Selections from The Mayan Cycle

by Jeremy Haladyna

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Jewel case with 12page booklet and 1CD

Includes unlimited streaming of Selections from The Mayan Cycle via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Borgia from Demon Zero 04:08	info	buy track
2.	Precious First Rat 05:37	info	buy track
3.	Escalation from Demon Zero 03:57	info	buy track
4.	Godpots (Ollas) 13:28	info	buy track
5.	Luubchords from Demon Zero 04:13	info	buy track
6.	Only Armadillos They Danced 05:21	info	buy track
7.	Intelligent Life on Other Flutes 07:01	info	buy track
8.	Snake Mountain from Tollan 05:58	info	buy track
9.	Puczikal Peten 18:04	info	buy track

about

Musical alchemist?

Jeremy Haladyna just might be the foremost musical alchemist in the Americas. Because, for a decade he’s been quietly turning the laws of the Mayan calendar into music—in different ways. Thanks to him, it’s possible now to listen to the Mayan calendar. And if hearing the calendar doesn’t suggest Mayan legend and ritual turned into gold, you’ll be hard pressed not to hear rats, armadillos, snakes and sacrificial blood, which all run through this music in due course.

Leave it to the pioneering label innova to feature the one-of-a-kind and newly hybridized. Over twenty years and eight visits to the Mayan region, American composer Jeremy Haladyna of UC Santa Barbara has ventured ever more deeply into the magic and mystery of Mayan culture, and given something back in the form of his unique body of work, THE MAYAN CYCLE. Spanning media and genre, from a single instrument, to voice, to computer, to DVD-audio, to full orchestra, this wide variety of pieces seeks to address everything from the most ancient roots of Mayan cosmology to contemporary Mayan political struggles.

The new musical scale Jeremy Haladyna crafted in 2006, born of the luub, or Mayan zero point, is the grit and substance of the opening track on this just-released CD. Virtual guitar, disembodied voices (as well as howler monkeys painstakingly tuned to match them) sing notes literally plotted on the motions of Earth, Venus, and the Mayan sacred almanac. We imagine we hear an old Mayan daykeeper ritually counting to thirteen, the mystical Mayan number, in the distant background. This is Borgia, one third of Haladyna’s startling work in these new cosmological notes…Demon Zero.

A scratch turntable—manned by the composer—is turned to entirely new ends as it impersonates the wheels of Mayan time in Demon Zero, then turns impish as it plays armored armadillo in Only Armadillos They Danced, partnering with string quartet. The story here has the Hero Twins from the Mayan Popol Vuh entertaining the Lords of the Underworld, whom they will soon outwit. The same Popol Vuh holds the inspiration for a companion piece, also on the CD, about their rodent ally, Precious First Rat.

Haladyna’s Snake Mountain from Tollan has the oboe sounding like Medusa as it and pipe organ entwine in a mystical dance. The context of “The Place of the Reeds,” [Tollan] is so shrouded in mysterious, distant legend that even the ancient Maya could only half recall it: we hear music invoking a place where the patron gods of Mayan cities were born.

These are colorful and alive performances, well matched to Haladyna’s exotic music honing in on each conceptual core. Relish the medal-winning performance by Areon Flutes of Godpots (Ollas), on a Lacandón rite, recorded at the 2009 Fischoff Chamber competition. You won’t hear a greater variety of flute sounds—all flute sizes plus ocarinas—on any other single track elsewhere. Lisa-Maree Amos of Orchestra Victoria [Melbourne] excels in Precious First Rat, where her gamboling alto flute is paired with Haladyna’s celesta. UCSB’s Young Artists String Quartet calmly plays the foil to the armadillo in Only Armadillos They Danced, while Sergio Ortiz of Mexico’s Concertistas de INBA narrates the chilling Puczikal Peten (Hearts of Yucatán). L.A. recording stalwart Michele Forrest is likewise transporting in her sailing melodic work on Snake Mountain, and starkly frightening where she needs to be.

All in all, a magical album fortunately not too late for the approaching “end” of Mayan time! And judging by the cultural wealth of the material Haladyna takes up, there’s no cause for worry.

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released May 25, 2021

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Jeremy Haladyna Santa Barbara, California

Dr. Haladyna divides his time between US-Santa Barbara and Pre-Columbian America in creative interpretations of ancient Maya culture

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