Bang on a Can

The phone rings. The fax machine goes off. The radio is on. So is the TV. The computer is running and hooked up to the internet. I'm scanning music from all over the globe, great music and outlaw music, music by anyone that can set up a home page. The CD store is open 24 hours a day. At 3 am I feel like listening to pygmy chanting from Africa, or Sufi dervishes from Turkey, or overtone singing from Mongolia. Outside my window there's noise. The subway runs over the Williamsburg Bridge, screeching metal against metal that I've begun to like. I hear the overtones and harmonies in the noise. In the midst of this cacaphony of world noise the parameters of composing have changed. A composer picks their own heritage and destiny.

I originally wrote Trance for the British ensemble Icebreaker -- the players in Icebreaker have trained themselves to play in independent interlocking units. I imagined several of these interlocking units going on simultaneously -- like all the different thoughts in one's head that go on -- like being able to hear all of the music that's going on everywhere in the world, in your head, at the same time.

Trance was just released on Argo/London.