Calanchi

An acoustic exploration of the phenomena of layering and erosion with two important chordophone instruments from the Western and Middle Eastern tradition, in this piece, the use of sustain and decay and the interpolation of playing techniques place a number of sound objects within concavities, divides, slopes and peaks. What really interests me, and seems to me only possible in music, is to glimpse the phenomenological experience of time and open up vibrational spaces. The vision of the gullies (Calanchi) is this movement in which soil and water interpenetrate, where apparently everything is still, but events of unknown power and speed take place, reverberating from the past, from outside and from within.

Music Current Commission Award 2002/23. Premiered at Music Current Festival, Dublin.