In Honor Of The Celebrated Pianist Glenn Gould’s Birthday,
Primary Wave and Division 88 Bring You
Assembled by Producer Billy Wild & Gabriel Pick, The Album Will Be Available Everywhere on October 23
Pre-save Uninvited Guests HERE
“In the future, the audience will become the artist and their life, the art….they will become the uninvited guests at the banquet of the arts.”
– Glenn Gould
In celebration of what would have been Glenn Gould’s 88th birthday, Primary Wave and Division 88 have partnered to bring you, Uninvited Guests. Available everywhere through Sony Masterworks on October 23, the 9-track album was produced by Toronto’s Billy Wild, with additional production by Gabriel Pick, Alex Kotyk and Andrew Testa, and features appearances by Division 88 – a collective of up-and-coming artists. Ranging from hip-hop to electronic, Uninvited Guests offers a look at how artists today would interpret Gould’s classic and most celebrated performances. Listeners will be taken on a ride via Wild’s creative production. Featuring Chief Awuah, Your Hunni, AARYS, Ro Joaquim, Gabriel Pick, Kiki Rowe, and DOPE FA$E, Gould’s historic catalog shines with lyrics and melodies from these current day musicians.
Having once been shunned by the classical music community for his views on the future role of technology in music, within today’s artistic landscape, the Uninvited Guests project would have been an important dream fulfilled for Glenn Gould.
Leading up to release day, Billy Wild will be taking over the Glenn Gould YouTube channel to share behind the scenes footage on the making of the album. He’ll continue the take-over twice a week and will also post tutorials, Glenn Gould history, and more.
“Uninvited Guests started 7 years ago as a challenge on whether or not Glenn Gould could be made to sound current,” says producer Billy Wild. He continued, “The main thing I learned on Gould is that he truly belonged in this generation. The number of things you can do these days on a laptop from a musical perspective is incredible and I feel confident the current technology would have suited his desire to create great recordings.”
“Everything we do at Primary Wave is about preserving the legacy of our artists while also trying to broaden their audience,” said Jordan Moran, Director of Digital Marketing at Primary Wave. He continued, “Billy Wild does just that with Uninvited Guests. Billy created a new sound that not only preserves Gould’s eccentric and quirky recordings but modernizes them to suit today’s musical landscape.”
Faye Perkins, former manager of the Glenn Gould Estate, added, “Billy Wild quickly became an integral part of the Glenn Gould Estate’s marketing strategy because of his innate knowledge and respect for Glenn Gould’s musical legacy. His collaborations with other artists demonstrate his acumen as a musician and a producer. Having him share Glenn Gould’s essays and ideas in a different musical language is what we call very Gouldian.”
Primary Wave was first introduced to Billy Wild and his love for Gould when the company partnered with him on the “Glenn Gould Exhibit” in 2018. At that time, “Uninvited Guests” was a project from Wild’s Division 88, a Toronto-based collective,who dug deep into the Gould catalog with the intention of using his piano samples to build modern hip-hop, pop, and electronic songs, or “remixes,” around them. Their goal was to retain the musical integrity of the original recordings, yet make new songs that fans of these genres would enjoy. The collective even took it one step further by manipulating historical CBC video of Gould to make it look as if the pianist was performing the new compositions himself. This was the beginning of what would become the Uninvited Guests album release that you’ll hear on October 23, 2020.