Music for “Bamboo Wind”

This music was commissioned by Shaleigh Dance Works for a 7 Canto cycle based on poems by Coke Ariail involving dancers, actors and one musician – me. They specifically requested cello which is not my main instrument and also the length of the piece required far more texture than I could achieve playing solo cello live so I purchased an inexpensive loop pedal which I loaded with nature sounds and other tracks I recorded on accordion, piano, violone, bouzouki, and bass. It was my first foray into “electronic” music. The dance was still evolving at the dress rehearsal and was also different each night so there was a fair amount of improvistion. There were readings of the poems during the dance so the music had to stay out of the way of that. I was unable to perform at the final performance so I had to record the whole thing at home on my ancient and stuttering Dell desktop computer watching a video of the previous night’s performance hoping all would work work out for the final performance.
My intention was to record a “concert version” since there is a lot of idle repetition in this recording waiting for actors to finish script but I never got to it so I’m posting the whole thing here.
 
released January 20, 2019

Album cover photo by Zoe Litaker Photography