Works I

…a series of new sound compositions by Bill Stevens

inspired by…

Timmah Ball
Joseph Beuys
Alexander Calder
Ayesha Hameed
Stuart Fowkes
Louisa Lana
Laura Salzberg

Works I

Bill Stevens
 Everyday Utopias

Expansive Territories 
Presence 
Contact 
Everyday Utopias 
When It’s Dark, Look for the Stars

How did the idea of Everyday Utopias manifest itself in light of the pandemic? How can we bring to fruition the imagining of alternative worlds, making for positive living utopias here and now? Thinking pre-pandemic (before 2020), endeavors displayed in the context of the pandemic (2020/2021) and experiences that shape and visualize possible futures - what are the connections?  Are there connections? Is this the present/future we have imagined in our lifetime?

i will erect the new paradise
 i will build and decorate it
 LIKE a garden in an outgoing/incoming vessel 
with ornamented walls 
with a basin in the floor

it is made from light and pleasant materials 
on the wall, lifeforms stand out in relief
 i can feel them ALL when i stroke the wall with my hands 
on the basin floor, lifeforms stand out in relief 
the light forms of water
 i can feel them ALL when i cross the bottom with my bare feet

i can feel EVERYTHING
…i will erect the new paradise 
Poem from Outgoing Vessel by Ursula Andkjaer Olsen 
Translated by Katrine Ogaard Jensen

Bill Stevens - trumpet, effects, compositions using Logic Pro
 Paul Pricer, spoken word on Everyday Utopias
 Eric Peters, drums on When It’s Dark, Look for the Stars

Cover Art by Sarah van Riq

Everyday Utopias

A Dove Has Spread Its Wings
A Spoken Word Oratorio, a message of peace

  Bill Stevens - compositions using Logic Pro
  Spoken Word using Narakeet, AI text to speech program

  * John F. Kennedy - Peace Speech, exerpt, American University, June    10, 1963
  * Prelude_Aria 1 with messages of peace by... 
                                                                            Martin Luther King, Jr.
                                                                             Hafsat Abiola
                                                                             Malala Yousafzai
                                                                             Nelson Mandela
                                                                             John Lewis
                                                                             Elijah Cummings
                                                                             Martin Luther King, Jr.
                                                                             Hafsat Abiola
  * First Interlude
  * Recitative - A Brave and Startling Truth, 
                             Dr. Maya Angelou
  * Second Interlude
  * Aria 2_Finale with messages of peace by… 
                                 Mother Teresa
                                 Thich Nhat Hanh
                                  Indira Gandhi
                                  Mahatma Gandhi
                                  Mother Teresa
                                  Thich Nhat Hanh         
* Finale: 
Buddha
Prophet Muhammad
Krishna
Jesus
Lao Tzu
Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Speech - A Tiny Ripple of Hope, excerpt, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 1966

Cover Art - Pablo Picasso’s Peace Dove - Picasso’s dove of peace spread its wings and flew around the world. No power could stop it.

A Dove Has Spread Its Wings

The Disappearance of Clouds
Bill Stevens, compositions and spoken word using Narakeet, an AI text to speech program

Three Suns - based on the artist Nung-Hsin Hu book and performance art

The Only Name We Can Call It Now Is Not It's Only Name (excerpt)
...based on the book, a poem by Valerie Hsiung

Landscapes of Retreat / The Disappearance of Clouds
...based on the climate writings and art of Rosetta Elkin and Tomasz Saraceno

The Disappearance of Clouds

Why don’t we start thinking of what we can put round the music? The reason we were originally interested in doing a film sound track is because the film supports the music - that’s to say, one’s awareness that this is music for a film stimulates the imagination to think pictorially and scenically, to connect the emotions of the film with the music. You just stop listening to a piece of music in the abstract and imagine the situation that it belongs to.

A strategy: there could be bits of dialogue trapped in the music - just short fragments in different languages drifting through.

Brian Eno, Letter to U2

Thus began my look into creating this new album, Movie Music. I chose two classics dating back to the silent movie era, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. Extracting dialogue from the films and placing it in and around the music my intent was to connect the music to the story. All music was composed by Bill Stevens.

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist science-fiction drama film directed by Fritz Lang, and written by Thea von Harbou in collaboration with Lang from von Harbou's 1925 novel of the same name. The silent film is regarded as a pioneering science-fiction movie, being among the first feature-length movies of that genre.

Made in Germany during the Weimar period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city master, and Maria, a saintly figure to the workers, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes in their city and bring the workers together with Joh Fredersen, the city master. The film's message is encompassed in the final inter-title: "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart".

