X-Country STRING QUARTET Project: pieces for a quartet biking the world, for MUSIC & PLANET

THESE LITTLE MINIATURES, or "sayings in prose," are each meant to be small windows on a new way of looking. What has to thnk a bit, it's true, but I believe it might be a good idea to have little background philosophical reflection interpolations like these nested between Poetry, Dance & Music performances. It's a way of reinventing perhaps, what I experience as the outmoded art form of "THE CONCERT,' itself. It might be a way of filling the performance space, as it were, with a new kind of energy, new ideas, a new kind of shared meaning. What could be more beautiful than that?

[PHOTO: Last light, December, snowy Snake River country, Oregon, where these MINIATURES were written]


THREE METAPHYSICAL MINIATURES, "An extinction of a different kind"

Jaehyuck Choi (1994) - Signal (2022)
for soprano saxophone and trombone (2022)

Live at Concours Nicati 2023
26.08.2023

Duo Signal 
Alejandro Oliván - soprano saxophone
Adrián Albaladejo Díaz - trombone

https://www.duosignal.net/

Audio recording: Christophe Egea
Audio mix and mastering: Clément Marie

Salquin Konzertsaal, Hochschule Luzern-Musik

Jaehyuck Choi - Signal (2022) - live, Luzern - 26.08.2023

Special thanks to my good friend, Simone de HAAN, Australian new music trombonist extraordinaire…I couldn’t have done this project without his help.

“What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.”

TEXT of Bertrand Russell’s Last letter used here is at http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/russells-last-letter.pdf

Feel free to make your own, I am sure, much better performance of the text. The track for the orchestral background (minus voice) is here:  http://picture-poems.com/mp3/russell_no-voice.wav

IMAGE: Bertrand RUSSELL, 1957

RUSSELL’S 1970 LAST LETTER, a call for peace in the Middle East

One approach to the rhythmic complexity of the piece is, of course, to simplify. Practice first as a purely percussion piece, without the instruments, singing / drumming the movements without pitch and dynamics. If you can generalize this technique of gradually progressing from simple to complex, a lot more can be learned than just the little study. 

"STUDY IN PIZZICATO" is a part of my "X-COUNTRY STRING QUARTET project." 

STUDY IN PIZZICATO performance materials:
webscore http://bit.ly/yqXZkC 
score pdf http://bit.ly/z4rm8O
performance model mp3 http://bit.ly/xTEEkR
parts pdf http://www.cs-music.com/quartets/study-in-pizzicato_parts.pdf

part of X-Country STRING QUARTET Project, "Study in Pizzicato,"

PHOTO: YUM CHENMO--"Great Wisdom Mother" at EWAM, Garden of 1000 Buddhas, Jocko Valley, Arlee, Montana

SEE TEXT at: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/1000-buddhas_9-29-10_8bw.html

RETWEET #buddhism A QUESTION OF #NONVIOLENCE, OR NON-EXISTENCE—a meditation pdf [140k] http://bit.ly/1nkSlvg mp3 [3.7Mb] http://bit.ly/1nkSjDB

A QUESTION OF NON-VIOLENCE, OR NON-EXISTENCE,  a meditation . . .

PHOTO: Arinica (Arnica montana) & Butterfly, the Alps

POSTER is at: http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_sonnet-XIV-2.html

POSTER pdf is at: http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_sonnet-XIV-2.pdf

DOWNLOAD: #FreeFriday RILKE IN THE WALLOWAS 80 new tr. & 120 photos, by CLIFF CREGO pdf 212 p/ 208 Mb http://bit.ly/mA3Ly7

RILKE: Sonnets to Orpheus, XIV [second part], German/English, tr. Cliff Crego

PHOTO: 'METH HOUSE,' Northeast MONTANA, somewhere lost, biking, along Highway 2...SEE MORE at: http://bit.ly/1S2iNWG

MUSIC featured is from my THE MAGIC BOX project, for mallet instruments...."dance of the blue castanets" ...
SEE webscore at: http://bit.ly/1PeKz3h
DOWNLOAD score pdf at: http://bit.ly/23cJQUy
  


7 MINIATURES: House of Culture - For the Young - Wilderness - Creationist? - Face of Empire

"Study in 2" is part of my "X-COUNTRY STRING QUARTET project."

