Friday, October 27, 2006
Posted at
07:18
by
Mike Miliard
Whether its gathering them like a
sorcerer to conjure
strange and strangely moving incantations, or collecting
them to make statements in support for file-sharing, Halsey Burgund is obsessed with the
human voice, and what it can tell us about ourselves.
He uses the voices he records —
strangers’ voices, talking about the things nearest to them, be they profound
or mundane — like instruments, and the compositions he creates with them,
woven together with evocative and atmospheric music, make him one of the most
singular and intriguing artists at work in Boston today.
Tonight, Burgund
will be premiering his latest piece, “One Hundred and Four Thousand,”
at Forest Hills Cemetery
in Jamaica Plain at 8 p.m.
It’s meant as a way to “explore the
cemetery’s contemplative nature as well as the relationships that various
cemetery ‘dwellers’ have to their surroundings,” he writes. “For listeners, the
music and voices will mix with the ambient sounds, smells and sights they
encounter as they make their way through the cemetery on paths of their
choosing.”
He tells us:
I created this piece by stitching
together fragments of interviews of cemetery visitors and employees - conducted
on the cemetery grounds in the Spring of this year – with traditional
instrumentation to yield an original piece of music intended to be heard while
at the cemetery. For the live performance, I will be playing marimba and
piano as well as using sampling technologies to trigger the voices. I
will be joined by Peter Bailey on guitar and MIDI guitar, Javier Caballero on
cello, Bennett Miller on upright and electric bass, Michael O’Connor on sax,
flute and clarinet and Bekka Schellenberg on violin. We will be using
live electronic manipulations to recreate some of the desired effects as well
as take it one step further by using surround sound to put the audience right
in the middle of the piece.
LISTEN: “Remembering
the Dead”
LISTEN: “I Just Want
to Be Recycled”
READ: Halsey
Burgund in the New York Times