Metropolis is a four movement suite…

Prelude - The Eternal Gardens
In The Depths
Intermezzo
The Mediator

The recitation of the spoken word is in German using Narakeet, an AI text to speech program using selected minimal text from the film to place the storyline in context to the original.


The Passion of Joan of Arc is a 1928 French silent historical film based on the actual record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and stars Renee Jeanne Falconetti as Joan. 

At the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris it is possible to see one of the most famous documents in the history of the world - the official record of the trial of Joan of Arc. If you turn over the pages, yellow with age, which contain the account of her martyrdom you will find Joan herself, not the military genius who inflicted on the enemy defeat after defeat, but a simple and natural young girl who died for her country.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is a one movement composition with the recitation of the spoken word in French, once again using Narakeet, an AI text to speech program. The text is based on only the responses that were given by Joan, without hearing the questions from her interrogators first. In her responses, you can conjure up the questions that were posed to her and her simple responses in and of themselves tell her story.

All translations can be found in the description of each seperate selection of music in this playlist.

Movie Music

Conceptual Tree is an album based on the artwork of Mati Klarwein. Through a series of conceptual compositions utilizing the Indian Tambura settings of Pandit Pran Nath as realized by LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela, Pandit Kamalesh Maitra, Ustad Amir Khan, among others in Fourth World musical settings to carry on the legacy of Jon Hassell, Don Cherry, Toshinori Kondo and Miles Davis.

Conceptual Tree

Wet Curve

Timeless

Dead Sea

Landscape Described

White Angel

Rooms of Resonance

What is the artists potential in improving on an acoustic instrument - in a room where related objects are brought into vibration?

Rooms Of Resonance

Antartica

…a new sound composition by Bill Stevens

Antartica

Snow Flurry I

Based on the sculpture Snow Flurry I by Alexander Calder (1948)

Arrangement: From the Variable, Ayesha Hameed

Snow Flurry I

Meet Me in the Clouds

…a new sound composition by Bill Stevens

Meet Me in the Clouds

Songs You Can't Hear
Poetry by Timmah Ball

Before silence
There were lyrics
A woman in a building
Sung histories we imagined
Fixed to our homes

I saw the Mill
Within an email
Site-specific sound
Within an app
Tethered to zoom
On the Internet
Writing sites
We haven’t met

Before silence
We saw words
In her mouth
From our instinct
About workers In a factory
On fire
Like we knew

Discussing labour
You can’t see
From experiences
You don’t know
Hosiery and socks
Before bespoke was marketed
And handmade was new

Before silence
We asked if
We still hear?
What doesn’t exist?
Unsure if
Sounds change
Fixed to our homes

Purpose, specificity,
Labour, manufacturing
Just words
On the Internet
Writing songs
You can’t hear

Luisa Lana reads in Italian

Field Recording - Stuart Fowkes

Songs You Can't Hear

In March 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I set out to record a series of interpretations on the music of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Bjork. Through the magic of remote recording we spent the next few months putting the music together from each of our homes resulting in the album, A New Day, Yesterday. 

This second release is an interpretation of Beautiful Boy by John Lennon. It features the guitar work of Steve Anagnost.

Each month I will be releasing the additional interpretations from the album A New Day, Yesterday as follows:

Come Together
All is Full of Love
Tears in Heaven
Hunter
Something

Thanks for listening.

A New Day, Yesterday

Beautiful Boy

Everyday Utopias
Bill Stevens - composition, field recordings
Paul Pricer - spoken word

Composition commissioned for Well-Being Cities, a unique collaboration between Cities and Memory and C40, a global network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed right now to confront the climate crisis.

The project asks artists to reimagine soundscapes representing well-being in cities – whether environmental, social, climate-related or cultural – with sound works being presented at the C40 Summit in Buenos Aires in October 2022.

My composition, Everyday Utopias, is a cautionary tale of how simple it would be to enter into a nuclear World War if we are not alert to what that would mean for the planet. We have it within our power and abilities to avert this, as of now, imaginary future. For true sustainability and wellbeing to occur, we must be able to put our differences aside and see where we have commonalities leading to a fundamental shift in thinking that looks to revive and protect our planet looking toward a collective future, a more resilient future.

