6. Never Signed, Never Sent
This title comes from an unsent letter from Abraham Lincoln to General George Meade, detailing his profound disappointment in his inability to pursue General Lee’s army after the Battle of Gettysburg, which may have well ended the war. The letter, uncharacteristically heated and vitriolic, was never meant to be sent to Meade, but rather written as a way to exorcise Lincoln’s anger. This movement is in the form of a tarantella, a frenzied and relentless dance mythically known as a kind of exorcism to “sweat out” venom after a bite from a tarantula.

6 Never Signed Never Sent

5. Cavatina
A cavatina is a short song with a simple character. Much like Beethoven’s Cavatina from the op. 130 string quartet, this movement serves as a “calm before the storm” of the final, tumultuous movement.

5 Cavatina

4. Fever Dream
The grooves in this movement are decidedly not hard to pin down. It is an homage to 1970s Funk and Disco, occasionally overcome with bouts of overzealous chromaticism.

4 Fever Dream

3. Highway Hypnosis
Highway Hypnosis is the phenomenon of managing to drive an automobile for long distances, doing everything safely and correctly, while afterwards having no recollection of the drive. This movement, beginning with one final holdover quotation from Radio Row, recedes into an undulating texture with glacially unfolding harmony. The rhythm, while muted and indistinct, creates an uneasy and evasive groove that is hard to pin down.

3 Highway Hypnosis

2. Radio Row
Radio Row was the nickname for Cortland Street in New York City from the 1920s to the 60s. The street housed several radio equipment vendors and repair shops, becoming a frenzied hub for radio technology throughout the city. This movement pays homage to this through several musical quotations of works featured in very early radio history, from Handel’s Largo (broadcast in 1906 to ships sailing the Atlantic) to “Vesti la giubba” from Pagliacci (broadcast in 1910 from the Metropolitan Opera, sung by Enrico Caruso). These works, in addition to a handful from “Jelly Roll” Morton and Mozart, are interspersed with warbling multiphonics phasing in and out of the texture like radio static.

2 Radio Row

1. 94 Steps to the Brink
This title is taken from a sign on a trail down to the edge of the Tahquamenon Falls in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After reading, you can’t help but count each step as you walk down to the falls, edging closer and closer to the brink.

1 94 Steps

II. a slow and patient train, awed by its surroundings

girls making noise (and music)
____
michigan based chamber ensemble of women

II. a slow and patient train, awed by its surroundings

Girlnoise

Related tracks