstein ("Music for Young Composers"), and privately by John Abercrombie, Pat Martino, Paul Weiss & Arthur Basile.

In 2015, Torn returns with only sky, an album that explores the far sonic edges of what one man and a guitar can create, a solo recording of almost orchestral atmosphere. It is Torn’s first ECM release since 2007’s acclaimed prezens, a full-band project, with Tim Berne, et al., that Jazzwise described as “a vibrating collage full of shimmering sonic shapes, a dark, urban electronic soundscape – a potent mix of jazz, free-form rock and technology that is both demanding and rewarding.” Many of those same descriptors apply to only sky, with its hovering ambient shadows and vaulting flashes of light, its channeling of deep country/blues memories and Burroughsian dreams of North Africa. Recorded in the acoustically apt hall of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in upstate New York (and then added to and manipulated in Torn’s own mad-scientist lair), only sky is an album to get lost in, over and again.

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