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Buying the CD
- On the CD:
- Track 4
Movements
- Bringing Forth the Voice
- Weavers
- Ramah
- Baton
- Shuundak
- Threads and Facets
- This Colony Breath
- Halleluyah Ketjak
- Contact
- comma@artswire.org
Carved with Breath
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much
others may despise it, is the invention of good games.
And it cannot be done by men out of touch with their
instinctive values." - Carl Jung
Carved with Breath is a set of "Human
Systems" pieces. Each involves procedures for collective
improvisation of music or movement.
(The article
A Personal View (in Lieu of a Humanifesto)
describes some of the principles guiding the Human Systems
compositions.)
The name of the set comes from the source text, drawn from the Sefer Yetzirah, from which the first piece, "Bringing Forth the Voice", is derived.
These pieces have evolved over several years, in differing contexts: the original version of "Ramah" was part of a large unfinished work for choir and piano, and the first version of "Halleluyah Ketjak" was performed on a keyboard with sampled voices. That piece and "This Colony Breath" first were tried as scores for live voices by the Dallas, TX ensemble "Question Authority, the". The other pieces were composed for Comma, and all were enhanced through developing them as a group.
We have performed some of these pieces on their own, as well as subsets of the full grouping. They are designed to eventually enter our vocabulary of materials and methods as an improvising ensemble, to be used when felt appropriate in the course of free-form performances.
