Compositions
“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descended, one sees no longer, but one has seen.”
— Rene Daumal
Carrie's Weight
Premiered on Mount Kilimanjaro. This video is spliced together to demonstrate the difference between performing on the summit at 19,341 feet, in the rainforest at 6,890 feet, and at several different locations in between, mostly 12,000-15,000 feet.
Hanging On
Premiered at Kilimanjaro Base Camp, just after the overnight summit and descent.
Letting Go
Premiered in multiple locations on Mount Kilimanjaro.
Amati (carries weight)
by Gregory Woodward
Performed standing in the middle of a cloud on Mount Kilimanjaro at approximately 15,000 feet. Permission to share postcard excerpt by permission of the composer.
Care. Ease. ...Wait
Premiered at Signal de Botrange,
Highpoint of Belgium
Performed here at Jerimoth Hill,
Highpoint of Rhode Island
Video coming soon!
L'Effet Droste
Belgium is a flat country that built a staircase at its highest point for the sole purpose of adding six additional meters to its altitude. Now, rather than a mere 694m, it reaches a perfect 700m! It deserved a short joke, as a Belgian postcard for Carrie Koffman's "carries weight" performance art project. Based on an idea shared by Arno Bornkamp and discussed by the three of us in Amsterdam, the Droste effect describes an image within which the same image appears. A staircase on a mountain...
Performed here at the highpoint of Connecticut, Carrie's current home state.
Flume Gorge Echos
Video coming soon!
(Less distracting field recording coming soon!)
Out of Proportion
One of my favorite scales is the augmented scale. It is not often used in
"classical music," but I find myself using it a lot when I'm improvising by myself at the piano or saxophone. To construct the augmented scale, take an augmented triad (Db, F, A) and add a half-step leading tone into each member of the triad (C-Db, E-F, G#-A). In addition to its unique sound in scale form, this collection of pitches also creates a lot of interesting and unusual harmonic opportunities.
I feel that the augmented scale is appropriate in the context of Carrie Koffman's carries weight project because carrying weight, in my experience, manifests in the augmentation or diminution
of a perceived level of "mattering." Values and ideas that carry weight to me may not for others. Some people may believe that an individual carries more weight in the world than that person believes they do, and vice versa. Someone may carry more weight in certain communities while being the laughingstock of others. Either way,
the inherent value of that person, thing, idea, or interaction is neutral - or at least that's my view today.
We humans create hierarchies and judgment calls. Perception and judgment can often blow things out of proportion. My tendencies are toward augmentation... overthinking, overestimating the importance of something, believing that my actions were more impactful/important than they really were, etc. Out of Proportion is a short musical reflection on this concept.
Homenaje a Kondiaronk
Carrie and I met in Amsterdam a few years ago and had a great click right away, so when she asked me to participate in this project I agreed instantly. When I started working on her piece I was reading ‘The dawn of everything’ (David Graeber/David Wengrow, 2021), an intriguing book offering a new view on the history of humankind. One of the protagonists in this book is the 18th century philosopher and chief of the Native American Wendat Confederacy 'Kondiaronk' (ca. 1649-1701) and when I mentioned this to Carrie she was pleasantly surprised. She was born and raised in the region where the Wendat lived: the frontier region of Canada and the US in the northern part of the Great Lakes region.
So we decided to make my contribution to her project a tribute to this monumental figure in American history, known for his outstanding eloquence, wisdom and strategic insight. She would look for an appropiate landmark connected to Kondiaronk to perform this tribute. The reason we know a lot about his ideas and philosophy is that in 1703 the french Baron de Lahontan published his ‘Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amérique Septrentionale’ (New Voyages to North America) including dialogues with Kondiaronk (using the pseudonym Adario). This book was published in my home country the Netherlands, at that time known for its (relative) freedom of press, thus providing us with another link.
When writing the ‘Homenaje’ I listened to music by Native American musicians and that was a source of inspiration, yet not literally but rather where mood and atmosphere is concerned. It is an attempt to create a chant that depicts and honours the wit and depth of Kondiaronk’s thinking; an echoing song that should sound as a solemn signal in his habitat.
Video coming soon!
Transformation
TBA
by Michael Daugherty
In progress.
Video coming soon!