On December 21st Tom Peyton and DoTank presented Tom's Bell by Bell event at Make Music Winter in New York. The video above contains music from both yours truly as well as Tom. I was very excited to write a piece of music for this ensemble, and as you can see from the video, it seems as though the event was successful from the standpoint of turnout as well as the anticipated and welcome outside sounds. This last weekend seems to have been filled with moments of happy accidents with sounds mingling...potatoes frying in a skillet creating fifths slowly inverting upwards with John Luther Adams playing on the stereo, a band saw outside creating a happy drone beneath some Friedman string quartets, and Doug Laustsen played a field recording of my piece, Lament, being performed at MMW on his radio show and noted the sounds intermingling as well. Perhaps my ears are unusually attuned to noticing such things since my Sunset + Music events over the summer encouraged such things, but whatever the case, it's been a pleasant series of sonic events as of late. To hear Lament in its entirety being played at Bell by Bell as well as a few other composers works for this event, click here.

Listening List
Lou Reed - Set the Twilight Reeling
John Luther Adams - The Light that Fills the World
Woody Allen - Wild Man Blues
David Lang - Child
Stravinsky - Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra

At long last, the Yellow Foot Chanterelle (left) has made an appearance here in Seattle. A week ago I went mushrooming for Chanterelles - slightly unusual for this time of year - usually they're either A. giant and soggy or B. it's become too cold and they've gone to sleep for the year - but it was so incredibly dry in late summer/early fall that their season was pushed back a bit and it hasn't been too rainy yet thus far. All in all it was a good haul (see below). However, this unusual season also meant that the Yellow Foot Chanterelles weren't out yet, yet last year in early November (the very end of usual Chanterelle season) they were out in droves. But...they must be out now as the foragers at the market had a soggy basketful.
     Wandering in the woods causes one to reexamine listening in our daily lives - the thick moss beds covering everything creating a completely different way of not only hearing sound, but interacting and moving through it and realizing one's own participation in the creation of sound. These ideas show up in my own work all the time - mainly in abstract ways - but recently I finished a piece for men's choir and percussion ensemble for Ken Pendergrass at SPU, and the work requires the percussionists to improvise at the end of the work using a tray full of natural objects they've collected to create the sound of moving through the woods. The singers are also required to play natural objects - rustling branches to create additional textures. Listening in new contexts seems to be happening all over - when I embarked upon the Sunset + Music tour over the summer I met a number of interesting people doing similar things, among them Tom Peyton. He and his group at DoTank do listening experiments like this one quite regularly. Technology has surely changed how we listen to music and media in general; hopefully positive contributions like that will be a counterbalance to the potential for sound to become less consequential in these strange times of fear and loathing.

11/21 listening list
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Open Graves with Stuart Dempster - flight patterns
Smog - dress sexy at my funeral
Django Reinhardt - All Star Sessions
F. Couperin - Harpsichord Suites
Tom Baker - Hunger
Django Reinhardt - Souvenirs