Work

Programme Note

During 2007 I spent a lot of time making field recordings of background noise in Paris, and analysing the spectral and rhythmic content of those recordings. I found the more I listened to my recordings, the more musical material I found hidden in these background hisses and hums, chatterings and otherwise banal noises: rhythms, mysterious melodies, energies and harmonic tensions. While working on this commission for the NZSO, I decided to try to capture the intrinsic musical essences I could hear in my field recordings, and interpret those sounds in an orchestral context, with the juxtaposition of the original noise recordings finding musical relationships in the orchestral counterpart. The resulting piece is a conjuring of various energies, or furies, caught in the background noise of Paris, and finding their way into the back of my throat to be sung into a quiet fury.

Lissa Meridan

Commissioned:

Commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Performance History

	29 May 2009	Performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with Michael Norris and conducted by Hamish McKeich at the 2009 Made In New Zealand Concert at the Wellington Town Hall, Wellington
		Hamish McKeich    New Zealand Symphony Orchestra