DESCRIPTION:
Kristina Wolfe: Record of Ancient Mirrors (2017)
MATA Commission
Live from MATA Festival 2017

April 29, 2017
The Kitchen
New York, New York

NOVUS NY
Scott Jarrett, conductor

Doug Balliett, viola da gamba solo

Kristina Wolfe: Record of Ancient Mirrors (2017)
Kristina Wolfe is a wanderer. She spent her early years exploring the forests of Mols Bjerge, near Århus, Denmark, has walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain and – during the composition of Record of Ancient Mirrors – explored Southeast Asia. In her journeys, she carries a recording device to preserve the sounds that strike her: church bells, birdcalls, cowbells. In so doing she has gained a deep respect for ancient markers, history, and spirit, captured the resonance of things from the past, and developed an understanding about time that she presents in her music.
To achieve these ends, she has created a catalogue of imaginary reconstructions of ancient liturgies, virtuosic pieces for viola da gamba, and compositions of massed diffuse drones – notated in a personal and precise style (“Some people do not like the way that I have notated my works (some do).”)
The goal is to somehow reclaim a more ancient way of hearing in which time is not seconds ticking away but rather an eternal duration marked off by events: imagine a lazy-man’s lifecycle, the day passes with events scattered throughout: eat breakfast, eat lunch, eat dinner, go to sleep, expanding into larger and larger forms. “Musical time is ... based on events, and time changes according to the length of
those events. For example, your sense of time in a pop song is no longer than three minutes long, but your sense of time in a drone is infinite.”
Record of Ancient Mirrors is inspired by the Zen concept of reflection on water. “Like reflections of the moon on water, like the Shobogenzo, the idea that the moon is perfect and beautiful and it’s sitting in the water but it’s not wet. It’s this concept that you would be above the world and the elements, slightly affected by it but you are a projection.” In this work the Viola da Gamba is like the moon reflected through a water mirror of drones; “sometimes the ensemble steps out of this undulating reflective surface and into the world. Other times... the sound of the viol illuminates hidden structures.”

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