VIEW iPad webscore at: http://cs-music.com/quartets/study-in-two_1.html

DOWNLOAD score pdf at: http://cs-music.com/quartets/study-in-two.pdf

DOWNLOAD parts at: http://cs-music.com/quartets/study-in-2_parts.pdf


part of X-Country STRING QUARTET Project, "Study in 2"

IMAGE: The freedom of the open road, my home/office/basecamp, along Hwy 2, MONTANA....

FOR MORE ON the X-Country STRING QUARTET Project, go to: https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/sets/x-country-string-quartet


The X-Country STRING QUARTET, biking round the world, for both Music & Planet

Teach the SIMPLE, to master the COMPLEX;
Master the COMPLEX, to teach the SIMPLE.

Any NEW MUSIC of any significance will, in my view -- at least implicitly -- hold enfolded within itself a very much more simple stream of sound and movement that is appropriate for children of different ages. A kind of path of discovery that opens the door to the unknown, and awakens a sense of the marvelous. In the early 20th century, Stravinsky and Bartok are good examples, I think, but the tradition really has its real spiritual source, I think, with Bach.

CHELTENHAM VIII is little project for kids ready to go on a bit of a rhythmic adventure. It's a double duo, with four voices, so one might play it with a much larger group as well. I've done it two or three times with groups around 13 or 14 years of age.

It's best to do it without conductor. That's the only way an ensemble will develop a shared sense of rhythmic ground, pulse, and subdivision, which is what the piece is all about. 

My experience is that, rhythmically, kids can play just about anything, much more than we assume, or give them credit for. The approach in THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE is that the guide or teacher knows the pieces by heart, and can sing them without music, BEFORE the first rehearsal. Kids resonate instantly and powerful with this kind of energy. You don't even have to play violin,  although it does help as coach to be good with bow/fingering/harmonic placement stuff, etc.

THE Webscore is at: http://bit.ly/1c9Wduo The pdf is at: http://bit.ly/1FmWOQA Parts pdf: http://bit.ly/1Jpyt0h

THERE'S a version for viola, too, at: http://bit.ly/1FmXuW9 pdf http://bit.ly/1FmXzZZ pdf parts http://bit.ly/1ItDOWN mp3 http://bit.ly/1ItEmMt

THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE is an open source project. So, if you'd like to make a new, perhaps better, version for different instruments of the piece, have at it!



CHELTENHAM (DOUBLE) DUO VIII, version for 4 violins, for the young performer . . .

A 17 seventeen-step poem is a kind of generalized HAIKU. How it is notated in the score isn’t relevant. Only the 17 steps as we hear/sense/feel them as a dance, a pattern of movement, is important.

A SEQUENCE strings 17 of these seventeen-step poems together, like strings of lights on a Christmas tree. Each string has a different color or theme or center.

There are 17 SEQUENCES. Here, we hear the first nine.

Each numbered pattern we hear is a single image or experience from a bike packing pilgrimage made through the mountains of IDAHO and OREGON. 120 days / 80 camps. Many more, new special places and new friends.

TEXT of SEQUENCES I through XI… (rough draft…) is at http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/lost-in-idaho.pdf

IMAGE: My bike packing rig, MISSOULA. I cache the bike, and periodically change over to boots and backpack for wilderness photography work, and then hike back out to my bike.

LOST IN IDAHO, A pilgrim’s notebook….Sequences I through IX

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3XXq8_01w

The immediate inspiration for my 'Fragment 16 (Xenogothic Triple Canon)' was a piece by the composer Matt Barber (https://soundcloud.com/brbrofsvl ) titled 'Prelude and Canon for Wind Quintet' ( which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhKDdcFm8l0 ). The title belies his piece's compositional virtuosity: the canon is in five different superimposed speeds, and uses late romantic tonal language. It caused quite a stir at Eastman when it was first played there, despite its short length. Matt's musicianship has been inspirational to me since I was 18 years old, and in some ways I feel like I am always several steps behind him. So I also wanted to write a polytempic canon in a historical contrapuntal style, and Avignon around 1370 was my target.

