Friend, dialogue partner, & Australian new music improvisor extraordinaire, Simone de HAAN. A selection of tracks we have done together...

Works with Simone de HAAN, trombone

SMASH THE BOX....

The five miniatures here are from my THE LITTLE CLAVIER...download gratis 630-page ebook here...http://picture-poems.com/tlc/the-little-clavier.pdf

(1) THE FARMER & THE ARTIST
(2) GARDEN VARIETY VERSE
(3) BEAUTY AS BALANCE
(4) ABSOLUTE
(5) RESONANCE

IMAGE: DRAGON TEETH in solid granite, top of the former BENSON GLACIER, (Lost) Glacier Peak.

RECORDED in Perth, WA, at St. PAULS, & HOTEL PANOPTICON the WALLOWAS, Northeast OREGON. Offgrid. Sun2Sound.

SMASH THE BOX, five miniatures & a soundpoem, with Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

IMAGE: Leaving Montana & the SWEETGRASS HILLS for CANADA, the Milk River, & WRITE OF ROCK...

FLATLAND, the texts of three poems are here...

(1) FLATLAND http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/dipper_polyphony_8-25-11.html

(2) WHAT’S A WEED, from ON THE WAYSIDE http://www.picture-poems.com/week1/wayside.html

(3) SIMPLE DESIRES http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_simple-desires.html

FLATLAND, three little poems in a soundscape, with Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

Just a playful simplexity free-for-all, with Australian New Music virtuoso doing all the hard work…

Stream Cliff Crego | Hör dir Playlist Works with Simone de HAAN, trombone kostenlos online auf SoundCloud an https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/sets/works-with-simone-de-haan

TUMULTUS, an insurrection in 8 voices with claves, Simone de HAAN trombone

THE TEXT IS from the 1996 Terre Nash documentary, "WHO'S COUNTING: Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics. Special thanks to my close friend, the great Australian trombonist, Simone de HAAN; the mysterious, sustained, deep resonance of his sound never ceases to amaze me...

VIDEO for THIS IS WAR is at https://vimeo.com/928814171

IMAGE: WAR PROTEST, University of TOLEDO, OHIO Country, USA

THIS IS WAR, on a text by Marilyn WARING, w/ Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

As I like to say, “The only thing worse than the fragmentation of poetry & music, is when we, in fragmentation, try to unite them.“ 

The inference here –– and I think most composers and poets would agree –– is that we need something radically new, a different approach, especially in what we think of as new or art music. 

To me, poetry and music are two aspects of one undivided movement, a movement which is for me very mysterious, and which I can’t even begin to define adequately, and, therefore, most of the time don’t even try.

Soundpoems are for me a way of exploring, of expressing, of sharing the natural beauty of this movement without so much thinking about it as acting out, or doing it.

The source text for this soundpoem is my “THE LITTLE CLAVIER.” The poem itself is hardly anything at all. Just a few simple phrases, a handful of images. So it does its work only very slowly. Despite its brevity, however, it does enfold an entire ARS POETICA, a way of seeing and doing poetry and music, again, as one whole. That’s its charm for me. It gives us an image of the qualitative ground of sympathetic resonance, a grandpiano-like timeless space we dare not play — for that would be just more fragmentation, just more expression of the isolated self-centered artistic ‘me.’ Instead, we listen passively, with all our energy, and reflect. This is a kind of  giving back of, as it were, as the poem has it, “the marvelous sea of chaos that surrounds us.” 

In closing, I might add here that the text is also the signature piece for my book of the same title. [See the link to the e-book below]

Special thanks to my mate, Australian New Music trombonist extraordinaire, Simone de HAAN, for adding his voice to the project. 

#iPad free friday #ebook THE LITTLE CLAVIER (631 pages b/w potos) bit.ly/dVmNKP

THE LITTLE CLAVIER, a soundpoem, featuring Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

I’m not going to say that my good friend & tnewmusic mate, Simone de HAAN, played in this little improvisato. He did, but only indirectly....mostly backwards...all stiched together with a happy toss of my 12-sided die. 

