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

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.

I was trained in tradition, yet I stepped beyond its walls. Sound is my language, not to decorate but to liberate. Composer, performer, and listener — one fire, three sparks, inseparable.

I write and compose to uncover what is hidden: the truth buried beneath power, the dignity of the ordinary, the current of awareness that flows through all.

I belong to no authority, only to sound, to truth, to the silence from which all begins. My work is not mastery, but remembrance — a manifesto in every note, every word, every breath.

I am a composer of the 21st century: a studio artist. The studio is my forge, my battlefield, my sanctuary. Machines hum like choirs, circuits burn like torches, cables twist like roots in the earth. Tradition breaks open in this fire — the score turns to light, the instrument becomes the world itself.

To be a studio artist is to seize sound at its rawest, to sculpt electricity and breath as one, to summon the invisible power that belongs to all. Here music is not bound by walls, not enslaved by profit, not tamed by form. It is free, untouchable, unending — a living flame for the century that is ours.

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

Cliff Crego