8-channel surround piece (stereo reduction)

Cisterna II was composed from recordings I made in the small town of Guanacaste, located high in the mountains of southern Honduras. When I visited in 2013, I was amazed by a giant cistern that sits on the mountain just outside of the village. Despite this, the residents of Guanacaste had infrequent access to clean water because the pipes had deteriorated and the town is very remote and difficult to access. Fortunately, a volunteer project rebuilt the pipe system and reconnected the community to the cistern in the years following my visit.

Many of the sounds in this piece – including interviews with residents about their relationship to water, local livestock, and the constant bachata music on the local radio – are convolved with the sound of the cistern's interior, its resonance captured by dropping a microphone in the open pipe that was eventually reconnected to the village.

A live performance version of this piece was premiered in Paris in 2014 as part of the IRCAM Manifeste festival, and recomposed for premiere at the DIFFUSION festival in Baltimore in 2021.

Cisterna II

Jason Charney