VIDEO for this track is at https://vimeo.com/947075794

An homage on & for Mr. Cage, in sound & word.

POSTER of the John Cage 10 Rules text is here http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/cage_10-rules-for-students_teachers.html

JOHN CAGE: 10 rules for students & teachers, a soundpoem homage

UPDATE: Marking one year from II.14.2018 #NeverAgain A somewhat surreal musical meditation on North American gun violence, and the cultural insanity of hired-gun, corrupt politicians, people for whom Money & Power count for more than the lives of their own Children & excellence in Education. "Pure insanity...." indeed.

Special thanks to my friend, new music Australian trombone virtuoso, Simone de HAAN. His sound and incredible musicianship was, as always, the inspiration for this little occasional project...

IMAGE: Buddhist Prayer Flags, Montana Blue Sky, EWAM, Arlee, MONTANA, USA

SUNSHINE & KITTENS, a musical reflection on cultural insanity, Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

A soundpoem meditation on a new species of invisible terror, one which fills the digital citizens of the world with an insidious kind of fear:—a now all-pervasive Corporate Surveillance State, one with the potential power to watch our every move. REMARKABLY, the irony of blocking one of the greatest rivers in the world — THE COLUMBIA — at the most sacred convergence of Native American Peoples in the PACIFIC NORTHWEST for this purpose, has gone largely unnoticed. “Do no evil,” indeed.

Special thanks to the Mountain Chickadees  up at HEARTBREAK MEADOW for their spiritual encouragement. AND to my close friend, Australian New Music trombone virtuoso, Simone de HAAN, for playing in the CIRCLE/SQUARE choir.... 


from ON THE WAYSIDE—
four new x-step (162-step) poems

. . . Randomness repeated
does not look like Chance . . . 										 

SEARCH GOOGLE

It's always been so,

that the one

who controls water

controls the kingdom,

and the one who controls the flow,

the source,

of information controls thought.

But now, the dam at

Fort Dalles powers data about

data, a new kind of meta-

control, a thirst for power

that drinks rivers dry.

The Dalles, once natural meeting place,

now hub of North American

squalor, the perfect site to mine

data for quick cash.

Like water, data flows, can be

filtered, turned off, colored red, blue,

black, invisible. First we asked

the river to give

us cheap cans. Now we

ask the river to connect up

the thoughts of the world. Water, like

data, can be used for power.

Let's hope for the best.


TEXTS are at http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/columbia_below-the-dalles.html

IMAGE: The great Columbia River, just below the Dalles Dam. Where GOOGLE’s new server complex consumes more energy than the former smelters that built the bombers of WWII.

SEARCH GOOGLE, or “Do no evil,” a soundpoem...

IMAGE: The former BENSON GLACIER, Eagle Cap Wilderness, OREGON

THE SOUND OF DISAPPEARING GLACIERS, a soundpoem, w/ Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

IMAGE: pickup trailer, waiting, ready to go...Hwy. 2 Northern MONTANA...

This is a little happy prose poem from the first part of my THE LITTLE CLAVIER. 

This is thoroughly improvised summer music. I myself am on the road at present, doing wilderness photography work, studying climate crisis at altitude, and frequently camping in different locations each night. So I enjoy composing music that for me seems to freely resonate with this spirit of the open road.

My theme is, of course, living. Or the different strategies of living one sees and experiences in the slow steady movement of a mountain bike loaded with gear moving down a Montana or Oregon highway.

There is plenty of time to think. There is plenty of time to make photographs. Plenty of time to meet and talk to people. And to hear orchestral music in one’s head. And eventually in the evening write it down.

Special thanks to my Australian new music mate, trombonist, Simone de HAAN, for giving voice to some of these feelings and images.

LET’S GO CAMPING! a musical prosepoem, w/ Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

THIS IS THE third of a growing set of short occasional pieces. I like to think of these as part musical diary, and part musical activism. The pieces are rather like MIRRORS MADE OF SOUND -- some would say shards of glass & barbed-wire -- mirrors that reflect in an open, honest, naked way the violent insanity of the present cultural, political moment.
 
