An improvised piece played on tenor, alto and sopranino recorders, then manipulated using computer software. Loosely inspired by sleepless nights, anxiety and resulting awareness of bird song at dawn.

Recorders - Kate Gallaher
Sound Design - Cosmo Willatts

Meditation From A Cage

made with inspirations and improvisations from @stellato-strings (violin) @kate-gallaher (recorder) and @jacques-andre's toy piano.

Until the last bird sings

This piece is built on Ableton Live out of the recordings I recrently made of @kate-gallaher and @stellato-strings playing flute, recorder and violin, sometimes using melodies from John Walsh's The Bird Fancyer's Delight, then also with me on the piano.

The image is from me asking Adobe AI for a picture of 'baroque dreamcatchers on a Sunday afternoon in South London'.

The piece is a response to this week's @naviar-records challenge based on a haiku poem by Jerome Berglund and here's the information about that:

'ore train
bright colors
passing quickly'
Submission deadline: 14th February 2024

 

 
TO PARTICIPATE
 
- Make a song in response to the weekly assigned poem (a new poem is published every Wednesday)
- When choosing a title for your piece also include the assignment number, for example “Title of your track (naviarhaiku527)”
To submit your track:
- If you’re a Soundcloud user, upload it on Soundcloud and send me the URL via private message, or tag me in the track.
- If you upload your music on Youtube, Bandcamp or anywhere else, upload your submission and then send me the link by email at marco@naviarrecords.com or contact me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
- If you don’t use any music platform, upload it to this Dropbox folder and I’ll include it in the weekly playlist. If you choose this option, make sure you include your name in the track’s title.

Your track may be included in Naviar's weekly podcasts and free (pay-what-you-want) compilations. If you can, please set the track as downloadable on Soundcloud and allow others to remix/reuse it by using a Creative Commons License.
 
For more information visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku
Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves.

Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. His first full-length collections of poetry Bathtub Poems and Funny Pages were just released by Setu and Meat For Tea press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Yavanika.

passing (naviarhaiku527)

The first time I've combined acoustie music I've recorded (@stellato-strings playing with a looper) with synth sounds (alchemy on Logic Pro X). I realised after that I was trying to make the Metallic Bell into one of my favourite sounds - the horn of American trains. 

This is my response to this week's @naviar-records hailku, written by the label's founder Marco Sebastiano Alessi:

'What's a month for the sea
as the waves touch my feet
a shiver, endless'

Here's the info about the challenge, it's a fantastic inititative, get involved.

Submission deadline: 21st February 2024

 

 
TO PARTICIPATE
 
- Make a song in response to the weekly assigned poem (a new poem is published every Wednesday)
- When choosing a title for your piece also include the assignment number, for example “Title of your track (naviarhaiku528)”
To submit your track:
- If you’re a Soundcloud user, upload it on Soundcloud and send me the URL via private message, or tag me in the track.
- If you upload your music on Youtube, Bandcamp or anywhere else, upload your submission and then send me the link by email at marco@naviarrecords.com or contact me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
- If you don’t use any music platform, upload it to this Dropbox folder and I’ll include it in the weekly playlist. If you choose this option, make sure you include your name in the track’s title.

Your track may be included in Naviar's weekly podcasts and free (pay-what-you-want) compilations. If you can, please set the track as downloadable on Soundcloud and allow others to remix/reuse it by using a Creative Commons License.
 
For more information visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

The image is a melding of three AI images generated by each line of Marco's Haiku.

shiver (naviarhaiku528)

Credits:

- Playing from The Bird Fancyer's Delight ... recorder by @kate-gallaher and violin from @stellato-strings
- Synths in WORM Rotterdam by Itchy Ear & I

Image of the furthest star yet found, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

This piece is a response to the latest @naviar-records haiku challenge. Here's the details about that:

'A distant mountain
Seen in the sunlight:
A desolate field'

Haiku by Takahama Kyoshi

Takahama Kyoshi was a Japanese poet active during the Shōwa period of Japan. He was the editor of the haiku magazine Hototogisu (previously edited by Shiki), where he promoted a more traditional style of haiku, as opposed to other popular schools which did not follow the pattern of seventeen syllables at that time.

Kyoshi also highlighted the symbolic function of the kigo (the seasonal reference), even though the more modern trends were already tending towards seasonless haiku.

This haiku poem is part of the Naviar haiku music challenge, where artists are invited to make music in response to a weekly assigned haiku poem. Participation is free and there are no limitations in the songs’ length or genre.

