Artist
“One more bright star from Zenon Marko is waiting to be discovered. We truly appreciate his calm piano melodies with the classical melancholic tone. Heart-warming way to say goodbye to someone beloved.”
-Nagamag.com
ending or beginning, lost to be found found, farewell and remembrance, until we meet again
in memoriam: for my mother – www.zenonmarko.com
“Each of us at least once returned home along the dark, barely lit streets. -Night Walk Home- so clearly and distinctly immerses in memories that you almost feel your presence on the cool, night alleys of your hometown.”
“Каждый из нас хотя бы однажды возвращался по тёмным, едва освещённым улицам домой. -Night Walk Home- на столько ясно и отчётливо погружает в воспоминания, что практически ощущаешь своё присутствие на прохладных, ночных переулках родного города.”
-Nagamag.com
“Morning Star” consists of works composed by Zenon Marko in the immediate aftermath of his mother’s death. These minimalist and atmospheric ambient piano pieces were written as tribute, meditations, and expressions of the diversity of emotions, reactions, thoughts, memories, hopes and fears that follow upon such a loss. The music also attempts to sympathetically comprehend the experience of one’s last days and weeks, facing mortality. The hope is that others who have experienced loss, or are facing their own mortality, will feel an echo, a recognition, and perhaps find solace, within this music. All the pieces are at a tempo of 60 beats per minute, the rhythm of the second hand of a clock, to express the sense of time passing, inevitability and transience.
“Hope is very fragile and difficult to comprehend a thing than faith. Without faith a man can live forever, but not human life. Without hope he dies. Zenon Marko in its new composition Hope helped us once again to reflect on the importance of life.”
“Надежда очень хрупкая и трудная для осознания вещь, чем вера. Без веры человек может жить вечно, но не человеческой жизнью. Без надежды он погибает и вовсе. Zenon Marko в своей новой композиции Hope помог нам в очередной раз задуматься о важности бытия.”
-Nagamag.com
“Hope” is the first single from the new album “Morning Star”. “Morning Star” consists of works composed by Zenon Marko in the immediate aftermath of his mother’s death. These intentionally simple pieces were written as tribute, as meditations, as expressions of the diversity of emotions, reactions, thoughts, memories, hopes and fears that follow upon such a loss. The hope is that others who have experienced loss will feel an echo, a recognition, and perhaps find solace, within this music. All the pieces are at a tempo of 60 beats per minute, the rhythm of the second hand of a clock, to express the sense of time passing, inevitability and transience.
“Highly emotional creation with a characteristic calm and peaceful inpact. Smooth and gradual progression of sounds. This beauty can surely touch your soul in a simple and direct way!”
-Nagamag.com
“Esse” (Latin, infinitive, “to be, to exist”) is the centerpiece of the “Symmetry” album. The entire album is symmetrical, and “Esse” itself is completely symmetrical and reversible in time, both musically and visually in this video.
“Symmetry” is the musically symmetrical soundtrack of a journey, whether physical, intellectual, imaginative, emotional, philosophical, psychological, or spiritual. The music expresses progressive ascent towards a goal, arrival at an apex, descent, and return. The structure of the music reflects and embodies philosophy, mathematics, sacred geometry, harmony and dissonance, and psychoacoustics. This electronic arrangement of the composition is inspired by early, baroque, classical and neoclassical music, as well as electronic music and minimalism.
www.facebook.com/ZenonMarkoMusic/
Zenon Marko is an artist, composer, producer, electronic musician, DJ, drummer, studio owner, and philosopher, residing in New York City. Marko produces, composes, and performs in genres ranging from rock, classical, ambient, progressive, electronic, techno, house, world, neoclassical, downtempo, and improvisational. His work has been released and on the charts internationally. He works under his own name as well as under various project names including that of his collaboration Metasonica. Marko owns Disreality, a music production company, studio, and label in TriBeCa in downtown NYC.
“Zenon Marko with his new ambient atmospheric vision Ascent 4 invites to explore the elements of earth and beyond. Lush harmonies and gentle keys, arranged with care on sound design, engaging an emotional trip and appreciation for the universe which we are a part.”
-Nagamag.com
From the full-length symmetrical concept album “Symmetry”
“Ascent 4” is the final ascent of the Symmetry concept album. Symmetry is the musically symmetrical soundtrack of a journey, whether physical, intellectual, imaginative, emotional, philosophical, psychological, or spiritual. The music expresses progressive ascent towards a goal, arrival at an apex, descent, and return. Each piece corresponds to one of the shapes of ancient geometry representing the elements: earth, water, fire, air, aether. “Ascent 4” is about the element of air.
The structure of the composition reflects and embodies philosophy, mathematics, sacred geometry, harmony and dissonance, and psychoacoustics. This electronic arrangement of the composition is inspired by early, baroque, classical and neoclassical music, as well as electronic music and minimalism. The entire album is musically symmetrical, with the “Descents” as compositional reverses of the “Ascents”.