The basic theme is simple: 

Humanity seems caught in a contradiction between the Demonic and the Divine, caught between, on the one hand, the self-destructive violence of war and conflict, and, on the other hand, the great promise of the natural intelligence of Nature, the Sacred, and the living Earth. Becoming aware of this contradiction and how it manifests as a formative force in our culture, our politics, our thought and consciousness -- and, indeed, our art and  music -- is, I think, a central challenge of our time.

The texts used are generally selected at random. Computer synthetic speech is preferred here as a way of mirroring how mechanical our actual human speech -- to my ear so loud, fast, aggressive, utterly without rhythm and breath -- has become. Individual words, phrases, fragments of public discourse, documents, outright lies, propaganda, etc. are distributed using chance operations which then go on to form complex, polyglot temporal vortices. At the same time, two historical source texts -- embodying this contradiction between the Divine & Demonic -- are juxtaposed with each other throughout the whole. (These are translations from the German, and are from J.S. BACH & Joseph GOEBELS.)

Other pieces in the new series are:

(2) DEVIL'S TRIANGLE https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/devils-triangle-wav

(1) SUNSHINE & KITTENS https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/sunshine-kittens-a-musical-reflection-of-cultural-insanity-simone-de-haan-trombone

IMAGE: (Muted) Snake River, BROWNLEE DAM, present-day Idaho/Oregon border, USA. The prison-like grid of 39 mega dams on the great COLUMBIA WATERSHED is, in my view, a textbook example of the above-mentioned contradiction between the Demonic impulse to control by violent force, & the Divine intelligence manifest in natural, flowing, living water.

ENEMY OF THE STATE (O Lamb of the Lord), Simone de HAAN solo trombone

TRANCE, from the Latin transire "cross over, go over, pass over, hasten over, pass away," from trans "across, beyond" (see trans-) + ire "to go" (from Proto Indian European root *ei- "to go"). So this suggests a transition from the present dominant, outmoded, and largely false religious traditions which are everywhere causing so much suffering and violence in the world--one need only think of the three monotheistic beliefs that all arose in the desert around the Middle East, a kind of strident wolftone in the consciousness of the world--to something more true.

But it is also TRANCE in the musical YOGA / Alexander Technique sense of "a half-conscious or insensible condition, state of insensibility to mundane things," [SOURCE https://buff.ly/2EIFvF0] This is a trance state one might enter [en-trance...] with this particular Spatial / Temporal qualitative ground. 

Lest we drift off in some sort of dull New Age stupor, my mate, the AUSSIE trombonist extraordinaire, Simone de HAAN, turns his horn into a ZEN BUDDHIST wakeup or encourage stick, dancing in the second half of the pieces with a two-voice out-of-synch dialogue between the loud speakers. 

The low-level TRANCE VAMP note material was generated  w/ WOLFRAM Mathematica, always good when dogged quasi Minimalist persistence is called for.

IMAGE: A poster from the picture-poems.com 100 MINIATURES project: ONE image; ONE idea; ONE new way of looking. #nonviolence ALL RELIGIONS ARE TRUE / ALL RELIGIONS ARE FALSE #pdf http://bit.ly/TzNxN3  Order #prints online http://bit.ly/2h85Ssa

TRANCE (All religions are true / All religions are false), w/ Simone de HAAN, solo trombone

THIS IS THE fourth of a growing set of short occasional pieces. I like to think of these as part musical diary, and part musical bearing witness. The pieces are rather like MIRRORS MADE OF SOUND -- some would say shards of glass & barbed-wire -- mirrors that reflect in an open, honest, naked way the violent insanity of the present cultural, political moment.