I failed, quickly: my piece is not strictly in three different consistent speeds (much too difficult), but the melodies in each voice, otherwise all direct copies of one another, do get pervasively pushed and pulled like taffy into and out of shifting speeds. I partly attribute my failure to my beloved teacher, Jean-François Charles, who suggested “Why not write a canon at the [melodic distance of a] 7th? ”, suggesting that canons at the 5th and octave were rather passé. I took him up on this, but it made life harder. For example, for technical reasons, descending scales were now basically off limits, and descending sixths become sort-of necessary as an escape hatch, both features which were uncommon in the melodic style of the medieval period. Nevertheless, it was great fun getting the piece to sound as 'medieval' as possible given these constraints. I can't take credit for the coinage 'Xenogothic'; that honor belongs to microtonal theorist and composer Margo Schulter (https://www.bestii.com/~mschulter/QuickTour.html). Please look up her and Matt's music if you get the chance.

Thanks to the JACK Quartet  for this wonderful performance.

Fragment 16 (Xenogothic Triple Canon)

In the silence of the night, the bubo bubo releases its voice into the valley with all its majesty; its depth rivals that of the night itself.

recorded at midnight in Niğde Aladağlar, April 30, 2025

Bubo Bubo (Eagle Owl) Aladaglar, Emli Vadisi

Pied Butcherbird song at dawn, accompanied by White-winged Fairywren, Trillers, Miners, Emu booms,  Magpies et al, in the NSW outback near Lightning Ridge

Pied Butcherbird Sunrise Recital

Water loss on land adds to rising seas: global drying with gravity satellite expert Jay Famiglietti.  Is this planet actually a living cooperative? Explore with science journalist Ferris Jabr. Expect abrupt shifts in big systems, from ocean currents to ice - new science led by Sjoerd Terpstra.  Three interviews.

Global drying, Gaia & Abrupt Change

σαν της αυγής ονείρατα και σκιάχτρα σαν της νύχτας (like dreams of the dawn and scarecrows of the night) • for soprano, accordion & marimba • a sound illustration on poetry by Kostis Palamas • composed by Christos Farmakis in 2020

0:00 Σιωπή | Silence
2:25 Μάγισσες αρμέγουν το φεγγάρι | Witches milking the moon
5:24 Βροχή από αίμα | Rain of blood

performed by KIMI ensemble • https://www.kimi-ensemble.com/
Þórgunnur Anna Örnólfsdóttir • soprano
Katerina Anagnostidou • marimba
Jónas Ásgeirsson • accordion

http://christosfarmakis.com/

like dreams of the dawn and scarecrows of the night

Composer. Writer. Photographer. Former conductor & founder of the ASKO ensemble.

On a bike/ski/hike trek of the Pacific Northwest studying native plants & climate breakdown 🌲 from sagebrush sea to whitebark pine. Composing off-grid the whole way.

#Sun2Sound 🌕 on Bluesky

THINKING LIKE A STONEPINE, a soundpoem manifesto https://vimeo.com/844665859

“LOVE & WATER, three thought poems w/ coda, PHAROS for small orchestra, “Nightwind”” https://vimeo.com/847079690 

CURRENTLY on mt bike/ski/climbing trek through Pacific Northwest, working on a photobook about WHITEBARK PINE COLLAPSE and CLIMATE CRISIS. BASES in the WALLOWAS | AMSTERDAM | ALPS. 

WEEKLY photo/poetry updates at www.picture-poems.com & THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE new music, poetry & dance performance project at www.cs-music.com

ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT for progressive, tech-savy, instrumental virtuosi interested in dialogue & collaborative undertakings.

CONTACT cliff@picture-opoems.com
Or on SKYPE or FACETIME @cliffcrego

MUSIC? The one thing humans do,
that makes the rest of nature jealous.

CHELTENHAM (DOUBLE) DUO VIII, version for 4 violins, for the young performer . . .

Cliff Crego

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