Sweet Heresy

Sweet Heresy

Sweet Heresy is an extremely unusual disc of duo performances on instruments created and performed by Untravelled Path, which is Mitsuko and Arthur Fankuchen of Taos, New Mexico. Theirs is an extraordinarily uncompromising slow and inward music inspired by musical traditions from around the world utilizing such instruments as bowed deep bass monochords played like… Read more »

Written By

Frank J. Oteri

Frank J. Oteri is an ASCAP-award winning composer and music journalist. Among his compositions are Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow for orchestra, the "performance oratorio" MACHUNAS, the 1/4-tone sax quartet Fair and Balanced?, and the 1/6-tone rock band suite Imagined Overtures. His compositions are represented by Black Tea Music. Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and is Composer Advocate at New Music USA where he has been the Editor of its web magazine, NewMusicBox.org, since its founding in 1999.

Sweet Heresy is an extremely unusual disc of duo performances on instruments created and performed by Untravelled Path, which is Mitsuko and Arthur Fankuchen of Taos, New Mexico. Theirs is an extraordinarily uncompromising slow and inward music inspired by musical traditions from around the world utilizing such instruments as bowed deep bass monochords played like the South Indian vina, a 48-key quartertone kalimba (I want one, don’t you?), and shakuhachi-type instruments with larger finger holes to allow for all sorts of microtonal fingering variants. Sadly, their self-proclaimed anti-authoritarian tendencies belie giving potential listeners much information on their CD, which lists only the names of instruments used on each track rather than titles and does not even include their last names. Their website—www.untravelledpath.com—while equally cryptic about their identities, at least offers some wonderful images of the instruments they play as well as a brief history of how they came to create the music they make.