The basic theme is simple:

Humanity seems caught in a contradiction between the Demonic and the Divine, caught between, on the one hand, the self-destructive violence of war and conflict, and, on the other hand, the great promise of the natural intelligence of Nature, the Sacred, and the living Earth. Becoming aware of this contradiction and how it manifests as a formative force in our culture, our politics, our thought and consciousness -- and, indeed, our art and music -- is, I think, a central challenge of our time.

The texts used are generally selected at random. Computer synthetic speech is preferred here as a way of mirroring how mechanical our actual human speech -- to my ear so loud, fast, aggressive, utterly without rhythm and breath -- has become. Individual words, phrases, fragments of public discourse, documents, outright lies, propaganda, etc. are distributed using chance operations which then go on to form complex, polyglot temporal vortices. At the same time, two historical source texts -- embodying this contradiction between the Divine & Demonic -- are juxtaposed with each other throughout the whole. These are translations from the German, and are from J.S. BACH & Hannah ARENDT, Victor KLEMPERER, & from the English texts of David BOHM. The avian soloists featured here are native to the borderlands, the Black-capped Vireo...back natural and modulated for our orchestra. 

In addition, there is a VOCAL OCTET background stream--a kind of isometric motet, if you will, based on one of my MINIATURES, a 32-step sutra that goes: 

"The simplest & most powerful of all possible freedoms,
is the freedom to stop doing what is contradictory or wrong."


(As always with sutras, this is a question which asks, "Is this true?" 32-steps means in THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE 32-syllables. In the TALKING HANDS/TALKING FEET technique/practice, we learn these like MANTRAS, by heart, singing, dancing. chanting, conducting, reciting...It's fun!)

ANOTHER VERSION of the BORDER WALL, recorded with Simone de HAAN playing all the many ensemble trombone tracks, is at: www.picture-poems.com/mp3/border-wall_2.mp3

Other pieces in the new series are:

(3) ENEMY OF THE STATE https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/enemy-of-the-state-m4a-1

(2) DEVIL'S TRIANGLE https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/devils-triangle-wav

(1) SUNSHINE & KITTENS https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/sunshine-kittens-a-musical-reflection-of-cultural-insanity-simone-de-haan-trombone

IMAGE: Rime on Barbed-wire, the good Earth gracefully healing the thought -- the illusion -- of finding security in isolation.

BORDER WALL (A mighty fortress is our...), bearing musical witness, w/ Simone de HAAN. trombone

HERE'S THE 31-step miniature used in the piece: 

"The price of freedom is no longer war; 
it's the revolution of thought & consciousness 
that ends conflict---before---it happens." 

It asks a very simple question: Is this true? 

I would say that it is. The music unfolds the energy, the sound, the pulse, the rhythm of the question, projecting it into space and time. The mist remarkable thing, I think, is that the music actually DOES or DOES NOT demonstrate or resonate w/ the truth of what is being said, what is being sounded or performed. It always up to the listener to decide which is the case.

Simone de HAAN, trombone sextet / Simone de HAAN, sexteto de trombón.

IMAGE: Yum CHENMO, the Tibetan Buddhist goddess of Wisdom & Compassion, very much needed in our confused & violent world, GARDEN OF 1000 BUDDHAS, Arlee, MONTANA, USA

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM, a music of protest...

This is more an audio documentary than actual  musical composition. My good friend and Australian trombone new music virtuoso tells us about his project to find resonance with the sound of whales. It is also a bit of an intimate window on how the two of us, he in FREO, WA, & I in Northeast OREGON, work together, sometimes on a daily basis, despite being separated by 15,000 km. After all, sound underwater moves four times faster. 

The header about us humans becoming in our hightech world increasingly 2nd-hand beings seemed entirely appropriate, that is, from the whales point of view.

POD, Simone de HAAN tells us about his project to find resonance w/ the living sound of whales

DARKNESS features two texts. One, heard at the top, is a sutra-like miniature of mine called THE PATTERN IS CLEAR on the mechanical nature of all human violence, from the most vulgar next devastating oil war in the Middle East, to the next most subtle exchange of equally mechanical insults between fellow artists. 