My tale begins as though in a dream. What future path will we take? One of sustainability or one of mutual destruction? Aside from the musical sections I composed on Logic Pro, I also included the following field recordings:

1. New York City Nuclear Preparedness Public Service Announcement  2. DENMARK COPENHAGEN Sirens in Copenhagen May 6 12.00pm 2020 - Timothy John Hinman  3. United States Nuclear Preparedness Announcement in the Event of a Nuclear Strike on the mainland United States  4. Statement by Albert Einstein as read by Paul Pricer

I do not believe that this is the path we need to follow, but in the words of Rod Serling from the Twilight Zone episode number 68 from September 29, 1961, “The Shelter” …

No moral, no message, no prophetic track, just a simple statement of fact. For civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized.

Contact - Bill Stevens - trumpet with effects, composition

The pandemic has rendered many things we once took for granted fragile. Among them is the certainty that music holds spaces for us, where freedom, closeness, exuberance, and community are within reach. Few things have been made so ambiguous and unsettling by living with the virus as contact, encounter, and touch. For many the idea of contact is now associated with fear, anxiety, grief, the painful loss of closeness and exchange, or guilt. Some are overwhelmed by the amount of new communication and relationships as they move deeper into the digital realm, while others finally feel liberated from the burden of maintaining contacts at all. Throughout these different realities, the inequality-reinforcing effect of the pandemic becomes apparent, because reducing contact might not be something one can afford, and its ramifications depend directly on their respective social status and economic resources. 

Today more than ever, we need to establish positively transformative modes of contact with other realities beyond our own. And not only between people with different ways of life, in different parts of the world, or between generations, but also with our planetary environment and the diversity of its life forms, which are currently deprived of the basis of their existence at an alarming rate. 

How can we bring back, rethink, re-experience, and strengthen the possibility for exchange and emotional resonance? Because without new and challenging forms of contact in the present, we cannot expect a better, more collective, just, and joyful future.

Contact, CTM 2022 Festival Theme

Contact

Presence
Bill Stevens - trumpet with effects, composition
‘Tears’ for Wayne Shorter, incorporated the Weather Report piece within the composition

While we may not experience historical acts as presence, we might experience something that includes history, a netherworld in which loss and presence begin to dance.

Music that can be simultaneously both a collective and a very personal experience by drawing from a traditionally communal aesthetic and a more individual contemplative nature marks our unique presence as an exploration of the intersection between these modes of listening. 

- paraphrased by Laurel Halo from The Line of Best Fit review

Presence

Expansive Territories
Bill Stevens - trumpet with effects, composition

 The concept of Territory is multifaceted and ambiguous. It relates to notions such as space and place, identity and community, dominion and control. It may refer to areas of land, but also areas of knowledge, activity or experience.

A Territory is never clear or neutral. It operates as ground, foundation, a space to act and dwell, but also as a specific domain or locale, in which human and physical patterns overlap, singular perspectives are shaped, and unique communities emerge, inhabit or conflict. Territories are social constructs, products of agency that encompass physical, virtual, social, political, experiential and affective spaces. These inform identities, generate values, produce meanings and ways of living.

A Territory is never static or fixed. It intersects with other territories, and feeds from the transgression of its borders or limits, its geographical, political and ecological interferences. The margins, as territories themselves, are the site of particular situations where differences come into contact, dialogue and exchange. They are in permanent transformation, expansion and contraction, generating new territorial dimensions of convergence, conversion, or conflict.

We propose the idea of Expansive Territories to comprehend expansion as a process of perpetual motion – physical, social, political and conceptual. Through exploratory and erratic movements, different territories overlap, merge, interact, are reconfigured, and reimagined. Expansive Territories seek to gain ground towards a sustained, active regenerative process as a way of resisting any formalization that interrupts their transformation.

- OSSO Research Residency Open Call 2020

Expansive Territories

This next remotely recorded release from 2020 of my interpretation series A New Day, Yesterday is based on the Eric Clapton composition Tears in Heaven and is performed beautifully by the following...

Richard Philbon, alto sax
Andy Berman, guitar
Luca Rosenfeld, bass

Thanks for listening.