The challenge was to create a timeless meditative album, depicting a wide range of moods from tranquil to intense, within strict limits: all pieces share the same tempo, arrangement, duration, and internal structure. Themes repeat, vary, evolve, develop throughout. The Ascent/Descent pairs required the creation of sounds, chord progressions, and melodies that worked equally well forward or in reverse. Each successive “Ascent” modulates to a “higher” musical key and greater harmonic and melodic ascending movement. “Esse” (Latin: “to be”), the centerpiece and apex, itself internally symmetrical, is music of complete stasis, an arrival at the destination, a pure contemplation of a panoramic vista, perhaps even a state of enlightenment or mystical rapture. Each “Descent” mirrors its numerically equivalent “Ascent”, successively descending in chord progressions and in musical keys. One source of inspiration for this work is the ascent to knowledge as described in Plato’s allegory of the Cave; another is the meditative process and the ascent to the enlightened state of consciousness, known as “The Fourth” (Turiya), in Indian philosophy.
The hope is that listeners find this music to be an evocative soundtrack to their own journeys, and that they may create their own interpretations.
More info, listen, buy, sign up: www.zenonmarko.com/music.html
Photo by Eva Mueller
Nagamag:
What are the genres that describe better your music style?
Zenon Marko:
Ambient, Neoclassical, Electronic, Downtempo, Electro-Acoustic, Traditional/”World”, Dub, Techno, House, Rock, Funk...
Nagamag:
Few words about your musical background and career?
Zenon Marko:
Music has always been a presence and love in my life. As a child, I studied piano and classical guitar, but drums soon became my primary instrument: acoustic drums, electronic drums, percussion. I became obsessed with the rhythms and sounds of drums. At the same time, I was also fascinated with the effects and possibilities of harmonies and timbre and texture and tonality, the “vertical” as well as “horizontal” axes of music. In my first university degree, I studied physics, but also studied music theory and composition; I continued on afterwards teaching myself more and more of these areas, along with production, engineering, sound design, synthesis, acoustics, psycho-acoustics, philosophy and aesthetics of music. I began a Ph.D. in physics, then switched tracks and instead completed a second undergraduate degree in philosophy. I am currently completing a Ph.D. in metaphilosophy, on the problem of beginning, or ultimate justification of knowledge. All along, I have been involved in music, as composer, producer, drummer, and DJ. As the list of genres suggests, my love of music embraces perhaps seemingly contradictory territories: from the most subtle ambient sound with no trace of rhythm, to extremely rhythmic music forms like dub, bossa, funk, techno, and rock. I have hundreds of musical works and ideas in various stages of completion, but perhaps it’s time to finally finish more of these and let them out into the wider world. There have been a number of releases with my on-going collaborative project Metasonica; I’ve just released my first solo album, the completely symmetrical instrumental ambient/neoclassical concept album “Symmetry”; there will be a rhythmic version of “Symmetry”, an entire video cycle related to the philosophy and concept, and live performances; there’s a completed ambient piano album to be released this year; I’m developing a dub techno project; also many tracks are already completed for a rhythmic downtempo project, featuring vocals in various different languages. Many more projects ongoing and in development, in and around my studio and production company, Disreality, here in downtown NYC.
Nagamag:
Do you remember your first connection of love to music that was the right impact to be a music artist now?
Zenon Marko:
Our family home was always full of music: piano, guitar, singing, records playing in every genre. However, my first distinct memory of experiencing music is that of hearing and seeing the Philadelphia Orchestra for the first time as a child. I was fortunate that my family introduced me to such experiences at an early age. I especially recall the overwhelming sense of awe and wonder at the beauty and power of this ensemble, in the grand space of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, as the orchestra was tuning in preparation for the performance. Surely that sonic experience, of individual instruments beginning from a state of chaos and dissonance, gradually cohering into an immense and sublime coherence, has always remained with me as an ideal, not only of music, but of emotion, of something like (for lack of a better word) spirituality, and even of other-worldly perfection.
Nagamag:
Why do you create music?
Zenon Marko:
I often ask myself this question, actually. At times, from my more strictly rational, scientific, even somewhat brutally utilitarian, side, I question whether music, culture, art, and so on, are excessive luxuries and self-indulgences, in a world of so much suffering, of all creatures, human and non-human. This concern is magnified by my sense that the world is sliding towards some sort of apocalypse. Should I better apply my efforts elsewhere? Of course, I do work in philosophy as well, but one may raise similar doubts about the value of philosophy in the face of urgent practical crises. Should I only be working towards practical, measurable goals of world improvement, perhaps in a mode like effective altruism? Although these doubts never disappear, I do believe that our needs and aspirations go beyond the purely material, that one also needs what these cultural, aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual activities provide. The material problems are urgent, of course, and demand our attention, as these address the functional basis for life; yet I believe these other regions of values, beliefs, and experiences are what render life beautiful and worthwhile. They offer a kind of transcendence. Certainly music has dramatically enriched my own life; it seems to offer a radically different kind of “answer”, compared to those offered by science and the more rational forms of philosophy; so how can I then deride it as a mere luxury or excess? After all, the music of others has given me so much. Therefore, my hope is that my music can give back in some way, and can bring to others, perhaps even to those in the depths of despair and suffering, some solace, beauty, and inspiration.
Nagamag:
Most artists have a favorite song from a different music genre than the one they are producing music for... Which is yours?
Zenon Marko:
Miles Davis “He Loved Him Madly”
Nagamag:
Of Course Nagamag would love to listen also which track from a similar artist you admire?
Zenon Marko:
Harold Budd & Brian Eno "First Light"