The other text, is the surreal and classic “last-man-on-earth” poem of Lord BYRON. Legend has it, that BYRON composed his masterpiece at the very darkest depths of what became known as “the year without a summer,” In Geneva, Switzerland, July 1816. This was the nuclear-winter-like year of cold and devilishly dark skies which resulted—of course this was not understood at the time—because of the eruption in April the previous year of Mount TAMBORA in the former colonies of the Dutch East Indies.

So the vision, or apocalypse—not in the Christian sense, but rather in the original Greek meaning of revelation, of “pulling away a cover”—is the simple but marvelously clear truth that all human conflict or violence is unnecessary. At the very moment of this insight, however, we are now totally enveloped by the facts of Climate Collapse. Horrifying, indeed, all the more given the worldwide parallel collapse of right governance, speeding us happily along—we are all complicit—the one way street to ecocide.

The avian soloist featured here—both in natural and highly modulated form (as doppler f-16s)—is the great SWAINSON’s THRUSH. It sings in unique ascending spirals, all the while frequency modulating multiple tones on the fly in a virtuosic flourish that gives its sound a remarkable organic complexity. They are just now arriving back in the montane zone above 1400 meters, just in time for the equally beautiful appearance of the White Forest Windflowers.

IMAGE: Buckwheat Overlook, a marvelous butte in the sagebrush steppe that tops out at a mere 1500 meters, but with spectacular views in all directions. I’m doing photography fieldwork here right now. The spirit caretaker here is the community of Western Meadow Larks. It is where the final parts of DARKNESS were composed.

DARKNESS, on the 1816 poem by Lord BYRON

THE PHILOSOPHER’S LYRE

Philosophy? It only takes one bad idea to destroy a man, or woman, or even an entire civilization.

Philosophy is not just something we think about; it is something that we do—a practice—like music or yoga. It goes after the contradictions, the misplaced, broken strings, and tunes and retunes its lyre religiously, each day, to the ground of truth. 




Philosophy sings its songs in the open—honest, naked, direct—and simply listens to how the sound resonates as it rings out, into the Universe.

PART I "Music? The one thing humans do that makes the rest of Nature jealous..."

(1) THE PHILOSOPHER'S LYRE
(2) THE GOOD & THE BAD, a set of six miniatures
(3) DIFFERENCE
(4) THE VIOLIN & THE NORWEGIAN SPRUCE, a love song, for Carl SAGAN
(5) BORDER WALL, with Simone de HAAN, trombone
(6) POD, finding resonance with the songs of whales, with Simone de HAAN, trombone

PART II "Even I turn, with my religion without a name..."

(7) DARKNESS, on a poem by Lord BYRON
(8) AN EXTINCTION OF A DIFFERENT KIND
(9) SUNSIGHT, for R. Buckminster FULLER
(10) WEEDS, part I
(11) FLOWERS, parts I, II & III

DOWNLOAD the much smaller but high quality mp3 [76Mb] for free at: picture-poems.com/mp3/the-philosopers-lyre_set.mp3

THE PHILOSOPHER'S LYRE, a set of 11 pieces, in two parts...

A dialogue between two voices: On the left hand side, a living, breathing, sea creature; On the right hand side; A quartet pod of underwater whales echoing each other. 

Recorded by Simone de Haan on February 4, 2020, at St Paul's in Fremantle, not far from the beach. Final mix by Cliff Crego, in the Wallowa Mountains, Oregon.

Dialogue - water.whales.resonance.

RECORDED at St.PAULS CHURCH, FREO, WA...with special heartfelt thanks...PHOTO, Simone de HAAN

LOVE RESONANCE, a father’s song to a lost son...Simone de HAAN, text & trombone

IMAGE: ECHO LAKE, C. 2400 m., Whitebark pine country above rhe incredibly rugged and beautiful HURRICANE VALLEY, Eagle Cap Wilderness, OREGON.

ON RELEVANCE, a soundpoem, with Veery (Catharus fuscescens) & trombone (Simone de HAAN) soloists

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 X

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.