PROGRAM
Threshold (1981-2008) A variation on an audience-welcoming work developed and performed by the New Music Co-operative during its Oxygen Tonic project (co-directed by Tina Pearson and David Mott) at the Canadian Centre for Photography in Toronto, 1983. Threshold serves as a tuning for the ensemble and for the concert: It is a gentle unearthing and invocation of the sounds of the performance space and its environs including the sounds brought by the audience, inviting their resonance in the evening’s performance. Shimmer After our last concert (LaSaM Unplugged – A Rose is a Rose), we picked up some old theatre light lenses that were being discarded by Metro Studio. Chris immediately placed them on the piano strings. We liked the sound. Whisper The Yamaha DX7 comes with a library of pre-set voices. One is called ‘Whisper Vox’. In Between Gold Textural melodies in breath cycle rhythms accompany inhaled vocalizations and utterances resonated by globe light fixtures. Text by Lyssa Pearson In Between Gold The liquid dark of evening melts, scatters, sears into a ferocious and cool velvet sky Deep. Fresh. The sun withers, draining from sight a brilliant memory of parched heat, of simple gold energy, direct, purposeful. Jasmine, mint, permeate the rich, silky air, slithering, sliding, floating, filling the whorls of the wind. Morning, a far off dream the stars laugh, gentle, rhythmic, delighted in the opal reality of the night. Tectonach Before equal temperament became established, the composer JS Bach was interested in varied tuning of specific musical intervals and the nuanced soundworlds that resulted. He also composed many pieces with reference to the pitch representation of the letters of his name. This piece lightly suggests elements of a Bach prelude stretched in time with shifts in tuning on the DX7 played against the static tuning of piano and accordion, with ghosts of Bach’s music echoing in the piano and vocal fragments. I Walk Through Snow Two EBows gently resonate the strings of the piano. The EBow (originally intended for use on the guitar) is a battery powered, hand-held “bow” which produces an energy field that vibrates and sustains the string using a focused feedback loop. The result is a powerful, rich and infinite sustain. Music Box Mystery The concert comes to a close with a delicate reminiscence of a popular tune, in retrograde inversion.________________________________________________
The Sonic Whisper performance was recorded by audio engineer Mario Milat, and made into a self-produced CD.
Sounds from Sonic Whisper can be heard at the LaSaM Myspace page, including Tectonach and I Walk in Snow.