Partch, Harry: Bitter Music vol.1 (Bridge Audio CD 3-disc set)  

Performed by Partch: John Schneider (voice, adapted viola, adapted guitar), Gary Eister (voice, piano), Richard Valitutto (piano), Paul West (kithara)

Includes Harry Partch speaking about Bitter Music.

This long-lost journal of Harry Partch’s wanderings during the Great Depression (from cleaning sewers to having tea with Irish poet W. B. Yeats) is an extraordinary musical portrait of an American pioneer, chronicling his occasionally hilarious and often heartbreaking struggles to forge a new music system outside the classical tradition. This première recording of Bitter Music takes the form of readings and collected musical fragments- an aural diary of what was going through Partch’s mind and ear during a critical period in his artistic development.