An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene - Project Announcement

New Climate Music Project with SHHH!! Ensemble

I am thrilled to announce that the ground-breaking and innovative percussion-piano duo, SHHH!! Ensemble, has commissioned me to compose a new large-scale artivist composition on the theme of climate change.

With the working title, An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene, this composition will index those sounds of our destructive past and present, with the hope that the music becomes a historical catalogue, like a museum gallery, for those destructive reverberations that no longer exist in the wild because humans decided it was time to dismantle them. If we choose this path, we can ensure a future for the sounds that are truly important to us, making certain those continue to thrive for epochs to come. We might be entering a new age out of the mistakes of our past but with a re-birth comes the ability to choose how you want to move forward.

This continuous single-movement 60-minute composition will be for various percussion instruments (both pitched and non-pitched), grand piano (with possible prepared elements) and fixed sound design. The sound design will be made up of audio samples that capture various activities that are associated with environmental degradation that are contributing to human-made climate change.

My work with SHHH!! Ensemble on this epic work will truly be a collaborative process. We plan to meet in the beautiful rural Ontario setting of Port William Sound on 2 occasions later this fall to plan and explore creative music possibilities together. I will compose the work in early 2023 and then work with SHHH!! in the production of the Holocene recording at the pristine venue of Domaine Forget in Spring 2023.

All this would not be possible without the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Stay tuned to my social media channels, my blog posts and my e-newsletter for updates on our progress.

An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene - Project Announcement

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