Michael Pisaro
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hearing
metal |
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Order reference: |
EWR 0902 |
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Medium: |
CD |
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Composer: |
Michael
Pisaro |
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Performer: |
Greg
Stuart (tam-tam) |
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(after Brancusi)
The 60-inch
("Mikrophonie") tam-tam is a large piece of metal, a
proto-sculpture. Brancusi might have altered it: rounding and tapering the
edges, making an oval instead of a circle, polishing the surface into smooth
gold.
The tam-tam
is also a vast sound landscape-an instrument that makes noise at the
slightest provocation. A resonance is created just in the act of walking past
the instrument or breathing on it ... that is, if your ear (or a microphone)
is close enough to hear it. Wherever it is touched with a bow or a hand, it
responds with chaotic, unpredictable complexity, never producing the same
sound twice.
I have
attempted to work within the givens of this landscape, to allow some of its
implicit contours to reveal themselves-by collecting sounds, giving them a
duration, putting them into a clear structure, and cutting a path through
them with pure tones.
Sleeping
Muse is
something like a four-part chorale of bowed sounds, with a melody made up of
long sine tones buried in the sounds.
The
Endless Column is a
collection of sixty extremely light, close recorded strikes, randomly
ordered, but with a rising scale of sine tones mixed in, more or less within
the central frequency range of the tam-tam (from 50 to 671 hz).
Sculpture
for the Blind arranges
eight layers of bowed sounds (which are then released) along a pattern of
lengthening durations and combined with a sine tone trio, again woven into
the sounds of the tam-tam.
Hearing
Metal 1 is the
product of close collaboration between composer and performer. The piece
evolved as Greg made test recordings based on my suggestions and then sent
them to me. As it happened we feel we fell into its world, in order to move
it slightly towards our own.
Michael
Pisaro
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