Syzygy

Syzygy News & Notes

1/10 - Check out the Syzygy Cover Story in Progression Magazine: Cover & Feature Article
1/10 - Download the MP3 Kweevak Radio interview

12/09 - Reflecting on the year 2009, we have much to be thankful for. Of course, our health and families are our most precious gifts and we come through 2009 in good shape. Syzygy had an exceptional year too. The release of Realms of Eternity in June and the live shows which followed were incredibly fun and memorable. We thank all of you for your support. We are also excited to receive the recent issue of Progression Magazine http://progressionmagazine.com/ which has a feature on Syzygy. If you didn’t get it, check it out. It is great. We are hoping that more people come to discover our music as a result. We have been advertising pretty hard lately so we hope that pays off as well. With that being said, 2009 has been a great year for me and the guys and we thank God and all of you for making it possible.

Looking ahead to 2010, we hope to have more excitement in store for all of you. We hope to release an audio disc of our 3RP festival performance last August (“Syzygy: Live at 3RP”). We may also include some video and possibly 5.1 surround bonus features on the same disc. That should be ready by spring 2010. We will be posting some of the video on our MySpace site as well as YouTube. In fact, the first video (“Mount Ethereal” is already up. It looks and sounds great, check it out. You may recall, Mount Ethereal was on our debut disc, “Cosmos and Chaos” when we were known as Witsend. At that time, we recorded the piece without vocals. Now you can hear a fresh version of it with vocals (courtesy of the incomparable Mark Boals). I hope you enjoy it. There will definitely be more to come.

Last but not least, we are looking to put together a small tour during the summer of 2010. We are hoping to be able to swing through several Midwest and East Coast cities. Hopefully, somewhere in your back yard even! We will end up near Pittsburgh headlining a show at the RPM’s Rock Club in Bridgeville, PA on Saturday, August 14, 2020 (it’s a 3RP/Howard Levy production so you know it will be great!). http://3rprogfest.com/. But, here is where you all come in…

Could you suggest the following to help us round out our tour?:
1) Venues – suggest any venues in the following cities that might welcome an original progressive act (Chicago, Cincinnati, New Jersey-area, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Rochester, Buffalo, and Detroit)
a. Size isn’t too important any stage bigger than 15’ x 20’ can work, house audio and lights are important
b. Most important is the vibe and the reputation for hosting progressive live shows and attractive progressive fans

2) Additional cities and venues – suggest other cities east of Chicago, south of Toronto and north of Atlanta

3) Companion Acts – suggest acts that would complement Syzygy in each city/venue (and you would like to see). We are looking for acts that have a loyal following. We are not hung up on whether we headline or not – the fit with us and attraction to the public is what’s most important (hence “companion act”). We are looking at it three ways:
a. Progressive “Tribute” acts – we are looking for excellent tribute bands so we could do a night of Creation (Syzygy) and Re-creation (Cover act) i. Example: Rochester – Going for the One (YES tribute band) at a club in Rochester
b. Original Progressive acts – unique acts that logistically and sonically work with Syzygy i. Example: Might Could (acoustic instruments and complex music) in Baltimore-area
c. Touring acts – of course if Transatlantic or any of their ilk want a “companion act” we are there to make that night an over-the-top success for them

We thought you (the listening public) would have the answers we are looking for and could help us put this together. To the extent that you could provide contact information about venues, companion acts or even references on behalf of Syzygy would be greatly appreciated!!!

Your input will determine the degree to which we are able to pull this together - no pressure :o)
Wishing you all an abundance of blessings this New Year. Your friends from Syzygy

