Created and performed together with Eric Leonardson
Live performance and composition for broadcast (2007)
Developed at the free103point9.org Wave Farm in May 2007, toured down the eastern seaboard of the U.S. in May-June 2007, and premiered on radio on ORF Kunstradio on June 17, 2007. The piece has since been broadcast on independent and public radio internationally.
Dancing Walls Stir the Prairies began with field recordings and descriptions of remembered sounds from our respective “sister” cities of Chicago and Toronto, particularly in our respective neighborhoods. We “listened below the surface of the map,” beyond geographic borders and visual marks, in order to recall two very subjectively experienced soundscapes that nonetheless share distinct features–balancing between documentary, intervention, and reverie. In other words, our field recordings figured not as the actual audio material heard in the finished work, but as the mnemonic source for recalling and describing soundscapes to one another, and through this process we improvised, structured, and developed our instrumental sounds and musical ideas. Using instruments as diverse as Eric’s self-constructed “Springboard“, as well as accordion, harmonica, theremin, voice, and live electronics, we sought to conjure the feeling and tone of places real and imagined.
