Recording: Very Many

Artist: Very Many

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #42), September 4, 2018.

Very Many - unknown

It's always deeply satisfying to be able to present musical explorations from folks I know from other avenues. I was familiar with Andrew Finlay Stewart as an organizer at the Long Winter series as well as a visual artist, and I knew Georgia Webber as a storyteller and comics maker (her Dumb: Living without a Voice has just been published by Fantagraphics) — so I was intrigued when they suggested they might be prepared to make some sounds together in public.

Each playing an unamplified violin, their set was all about listening, and listening closely. This piece (presented as a rather underwhelming field recording, I must confess) used the geometry of the room to create a spacialized experience, with the performers starting at opposite ends of the room and then meeting each other in passing as their quiet musical gestures trailed along with them and ending up at the far end from where they begun. A second piece (too beautifully delicate to be recorded at all) pushed further into Pauline Oliveros territory with Webber asking the audience members to add their own quietly-humming voices to create a soft bed for their hushed musical string-scratches.

[Track Could Bend is back at Wenona on Tuesday, November 6th with performances from Araz Salek & Colin Fisher, Julie Reich and Alex Fournier & Tara Kannangara.]

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!