Programme Notes Night Call From the First

Programme Notes

Night Call

From the first haunting chant to the somewhat surprising sounds at the end -- sounds that might make you question everything you've just heard, "Night Call" takes you on a journey that is at once ethereal and cerebral. It is not merely that the echoes and the breaths of sound that brush across your auditory pallet are intriguing and yet shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, though this is certainly the case, but that there is both symbolic and spiritual suggestion and a sense of playful humor in the piece as a whole, where the sounds are as much a riddle as they are a journey, taking the listener to places that are both strange and familiar while also calling on the conscious mind to pay attention, to identify, and to simply be aware. Presence, presence of both the self and presence in space and time, are heightened in this audio pastiche pushed out from the auditorium's speakers.

The layers of manipulation and effect that must exist before this "Night Call' reaches one's ears are tremendous, and are an integral part of the piece and its performance. It is through such mediation and manipulation that most f our observations occur in the technological world; we get not only our sounds but also our sights and even some of our sensations from devices with electric current and sudden, unnatural components. Electricity powers the brain and the body, too, of course, and in some ways this piece attempts to do the brain exactly what man has done with electricity in recording equipment, in speakers, and in other technology: the waves are manipulated to bring about a certain experience, a certain thought, and perhaps even a certain conclusion. Every individual will of course experience this soundscape in their own way, with their own patterns and their own currents, just as every individual experiences themselves, their thoughts, their nights, their dreams, and their sleep differently. Brief though it may be, this piece takes the listener through all of these areas whether or not they are truly aware of it, and where we are returned when the speakers have died down cannot be the same place we were in when the sound first sparked to life.

Xibalba Dream

What makes dreams? The question is as nebulous, unanswerable, and as off the marl as the question, what is music? There can be no answer these questions not simply because of their subjectivities -- the fact that different people perceive music and dreams differently, and the fact that one individual could never hope to communicate with another individual precisely what these different subjective perceptions are -- but also because the questions are built on a false premise. Neither music nor dreams are things that can be easily defined as concrete objects or even clear abstract concepts. Instead, both music and dreams are experiences, and constitute innumerable and truly infinite and ever-changing amounts of things, so as to remain truly indefinable from a practical point-of-view. Both questions ultimately ask the one being queried to limit themselves and their world by providing a response, and so both questions must be rejected.