Tears In Heaven

A Dove Has Spread Its Wings
A Spoken Word Oratorio, a message of peace

Bill Stevens - compositions using Logic Pro
Spoken Word using Narakeet, AI text to speech program

* Aria 2_Finale with messages of peace by… 
                                 Mother Teresa
                                 Thich Nhat Hanh
                                  Indira Gandhi
                                  Mahatma Gandhi
                                  Mother Teresa
                                  Thich Nhat Hanh         Finale: Buddha
                                                                                    Prophet Muhammad
                                                                                     Krishna
                                                                                     Jesus
                                                                                      Lao Tzu
Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Speech - A Tiny Ripple of Hope, excerpt, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 1966

Aria 2 - Finale - Epilogue

A Dove Has Spread Its Wings
A Spoken Word Oratorio, a message of peace

Bill Stevens - compositions using Logic Pro

* Second Interlude

Second Interlude

A Dove Has Spread Its Wings
A Spoken Word Oratorio, a message of peace

Bill Stevens - compositions using Logic Pro
Spoken Word using Narakeet, AI text to speech program

* Recitative - A Brave and Startling Truth, Dr. Maya Angelou

Recitative

A Dove Has Spread Its Wings
A Spoken Word Oratorio, a message of peace

Bill Stevens - compositions using Logic Pro

  * First Interlude

First Interlude

A Dove Has Spread Its Wings
A Spoken Word Oratorio, a message of peace

Bill Stevens - compositions using Logic Pro
Spoken Word using Narakeet, AI text to speech program

* John F. Kennedy - Peace Speech, exerpt, American University, June 10, 1963
Prelude_Aria 1 with messages of peace by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hafsat Abiola
Malala Yousafzai
Nelson Mandela
John Lewis
Elijah Cummings
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hafsat Abiola

A Dove Has Spread It's Wings - Prelude - Aria 1

Another release in my series of interpretations on the music of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Bjork. At the beginning of the pandemic, these remote recordings came together in the album: A New Day, Yesterday. 
This sixth release is an interpretation of Bjork's 'Hunter'. 
Featuring:
Bill Stevens, flugelhorn
Steve Anagnost, guitar
Thanks for listening.

Hunter

When It’s Dark, Look for the Stars 
Bill Stevens - trumpet, composition
 Eric Peters - drums

How can we draw on imagery, philosophies, theories, and methodologies to interrogate concepts of home, place and belonging? Home can be imagined in terms of geographical location, or in terms of the body or of the self. It may be articulated through its temporality; a legacy or sense of inheritance, a futurity or an aspiration. It may be conceptualized as occupying the physical, the spatial, the temporal and the cultural realm. It may be conceived of as gaining its coherence in displacement, in exile, in migration and threat. To belong may be interpreted as something that is cultural or religious. Similarly, belonging could draw from affectual states where one feels secure and safe, or excluded from a place or community. It spans the personal, the local and the global, encompassing geopolitical concerns and their impact on people, through communities and on populations, on the consequences of the pandemic, climate change, war. In this way artistic and critical responses may range from the intimate to the global.

Home: provocations on place and belonging, University of Gloucestershire (2022)

This track was largely inspired by Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society output, particularly the mesmeric bass and drone like nature of the rhythm. I’ve fallen in love with the ‘astral jazz’ movement from the 1960s and 1970s and Don Cherry, for me, was the master, not due to the complexity of the work, but for the devotion and mesmerism he was seeking as a player and from his band.

The composition features Eric Peters on the drums and is based on the Don Cherry statement, ‘Ornette’ as performed by the Organic Music Society. The opening solo trumpet is a re-interpreted transcription of ‘Voice of the Silence’ from the album El Corazon with Ed Blackwell and in tribute to Don Cherry.

And when in doubt or alone, always remember, “When It’s Dark, Look for the Stars”.

When It's Dark, Look for the Stars

I recently came across two compositions I did while living in Seattle, WA. The first, presented here, Music for Brass in three movements written in 1987.

The second was a string quartet written in 1988 that is also posted on this site.

Thanks for listening and please check out some of my new ambient works while you are on my music page. Really appreciated.

Music For Brass In Three Movements

I recently came across two compositions I did while living in Seattle, WA. The first, presented here is my String Quartet No. 1 written in 1988 (The second was a brass quintet written in 1987 that is also posted on this site)

The String Quartet No. 1 has been resurrected here and is a centerpiece of a new work that I will be releasing in 2024.

Upon hearing this string quartet piece, I was approached by the composer Ken Lieberson to see if he would be able to use elements of the composition as part of his 31st symphony. Upon hearing Lieberson's Symphony No. 31, I had this to say...

"Like the 30th, your music is really evolving - very powerful, dynamic. Draws you in. I appreciate the use of my String Quartet as incorporated in this new symphony. I definitely hear the influences you mentioned in the second, third and especially in the fourth movements. I feel honored that you did this and love what you created". To listen to Ken Lieberson's Symphony No. 31, you can visit this link: https://bit.ly/3R8to81

Thanks for listening and please check out some of my new ambient works while you are on my music page. Really appreciated.

