"Cycles" Ron Thomas - Keyboard Synthesizer John Swana - EVI Synthesizer Joe Mullen - Percussion Vectordisc 006 & 007 2 CD Set Recorded by Glenn Ferracone at The Music Centre, Exton, PA June 17, 2003 and October 12, 2004 Mastered by Paul G. Kohler Produced by Richard Burton Cycles is a collection of 11 feature length tone poems, cinematic landscapes and quasi-mystical soundscapes. John Swana and Ron Thomas (synthesizer sounds) and Joe Mullen (percussion)create everything from tiny microscopic events to swirling masses of raging mountainous ostinatos. The resulting music is more like drama and cinema(characters, psychologies, plots, narratives) than just "listening to" music. Essential to the presentation of course is the excellent soundscape recording techniques of recording engineer Glenn Ferracone. Several trial sessions preceded the pieces released here and other projects are ahead for this group including performances and future recordings. Ron Thomas John Cage was always a great source of joy and refreshment for me. I visited him once or twice a year. We drank strong Japanese tea together, and I would just let him talk about whatever he was into at the moment: Satie, Thoreau, Nanotechnology. We had some great discussions. I think it is helpful to remember that John was a Buddhist and also was very interested in technology. He really was trying to change the way both artists and the public thought about art. And him succeeded. Ron Thomas I discovered the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen around 1958 or 1959 through the Robert Craft recording of Zeitmasse wind quintet. After I graduated from the Manhattan School of Music, I learned that Stockhausen was going to be in Philadelphia in the spring of 1964. I appeared in his class at the University of Pennsylvania. He was substituting for George Rochberg for the semester. I latched myself onto him, told him, I sold everything I had to come here! Ah, a true artist, he said. He was a young man still - 36, and I was 24. He gave me a direct insight into post-World War II musical thinking in Europe. I absolutely adored him. But he was also way too much of a blinding light in a way. I needed to recover from him-a bit too charismatic. He gave music new forms of expression, new feelings. Miles Davis called it bettering the forms of music. Berlioz called it endowing the music with new actions. Ron Thomas REVIEW FROM ALL ABOUT JAZZ By DAN MCCLENAGHAN, Published: April 30, 2007 http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=25419 Many jazz pianists have a grounding in the classical side of music. Ron Thomas's anchoring may be deeper there than most. His back-to-back piano trio outings, Doloroso (Art of Life Records, 2006) and Music in Three Parts (Art of Life Records, 2006), explored some very alluring, loose sound shapes shaded by his classical side in a quite accessible way—gorgeous recordings, both. A trip to the pianist/composer's website and an exploration of his eloquent and extensive ramblings is quite a strange trip. Thomas reveals that when he saw the romantic comedy The Seven Year Itch in 1957, he was "mysteriously prompted" by the soundtrack's inclusion of Rachmananoff's "Second Piano Concerto" to become a musician. This was a movie that starred Marilyn Monroe. I remember the movie well; but Rachmananoff—sadly, in retrospect—didn't make an impression on me; which may explain, in part, why Ron Thomas is making great sounds and most of the rest of us aren't. With Cycles, though, a first impression was: "What the hell is this?" After experiencing the organic beauty of the two 2006 piano trio sets, Thomas makes a departure, with his keyboard synthesizer in place of the piano, teaming with trumpeter John Swana, who plays an electric valve instrument here, and Joe Mullins on percussion. This is strange stuff: electric washes and trilling neon noises, cries that sound like whale songs mixed with soundscapes and indecipherable messages from outer space. Atmospheric to the max, this feels like a science fiction movie soundtrack a good deal of the time; speaking of which, one of his compositions here is "Electric Sheep (Dream of the Android)," borrowed from the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep that became the movie Blade Runner. Mullin's drumming keeps thing from soaring out of the galaxy, nailing down the glowing and diaphanous electricity. Or at least trying to. Without him this might have been an unlistenable experience; with him things get tied—albeit loosely—together. With him, amorphous atmospheres gain shape and become weirdly compelling. Record Label: Vector Disc | Style: Beyond Jazz Ron Thomas can be heard on other Vectordisc recordings as a leader (Scenes from a Voyage to Arcturus, The House of Counted Days with John Swana, Tony Marino and Joe Mullen, 17 Solo Piano Improvisations, Elysium and Wings of the Morning). Ron also appears as on the following Vectordisc recordings The Mike Falcone Quartet's "Playing Live", Richard Burton's "Simple Major Simple Minor" and Kristin Garson's "Music Under the Influence". Ron has other CDs as a leader (Music in Three Parts, Blues for Zarathustra and Doloroso) on Art of Life Records. He also appears on Pat Martino's "Live" and Eric Kloss's "One, Two, Free". For more information click links at the below left of this page.