Recording: Germaine Liu

Artist: Germaine Liu

Song: [edited excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Somewhere There Creative Music Festival – Show 2), February 27, 2016.

Germaine Liu - [edited excerpt]

With the nights dominated by a series of large ensembles, the festival's first afternoon took the opposite tack, presenting a half-dozen short sets of solo improvisation, as well as a panel discussion on the theory and practice of putting one's own music under the microscope. One of the city's most dazzling soloists, Germaine Liu showed a few different concepts for percussion and human body, including trays of marbles (and later, water-filled trays). But most fascinatingly, in between those, she played a dazzling set on a well-worn xylophone, using her hands and arms to mute and "play" the resonating, lingering soundwaves.

[I was so taken with this little selection that I gave in to the temptation to tinker with it. It turns out that it sounds quite astonishing when played backwards. And having discovered that, I stretched it out and chopped it up for a rather extended re-imagining.]