String Quartet No. 1

Landscapes of Retreat / The Disappearance of Clouds
Rosetta Elkin / Tomasz Saraceno
Bill Stevens, composition

Rosetta Elkin is associate professor and academic director of landscape architecture at Pratt Institute. Landscapes of Retreat are portraits of climate adaptation. Rereat is found in the land that is left behind as settlement patterns shift due to a changing climate.

Tomás Saraceno is an Argentine contemporary artist whose projects, consisting of floating sculptures, international collaborations, and interactive installations, propose and dialogue with forms of inhabiting and sensing the environment that have been suppressed in the Capitalocene era.

Water and air, planets and stars, are tied by cycles of transformation. Every change is refracted in this fragile tension, calling for new ways of thinking, feeling and knowing multiple atmospheric threads of interconnection.

Landscapes Of Retreat / The Disappearance of Clouds

The Only Name We Can Call It Now Is Not It’s Only Name (excerpt)
Valerie Hsiung
Bill Stevens, composition

Valerie Hsiung is a poet, interdisciplinary artist, and the author of several poetry and hybrid writing collections. Born in the Year of the Earth Snake and raised by Chinese-Taiwanese immigrants in Cincinnati, Ohio, she now lives in Colorado where she teaches as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing & Poetics at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa.

Spoken Word made possible with Narakeet, an AI text to speech program

The Only Name We Can Call It Now Is Not It's Only Name

Three Suns
Nung-Hsin Hu
Bill Stevens, composition

Nung-Hsin Hu (胡農欣) is a Taiwanese-born U.S.-based interdisciplinary artist who interweaves time-based media, installation, performance, and artist’s books in her practice. Her work intends to reveal the invisible status, articulate the unconsciousness, and perform the vulnerability through a poetic and whimsical approach.

First Movement: Artic Circle, The Land Without Return
Why North?
Touching the Rumble of Melting
Encountering the Absurd Guests

Second Movement: Taiwan, Incurable Nostalgia
Time moves in one direction, memory in another.
We are that strange species that
constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.

Third Movement: Iceland, Midnight Sun
How to Summon the Night to Return?
The Clocks are Not in Unison
At the End of Route One

Three Suns

The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer
Music by Bill Stevens from the album Movie Music
Spoken Word Narration using Narakeet, an AI text to speech program

From the movie The Passion of Joan of Arc

The original French text:

Je jure par les saints Évangiles de dire la vérité, toute la vérité et rien que la vérité concernant la mission qui m'a été confiée par le Roi des Cieux.

A la maison je m'appelle Jeannette…

Ici, on m'appelle Joan !

Dix-neuf… je pense.

Qui m'a appris le Notre Père ?

Ma mère…

J'ai été envoyé par Dieu pour sauver la France !

C'est pourquoi je suis né.

Ma récompense ?

Le salut de mon âme !

Oui, Dieu me libérera

et au moyen d'une grande victoire.

Je sais que Dieu viendra bientôt à mon aide de manière miraculeuse.

Vous demandez, suis-je en état de grâce ?

Si je ne le suis pas, que Dieu m'y mette.

Et si je le suis, que Dieu me garde.

Vous dites que c'est le Diable qui m'a trompé et que je suis seul…

…seul, avec Dieu.

Je préfère mourir plutôt que de nier les actes de Dieu et si je dois mourir, je vous implore de me faire enterrer dans une terre consacrée.

J'aime Dieu. Je l'aime de tout mon coeur.

Tu dis que je suis un enfant du Diable, mais je dis que c'est toi qui as été envoyé par le Diable pour me tourmenter.

Je n'ai rien fait de mal.

Ses façons ne sont pas nos moyens. Je suis son enfant.

La grande victoire sera mon martyre et ma libération définitive…

La mort.


The English translation:

I swear by the Holy Gospels to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth concerning the mission which has been entrusted to me by the King of Heaven.

At home I am called Jeannette …

Here they call me Joan!

Nineteen ... I think. 

Who taught me the Our Father?

My Mother…

I have been sent by God to save France!

That is why I was born.

My reward?

The salvation of my soul!

Yes, God will release me 

and by means of a great victory.

I know that God will soon come to my help in a miraculous way.

You ask, am I in a state of grace?

If I am not, may God put me there.

And if I am, may God so keep me.

 You say that it is the Devil who has decieved me and that I stand alone…

…alone, with God.
I would rather die than deny God’s acts and if I should die, I implore you to have me buried in consecrated ground.

I love God. I love him with all my heart.

