
Great recording.
– Tom Allen
CBC Music About Time
…latest masterpiece. This musical experience is a much-needed reminder of the healthy world we’re all working toward.
– Zenith Wolfe, La Scena Musicale ★★★★★
This new composition/album presents a radical catalogue of our created world’s sounds. The audience is faced with the echoes of our human-made environment, stripped bare of visual distractions.
His most ambitious project to date…
– Robert Rowat, CBC Music
An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene is a fearless work. It focuses on the environment from an auditory perspective, presenting a catalogue of our created world’s sounds by tallying the noises, echoes, reverberations and refrains associated with environmental degradation that leads to climate change. The sequential recordings of traffic, machinery, drilling, fracking and more serve as a backdrop for musical responses and reflections from the piano and percussion instruments, that simultaneously respond, reflect and develop the soundscape journey from one of hostile discord to one of reconciliation and peace. The audience is faced with the sounds of our man-made environment, stripped bare of visual distractions, and taken on a journey of action and possibility. We see this as a way to reach people on a whole new, visceral level. As humans, we get to decide what sounds we take forward with us into a new era and which ones we resolve to leave behind.
Frank Horvat has been successfully exploring states of the human condition in contemporary times…This prolific composer keeps surprising us with diversity and an extent of musical expression, language and themes…his message is clear: music is an important tool in raising the level of positivity and hope on this planet as well as in our individual lives. Change is possible.
– Ivana Popovic, WholeNote Magazine
Learn more about the making of this album.
Frank Horvat has carved a niche for himself among today’s composers, wearing his fragile heart on his sleeve and writing music that emphasizes the emotional over the intellectual.
– Robert Rowat, CBC Classical
Download
Spotify
Apple Music
TYPE
Electro-Chamber
ALBUM ART
View booklet
MUSICIANS
SHHH!! Ensemble
Edana Higham (piano), Zac Pulak (percussion)
COMPOSED BY
Frank Horvat
PRODUCED BY
Carl Talbot
RECORDED AT
Le Domaine Forget by Carl Talbot,
May 2023
MASTERED BY
Marc Theriault (Le Lab Mastering)
COVER GRAPHIC
Brad Cherwin
LABEL
Leaf Music
RELEASE DATE
20 October 2023
Horvat is known for distilling complex analyses into avant-garde, yet digestible experiences. Each sample is used sparingly, so as not to overshadow the instruments; they never sound tacky or appended to the music for the sake of melodrama.
– Zenith Wolfe, La Scena Musicale
Story behind the tracks
Composition Details
Update: October 2022
Update: December 2022
Update: April 2023