An album of new music for Hardanger d’Amore and Hardanger fiddle, by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Dan Trueman. Bog bodies, ghost walks, superstitions, fables, and more…
Thirteen original tunes for the Hardanger d’Amore, composed and performed by Dan Trueman.
What he brings is an abundance of space, a sense that each tune could last a whole night long. From the sprightly ‘Upham Down’ to the reflective ‘Sills Gully’ this is a moving, personal journey.
—Songlines Magazine
The Hardanger d’Amore is a new 5-string instrument, a cross between the 5-string fiddle and the Hardanger fiddle. Dan commissioned the first of these from renowned Norwegian instrument builder Salve Håkedal in 2010, and Salve has now made more than 30 for fiddlers from around the world.
These tunes—”Crooked Tunes from the Crooked Downs of Shoreham”—are a product of Dan’s experiences with traditional music from Norway, Ireland, and America, contemporary and early classical music, and are named after places in Shoreham, New York, where he grew up.
An octet for string quartet and percussion quartet.
‘Songs That Are Hard to Sing’ straddles early and contemporary traditions to arresting effect… The forty-two-minute piece inhabits a fascinating space given that it could pass equally convincingly as rustic material created by self-trained musicians at some remote cabin as a work produced by music academics conducting microtuning experiments at a university.
—Textura
Olagón
an evening-length collaboration between composer/fiddler Dan Trueman, vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird, and Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon, featuring Eighth Blackbird, directed by Mark DeChiazza.
Named Top Classical Album of 2017 by The Boston Globe.
Note that this is NOT the full-fledged opera that will premiere in April 2023 in Dublin, featuring the addition of Gelsey Bell as Medhbh.
Six Etudes for bitKlavier.
The etudes, some fast and virtuosic, others spare and introspective, unfolded to beautiful and haunting effect in a haze of pitch-bending, echoes, distorted rhythms and eerie timbres.
—The New York Times
music by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Dan Trueman for two 5-string Hardanger d’Amore fiddles.
a seamless and unfettered soundscape / the work of musicians revelling in the moment: a rare find
—The Irish Times ★★★★★
The quartet members gamely do battle with drum machines; attach speaker drivers to bass drums and play with the resulting feedback; and manipulate synthetic string timbres with golf video-game controllers, complete with tethers. And on top of all that, they play more conventionally written sections for percussion with aplomb. It’s this shared commitment to bringing seemingly disparate elements together that makes Trueman and So a winning association.
—Time Out New York
music by Brittany Haas and Dan Trueman
for two fiddles and a band.
a fascinating mix of driving American fiddle playing with otherworldly Hardanger textures… totally freed from the constraints of form, and let roam melodically and rhythmically through an earthy-ethereal paradox of composition, improvisation, tradition and abstraction.
—Journal of Music
The thirteen tracks on Unpacking the Trailer are based on tunes written by Trueman or Treuting and refined by the group collectively, without notation. It was a cassette recording of traditional Norwegian dances and wedding marches that inspired Trueman to take up the Hardanger fiddle, and the album’s sound is infused with an energy and jubilant spirit to effectively “combine chamber music intricacy with folksy twang” (Time Out New York). The songs are by turns joyful, wistful, playful, and melancholy; tuneful, but filled with offbeat details that repay repeated hearings with increasing pleasure. One might call the group’s music Americana, if Oslo and Brooklyn were located in the Appalachians.
A beautifully detailed piece of work.
—The Rambler
a bold statement of purpose disguised as an unpretentious lark
—Time Out New York
An evening length work for fiddle, guitar, percussion quartet, and projected “animated paintings” by Judy Trueman.
The music on Gardens, composed by Trueman, includes rustic folk melodies, gangly dances and pulse-oriented workouts on woodblocks and marimbas–as well as flowerpots, rocks and a wheelbarrow–interspersed with quirky narratives written by Jennifer Trueman and read by her and Rinde Eckert. A DVD matches the music to images by painter Judy Trueman, computer-animated like a gallery full of Kandinsky canvases dancing to their own gaudy rhythms.
—Time Out New York ★★★★★
Machine Language
Six chamber works, performed by Dan with the Brentano String Quartet, the Daedelus String Quartet, Non Sequitur, the Tarab Cello Ensemble, and others.
Once again, Bridge Records has presented a composer from the East Coast scene whose music is not only unique and intelligent, but also deserves attention.
—Classics Today
Recording Field, H
a DVD of improvisations and dance pieces by Curtis Bahn, Tomie Hahn, Dan Trueman, and Pauline Oliveros.
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Live electronic improvisations, by Dan Trueman (6-string electric violin, sensor bow, Bowed Sensor Speaker Array) and Curtis Bahn (sensor bass).
Sounding like flames igniting a fuzzy nylon carpet or someone munching a mouthful of needles.
—Time Out New York
Trollstilt
Music for Hardanger fiddle and guitar by Dan Trueman and Monica Mugan.
In a feat of impressive musical alchemy, Trollstilt has fused an ancient tradition, the Hardanger fiddle repertoire of Norway, with modern compositional technique and created something truly 21st-century. Dan Trueman’s tunes, which range from the demonic to the playful, extend the form without sacrificing the spirit or rigor of the original music. Monica Mugan’s intricate, sympathetic guitar accompaniments bring something new to the tradition that will be copied for years to come. This is hypnotic, fresh, bracing music.
—Bob Norman, Sing Out!