Discography
Taking Auspices (2018),
On her debut solo album, violinist Erica Dicker employs original compositions and improvisation to evoke desolate environments and postindustrial landscapes. The disintegrating remains of the abandoned coal mines and steel mills that formed the backdrop of Erica's early childhood in the German Ruhrgebiet provoke her imagination and are magnified by her fascination with ancient practices of augury and occultism.
Stark and often brutal textures emerge through Erica's exploration of the geography of her instrument, a setting where improvisation is an act of divination and her superstitions yield themselves to musical structures. Each of the four pieces on Taking Auspices was inspired by a serendipitous event or encounter that changed Erica's perception of her environment and her relationship to it.
Collaborations with Anthony Braxton
12 Duets (DCWM) 2012
Anthony Braxton: sopranino, soprano, alto, baritone, bass, and contrabass clarinet, electronics
Erica Dicker: violin, prepared/scordatura violin
Kyoko Kitamura: voice
Katherine Young: bassoon, electronics
Several years ago, Anthony and I discovered our mutual (giddy) enthusiasm for the music of Richard Wagner. I feel compelled to mention this because there is a positively orchestral, if not Wagnerian, element to our recording together—a sonic Gesamtkunstwerk, if you will, representing all registers of playing. In each take, new drama unfolds, as if each were a new act in an operatic continuum.
Yet the most amazing thing about the process of recording with Anthony was the vast spectrum of sounds made by only two people. Much of this was inspired by the ghostly presence of the interactive electronics, which we joked about being the “third member” of our duo. I also used a second scordatura instrument, whose tuning I experimented with over the course of the two day recording process.
Such deep, multi-dimensional exploration can only take place in an atmosphere of friendship and positive energy. These qualities are what make working with Anthony so inspiring and richly rewarding. - Erica Dicker
Quartet (Warsaw) 2012
Anthony Braxton – alto & tenor sax
Erica Dicker – violin
James Fei – alt sax
Taylor Ho Bynum – cornet
Sextet (Falling River Wall Music) 2007
Anthony Braxton: saxes
Erica Dicker: violin
Sally Norris: piano
Katie Young: bassoon
Matt Musselman: trombone
Dan Peck: tuba
Trillium J 2016
To many players to possibly list
Violin: Erica Dicker (concertmaster), Sam Bardfeld, Sarah Bernstein, Julianne Carney, Jason Hwang, Mazz Swift, Scott Tixier, Ginger Dolden
Trillium E 2011
Each of Trillium E’s four acts features a different episode: a genie in a bottle, the invention of human cloning, interplanetary space travel, and the exploration of a jungle pyramid.
Echo Echo Mirror House (NYC) 2011
Recorded live at the 2011 Tri-Centric Festival at Roulette
Anthony Braxton, Andrew Raffo Dewar, James Fei, Steve Lehman, Chris Jonas, Sara Schoenbeck: reeds; Taylor Ho Bynum, Reut Regev, Jay Rozen: brass; Renee Baker, Erica Dicker, Jessica Pavone: Strings
In Echo Echo Mirror House musical system, all the musicians wield iPods in addition to their instruments, while navigating scores that combine cartography and evocative graphic notation, creating a musical tapestry combining live performance and sampled sounds from Braxton’s extensive recorded discography.
New Music Contribuitions
Ascending Primes (2024)
a double album of Modney’s compositions for solo, trio, quintet, septet, and undectet pursuing transcendence and ecstatic space. Built on the foundation of Modney’s interests in tuning systems and exploring extremes of harmonicity and dissonance, the album convenes prime-numbered ensembles made up of the composer’s peers in the uncategorizable terrain between modern jazz and classical practices.
David Lang’s
anatomy theater (2019)
follows the astonishing progression of an English murderess from confession to execution and, ultimately, public dissection before a paying audience of fascinated onlookers. Through the miracle of opera, she sings through it all.
Concrete & Void (2021)
Wavefield, a New York City based contemporary music ensemble founded in 2016, releases its debut recording featuring works recorded in October 2020 in an outside parking garage in New Jersey, an environment which facilitated social distancing as well as collective music making. The recording is as much a byproduct of their ongoing relationships with longtime composer collaborators and an openness to a wide range of notational contexts as it is a document of the resiliency of the creative impulse during a trying year
Precepts (2021)
During 2019 and 2020, Eli Wallace was absorbed with studying the organization of pitch content employed by Earle Brown, and the graphic notation of Anthony Braxton and Anestis Logothetis. To create Precepts, Wallace wanted to marry graphic notation with pitch content, subtly hinting at pitches to be played during the piece. The work is divided into four movements, and each movement contains four pitches, equalling 16 pitches in total. Each movement contains four different pitches, and there are four notes that repeat during the piece, creating a macro pitch content that stretches over the course of the entire piece.
Idiom (2021)
Idiom is a series of six pieces by Anna Webber, each of which is based on a specific woodwind extended technique -- a broad term meaning any non-traditional way of producing sound on an instrument, including the use of multiphonics, alternate fingerings, key clicks, overblown notes, and the like -- that she has taken from her own improvisational language. The works are the upshot of her belief that jazz composers/performers are in a privileged position to create the perfect vehicles for themselves as improvisers.
Stars and Constellations (2023)
features Nachoff on tenor alongside bassist Mark Helias (reprising his role from Magic Numbers ) and drummer Dan Weiss, also his collaborators in the venturesome Ethereal Trio, which released its self - titled debut in 2018. They’re joined throughout the album by the Bergamot Quartet, with the addition on “Pendulum” of The Rhythm Method . Both are New York City-based string quartets adept at navigating both complex compositional material and improvisation.
Contemporary Chaos Practices (2018)
The critic Steve Smith writes in the liner notes: "The present recording …. by an ensemble of first-call freelancers…… provides eloquent evidence of what Laubrock has achieved. Both of her orchestral pieces – Vogelfrei, with its variegated textures, animated rhythms, swooping vocals, and inexorable momentum….. [this recording] serves notice of an estimable composer who has something to say, and knows exactly how to say it."
Projects
Blood Luxury (2022)
Erica Dicker - violin
Dennis Sullivan - percussion
a collection of abrasive, sometimes fragile pieces recorded in 2019. Already steeped in darkness, as if in anticipation of the despondency and desolation to come, Dicker and Sullivan invoke the most raw and vulnerable aspects of their psyches in a ritual ode to impermanence.
Trespassers (2024)
Erica Dicker, violin
Eli Wallace, prepared piano
Deric Dickens, percussion
Three Days (2023)
Erica Dicker, violin. baritone violin
Allen Otte, percussion amplified sound boards, shortwave radio
Paul Schuette, synthesizers, guitar