The primes of Ascending Primes, the new album by violinist/composer Modney, formerly known as Josh Modney, are prime numbers. As natural numbers evenly divisible only by themselves and by one, prime numbers can be taken as symbolic of wholes that can’t meaningfully be broken down into constituent parts, unique entities that are themselves and themselves alone. Of a kind of singular integrity, in other words. They also play an important role in generating consonant intervals in just intonation, which is the tuning system underlying the compositions on
