AXIOM (traditional liner notes)

An axiom is a self evident truth. Everything in this album represents different aspects and shades of truth.

 

Just as there are many facets to truth, there are different styles of music that can best portray the idea of truth in music. The Axiom Quartet believes all music is beautiful when heard through the voice of the string quartet. When The Axiom Quartet and Karl Blench selected the music for this album they chose compositions from multiple genres to best convey the complexities of truth.

 

“Insight” is the exhilarating realization of truth while “Little Lies” bends truth. “Er Barme Dich” represents confession and “Pur Ti Miro” dances around the subtle truths found in love. In “Everything Means Nothing to Me” an artist painfully expresses the truth in his heart while Billie Holiday begs a lover to not tell her the truth in “Don’t Explain.” Charles Ives pays homage to the truth that Transcendentalism gave to all of us in the “Alcotts.” The last track, “Axiom,” is a new composition for string quartet by Karl Blench. “Axiom” is a work about seeking truth and reason, only to have had the answers present from the beginning. Karl Blench wrote all of the arrangements and original compositions for this album.

 

There are small moments of music, also original compositions of Karl Blench, between each of the longer sections of this album. They blend and blur the ideas of the music that comes before and after them to portray the grayer tones of truth.

 

Lastly, the beautiful poem by John Grimmett and the entire album can be heard in an infinite loop as their endings dovetail back to their beginnings, like a snake swallowing it’s tail. This is an ancient symbol for infinity and it represents the truth that lies beyond everything.

 

 

 

Poetic Notes by John Grimmett

 

“Pay close attention.

You do not need to stand on the edge of a mountain to know grandeur. You do not need to

wade waist-deep through a river stream to understand that the earth will move beneath you.

You do not need to stare up at a sky full of its celestial occupancy to comprehend how small

you are. The sparrows do not need to sing another verse of the same song — the earth is

leaving you behind, you know; each day, a loss of seconds and breaths and sunlight.

Somewhere else, a clock is ticking, so what will you do with what you have left?

 

Contemplate, then, moments of being: they are not easy moments. Sure, it is simple to

remember the acquisitions, the gradual gatherings of a life — the early lessons, the discoveries

and collections that, in your childhood, put a shamrock tint over your eyes and warm

gloves protecting the hands that cradled your heart.

 

Be that as it may.

 

It can all be deceptive, for what did you learn from getting your way? What has it all

working out taught you? Ask your brother whose house burned down. Send all inquiries to

the young mother who has lost her child. Make the solemn request to the soldier who has lost a

limb and his mind in a war. If time and the accumulating deficit of days will teach us anything about the breathtaking, our moments of being are derived from the mundane, the routine,

the coming and going of things. And that’s all.

 

Be that as it may.

 

Perhaps the last analog clock — the one belonging to your grandmother — is still ticking

quietly despite your attempts to stuff it behind a pillow. Somewhere else, a young girl takes

the hand of her older brother as she is walked to school for the first time. Somewhere else, an

old woman remembers her husband six years gone with a smile and a hint of jealousy that

he would never have to miss him the way she does.

 

Somewhere else, nothing becomes everything for millions of souls who are still searching

for some unnameable attraction, and it is all the most devastating, desperately beautiful thing.

 

Be that as it may.”

 

-John Grimmett