You have seven days from the posting of this haiku to submit your track. For information on how to make a submission, visit the Naviar Haiku Music Challenge page.

 
TO PARTICIPATE
 
- Make a song in response to the weekly assigned poem (a new poem is published every Wednesday)
- When choosing a title for your piece also include the assignment number, for example “Title of your track (naviarhaiku529)”
To submit your track:
- If you’re a Soundcloud user, upload it on Soundcloud and send me the URL via private message, or tag me in the track.
- If you upload your music on Youtube, Bandcamp or anywhere else, upload your submission and then send me the link by email at marco@naviarrecords.com or contact me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
- If you don’t use any music platform, upload it to this Dropbox folder and I’ll include it in the weekly playlist. If you choose this option, make sure you include your name in the track’s title.

Your track may be included in Naviar's weekly podcasts and free (pay-what-you-want) compilations. If you can, please set the track as downloadable on Soundcloud and allow others to remix/reuse it by using a Creative Commons License.
 
For more information visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

Submission deadline: 28th February 2024

Distant (naviarhaiku529)

The recorder playing on this piece is by @kate-gallaher and there is violin from @stellato-strings

This is my response to this week's @naviar-records haiku challenge. Here's the details about that:

'The first thunder
Is likely to shake
The tiered doll stand.'

Like Santoka and Seisensui, Kawahigashi Hekigoto (1873-1937) was an important advocate of the free verse haiku.
Besides being a writer and critic of haiku, Hekigoto was a literary scholar, noh dancer, art critic, calligrapher, social commentator, and mountain climber.
 

Haiku by Kawahigashi Hekigoto

Picture by Yusuf Evli

Submission deadline: 13th March 2024

The first thunder (naviarhaiku531)

Using slowed down fragments of recordings of pedalled piano notes, @stellato-strings touching her violin with the bow, a creaking piano stool and ticking clock, I created this piece using loops and effects on Ableton Live.

It's my contribution to this week's @naviar-records haiku prompt.

The title 'along' is taken from this haiku poem by Takashi Matsumoto:

'Flowing along
changing its colors
a soap bubble.'

Takashi Matsumoto was a Japanese poet originally from Tokyo. Born into a family deeply interested in nō theater, he also devoted himself to it in his youth until 1921, when he came into contact with Hototogisu magazine and haiku poetry. Beginning the following year, Matsumoto became a student of Takahama Kyoshi. In 1946, he launched the magazine Fue 笛 ('The Flute').

The image is from a fraction of a picture by Rodion Kutsaiev.

For more information about @naviar-records and the weekly haiku challenges please visit: http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

along (naviarhaiku533)

This really was 'pre-dawn inertia'. Taking some recordings I have of percussion instruments and doing an effected Ableton Live mix.

My response to the weekly haiku challenge from @naviar-records, this week from label founder Marco. Here's the poem:

Pre-dawn inertia
Where do I go
From here?

Title is taken from the first line of a haiku by Marco Sebastiano Alessi. The image is a section of an image by Dameli Zhantas.

Submission deadline: 3rd April 2024

For more information visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

Pre-dawn inertia (naviarhaiku534)

This ambisonic sound piece was included in the Screen South Immersive Sound Showcase at Folkestone's inaugural Queercall Festival in March 2024. 

300 years ago, John Walsh’s baroque recorder tunes (The Bird Fancyer’s Delight’) were composed for players to teach commonplace British birds. Today, some of these species are dwindling, and so this lament draws on those melodies (performed by @kate-gallaher on recorder and @stellato-strings on violin), field recordings of Folkestone sea, wind and birds at dawn, and mucking about with Gerry McNee on the Teisco 110f in WORM Rotterdam’s vintage synth studio. 

It was all made possible thanks to the dream production team of Christian Duka (Amoenus) and Gavin Roberts (Screen South). Screen South also kindly loaned the a Zoom H4n Pro recording equipment to record the Folkestone bird and sea sounds, and provided Ableton and ambisonic sound training and support.

Until the last bird sings (at Queercall Festival)

Soprano Salomėja Petronytė and pianist Lukas Butkus performed this piece - it's the first part of song cycle I'm composing - on Tuesday 28 May at Festivalis Druskomanija. The backing track is a mellotron sound and a recording of haunted voices which may have been in Hackney or Ipswich. I'm not sure which.

The photograph is of Salomėja and myself was taken after this performance, captured by Ilmé Vyšniauskaité.

Thank you to Eleanor Nicolaou for the help and advice with writing for voice, and Kate Gallaher for the expert Sibelius scoring.

04 Fascination

Louise Walters