On A Wing and A Prayer – Deeside is this Thursday 14th March at 7:30 at The Barn Banchory and Pete, Joe and I are really looking forward to sharing the music we’ve created from our residency in Braemar this January with our friends and supporters in Aberdeenshire.
Today I want to share with you a short video showing the wonderful nature and soft, snowy scenes we experienced in January in Glen Quoich set to a short fragment of our music as well as a few words from Pete about how he used the sounds we collected in January to create the elecroacoustic sounds over which Joe and I improvised and composed music for viola.
Of course this video can’t get across the wonderful spatialisation in sound that Pete has created for the room, so to hear the music to full effect, make sure you book yourself a ticket from: https://thebarnarts.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/1173652872
For those of you who live too far away from Deeside we will be recording the concert here, so subscribe here to make sure you don’t miss it.
A word or two about the electroacoustic sound… by Pete Stollery
Most of the sounds you will hear were recorded during our three-day residency in Braemar in January earlier this year. They will be presented over eight loudspeakers which surround the audience in order to provide a kind of sonic immersion where you witness the sound from within. Sometimes the sound will seem to come from everywhere at once, and sometimes from specific places but the dynamic nature of the movement of the sound is designed to allow the audience to perceive it from a different viewpoint (hearpoint?), not as if it were merely happening in front of you.
Open…, the sound of a tiny stream we discovered on our way up to the Quoich gradually fills the space, enveloping the audience before a discernible note slowly rises from the texture. Grain is a short study on the sonic characteristics and behaviours of water, its graininess, its dynamic movement, with hints of what lies under the water. The New Bridge – Frozen Solitude explores the coldness of the place and Muckle Spate charts an imaginary journey through the water at the height of Storm Frank, gradually settling into Alluvial Fan – Dissipation – The Birds Return. Listening is central to all my creative output – it is a sense that we under-use and one which can provide a huge amount of information and detail if we only give it a chance. You are invited to listen in – more than you would normally do – to discover the movement, the shapes, the behaviours of the sounds, in a musical way.
nordicviola 