7/09 - FINALLY!!! It's here…Realms of Eternity…it took what seemed an eternity, but we believe the wait will be worth it. The compositions are so deep and textured, you will have lots to explore for some time to come. Be sure to experience this album under headphones too (we took great care to make that as fun as possible). You will notice that it's a single disc. In order to keep the retail price down during these very hard economic times, we found a way to put ALL 77 minutes+ of music on one CD without cutting one note! So as cool as it would have been to have presented this material in a "double" package, we felt it was best to make it as affordable as possible. Special thanks goes out to our engineer Chris Keffer who did an amazing job (again) throughout this project. I can't wait to hear from all of you about your experience with this album. With the release behind us, we have now switched gears and are rehearsing and playing some live shows. We had our first one a few days ago, and it went quite well. It was fun to feel the power and emotion (and challenge) these compositions uniquely possess in a live presentation. To that extent we hope to see you in the coming weeks at one of our shows. We are having our official CD release party on August 1, 2009 at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland http://www.beachlandballroom.com/calendar.asp?Page=5. We are also looking forward to playing at the 3RP Festival in Pittsburgh on 8/9/2009. http://3rprogfest.com/index.php?content=tickets. So, on behalf of all of us in Syzygy, thanks for your patience and support. Let us know what you think. Be Blessed, Carl

Carl 3/09 - It's with an abundance of joy that I am pleased to tell you that we should have our masters to the duplicators in mid-April. From there, it's just a few short weeks to get it into distribution. Realms of Eternity is really going to be released! 77 minutes plus! Surprises! What a project! People that have heard it have said, "No one is writing like this anymore." Well, that's our goal: to stand on the shoulders of the greatest progressive forefathers (and sisters) and compose music that honors that tradition without being derivative. I just know you all will like it very much. We are also toying with the idea of a 5.1 surround mix in a subsequent release. That would be so amazing. But, first things first...we will release the album and get that other stuff going shortly thereafter. Most importantly, I want to confirm the rumor that we will be promoting this album with some live shows! Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, be blessed! - Carl

7/08 - Greetings and blessings to all. We are rounding third and heading home. Most of the mixes are done. Not a wasted moment or any filler to be found. I won't announce a release date quite yet, but we are getting close. In the meantime I have included some pictures of a recent session where we brought in a cellist, violinist and flutist for some additional orchestration. These are students enrolled in the Master's Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music where I am on the Board of Trustees. It was their first exposure to "progressive rock", but they did a great job and had a lot of fun to boot. Hope you enjoy. Stay tuned for additional news coming shortly. Peace and blessings to you and your families for the rest of the summer. - Carl

1/08 Well, we finally have some photos to share with you of the group working on our new project (Realms of Eternity). Now, at least there is some verifiable, visual evidence that we are working! The photos include live shots of us at 1) the Winchester Club (where we premiered The Sea, Dreams and Vanitas), 2) in the studio recording our new epic piece, The Sea, 3) at our remote recording odyssey of the Dialectic and 4) my home studio doing some classical guitar work (love the shorts). I would be remiss if I didn't give a special thanks to Brian Misch of Misch Photography for his great work at the Winchester and at Magnetic North Studios. Lastly, we just finished mixing The Sea which is a 26 minute epic and it sounds great! We are on toVanitas which is a much shorter piece and will be loads of fun because it has lots of counter point lines and a very cool symphonic arrangement. We'll keep you posted, but progress is definitely being made. Maybe we'll even be able to get a few sound bytes up on the website pretty soon. Hope this update finds you well and continued blessings to all of you. -Carl

12/07 Well I am officially out of the prediction business. What I can tell you is that we have had a several month delay due to technology - my protools rig simply can't handle 100+ tracks and 26 minutes of music of our major epic The Sea. So I have had to switch everything over to cubase and redo quite a bit of my studio in the process. I won't bore you with the details of transferring the information and debugging everything, but it was horrendous. Thankfully, we are back to mixing and looking for distribution at the same time. If anyone has any helpful referrals, we'd love to hear from you. I am also delinquent in my promise to post sound clips and photos of our recording sessions but maybe that will be forthcoming too. Thanks for hanging with us. Talk soon and God Bless - Carl Baldassarre

12/06 We are making steady progress on our new release, "Realms of Eternity". All basic tracks are complete. We are now tracking vocals and mixing. Sam, Paul and I just reviewed all the basic tracks recently ( 8 tracks spanning 70+ minutes) to take stock on where we are in the project and we were overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of this album. This is far and away our greatest work. I hope to shortly have some pictures and sound samples up here so you can see and hear what we are up to. Thanks for your patience. It will be amply rewarded. Take care and God Bless, Carl