“Conlon Nancarrow meets Thelonious Monk – a mathematical master with groove. Maroney manages to keep jazz in motion without demystifying it.
Instead of displaying virtuosity, a collective consciousness unfolds that questions space, time, and sound... a composer who approaches jazz as if he's remeasured the universe.”
 - Alexander Moell, Amplifed

Herb Robertson – trumpet
Ellery Eskelin – tenor saxophone
Denman Maroney – composition and sampled hyperpiano
Mark Dresser – bass
Phil Haynes – drums

Recorded April 11, 1995 live in concert at the Knitting Factory, New York NY.

I met trumpeter Herb Robertson in the 1970s through multi-instrumentalist David Simons, who invited him to join our band Iota Jot Yod with vocalist Shelley Hirsch and bassist Skip LaPlante, Ed Schuller, or Arthur Kell.

I met drummer Phil Haynes in the early 1990s when we both played in bassist Mark Dresser’s quintet with trumpeter Dave Douglas and vocalist Theo Bleckmann.

I met saxophonist Ellery Eskelin at around the same time at Phil’s Corner Store studio in Brooklyn.

I formed the band on this album in order to play along with digital samples of hyperpiano, which I had made because I feared the acoustic piano was an endangered species.

I called the piece Mean Times, not because times were mean, but because I was (and still am) interested in temporal harmony. Thus here mean means intermediary not nasty.

Now times are indeed mean meaning nasty, and Herb Robertson has died, so it feels right to release this recording despite the low fidelity.

Oscar Wilde said all art is quite useless. I disagree.

Mean Times press release

“Pianists have been tinkering with the guts of their instruments for nearly a century now, but it’s altogether likely that no one has explored the art of prepared piano as diligently or creatively as hyperpianist Denman Maroney.” – Time Out New York

The music of "hyperpianist" Denman Maroney is inspired by nature and the music of John Cage, Ornette Coleman, Henry Cowell, Duke Ellington, Charles Ives, Scott Joplin, Olivier Messiaen, Thelonious Monk, Conlon Nancarrow and Karheinz Stockhausen among others. Maroney plays what he calls hyperpiano, which involves bowing and sliding the strings with bars, cylinders, bowls, blocks, and cases and gives him a unique sonic vocabulary. He also uses a systemœ of temporal harmony, based on the undertone series (1, 1/2, 1/3...) that allows him to improvise and compose in multiple tempos at once.

Maroney has composed some 90 works and recorded some 50 albums (35 as a leader) with Dave Ballou, Theo Bleckmann, Michael Dessen, Dave Douglas, Mark Dresser, Andrew Drury, Min Xiao Fen, Robin Fincker, Denis Fournier, Ratzo Harris, Shelley Hirsch, Earl Howard, James Ilgenfritz, Leroy Jenkins, Lisa Karrer, Dominic Lash, Emilie Lesbros, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mat Maneri, Bob Meyer, Angelika Niescier, Oscar Noriega, Kevin Norton, Barre Phillips, Ned Rothenberg, Rich O’Donnell, Michael Sarin, Megan Schubert, Samuel Silvant, David Simons, Hans Tammen, Scott Walton, and Matthias Ziegler, among others.

Jimmy Garrison and James Tenney were among his favorite teachers. He has a Master of Fine Arts degree in composition and piano from Cal. Inst. of the Arts. He has won fellowships from Chamber Music America, National Endowment for the Arts, NY Foundation for the Arts, NY State Council on the Arts, Arts Council of Rockland (NY), Michigan Arts and Culture Council, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Music Omi, and Yale Summer School of Music and Art. He has performed in Canada, USA, Mexico, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, China, South Korea, and Japan.

In 2006 Agusti Fernandez invited Maroney to perform solo on a piano series he curated for the Fondatió Miró in Barcelona, Spain. The series ran in conjunction with an exhibition of Tampered Pianos by Carles Santos. The music on this live album, Nits Musica, is what Maroney played at the exhibit. It’s a mélange of his compositions ‘Pulse Field’ (11:59 of track 1) and ‘Kilter’ (beginning of track 2) and his improvisational techniques hyperpiano and temporal harmony, respectively (1) playing the keys with one hand and the strings with the other using bows and slides of metal, plastic, rubber, and wood and (2) writing and playing in pulse fields and rhythmic canons. Nits Musica is Denman Maroney’s first release on Cuneiform Records.

Nits Musica press release