You say that I am a child of the Devil, but I say it is you who have been sent by the Devil to torment me.

I have done no wrong.

His ways are not our ways. I am His child.

The great victory will be my martyrdom and my final release…

Death.

Tha Passion Of Joan Of Arc

Metropolis, Fritz Lang
Music by Bill Stevens from the album Movie Music
Spoken Word Narration using Narakeet, an AI text to speech program

From the movie Metropolis, Fourth Movement: The Mediator

4. The Mediator          (Der Vermittler)

Das Einzige, was die Arbeiter in Schach hält, ist ihre Erwartung an den ihnen versprochenen Mittler.

Die Ewigen Gärten liegen verlassen.

Und diese Frau, zu deren Füßen alle Sünden liegen, wird auch Maria genannt.

Dieselbe Frau, die die Menschen in den Tiefen als Heilige betrachten?

Sie wird ihren Glauben an den Mittler zerstören.

Morgen werden Tausende voller Wut und Verzweiflung fragen: Wo sind Ihre Kinder? 

Wir werden zusehen, wie die Welt zum Teufel geht.

Kopf und Hände wollen sich verbinden, aber sie haben nicht das Herz dazu.

Oh Mittler, zeige ihnen den Weg zueinander.

Der Mittler zwischen Kopf und Händen muss das Herz sein.


4: The Mediator

The only thing keeping the workers in check is their expectation for the Mediator promised unto them. 

The Eternal Gardens lie abandoned.

And this woman, at whose feet all sins are heaped is also called Maria. 

That same woman that those in the Depths regard as a saint?
She will destroy their belief in the Mediator. 

Tomorrow thousands will ask in fury and desperation, Where are your children?  We'll be looking on as the world goes to the devil.

Head and hands want to join together, but they don't have the heart to do it. 

Oh Mediator, show them the way to one another. 

The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart.

The Mediator

Metropolis, Fritz Lang
Music by Bill Stevens from the album Movie Music
Spoken Word Narration using Narakeet, an AI text to speech program

From the movie Metropolis, Third Movement: Intermezzo

3. Intermezzo          (Zwischenspiel) 

Heute erzähle ich Ihnen die Legende vom Bau des Turmbaus zu Babel.

Kommen! Lasst uns einen Turm bauen, dessen Gipfel bis zu den Sternen reicht!

Und auf dem Höhepunkt des Turms werden wir schreiben:
Groß ist die Welt und ihr Schöpfer!
Und groß ist der Mensch!

Aber diejenigen, die sich den Turmbau zu Babel ausgedacht hatten, konnten den Turmbau zu Babel nicht bauen.

Die Aufgabe war zu groß. Also zahlten sie den Lohn an Außenstehende.

Aber die Hände, die den Turmbau zu Babel bauten, wussten nichts von dem Traum, von dem der Kopf, der ihn erdacht hatte, geträumt hatte.

Die Lobeshymnen eines Mannes wurden zum Fluch anderer.

Es wurde die gleiche Sprache gesprochen, aber diese Männer verstanden sich nicht.

Groß ist die Welt und ihr Schöpfer und groß ist der Mensch
Für Kopf und Hände ist ein Mediator erforderlich.
Der Mittler zwischen Kopf und Händen muss das Herz sein.

Im Dom sieht Freder, wie ein Mönch an der Kanzel predigt.

„Wahrlich, ich sage euch: Die Tage, von denen die Apokalypse spricht, rücken näher!“

Die Hand des Mönchs zeigt auf die Bibel, in der geschrieben steht:

„Und ich sah eine Frau auf einem scharlachroten Tier sitzen, das voller lästerlicher Namen war und sieben Köpfe und zehn Hörner hatte.

Und die Frau war in Purpur und Scharlach gekleidet und hatte einen goldenen Kelch in ihrer Hand.

Und auf ihrer Stirn war ein Name geschrieben, ein Geheimnis:

Babylon die Große, die Mutter der Abscheulichkeiten der Erde.

Und ich sah die Frau, betrunken vom Blut der Heiligen.

Wahrlich, ich sage euch: Die Tage, von denen die Apokalypse spricht, nähern sich.

Alle sieben Todsünden, in ihrem Namen.

Der Tod überkommt die Stadt.


3: Intermezzo

Today I shall tell you the legend of the construction of the tower of Babel. 

Come! Let us build a tower whose zenith shall reach unto the stars! 
And at the tower's zenith we shall write: 

Great is the world and its Maker! 
And great is Man! 

But those who had conceived of the Tower of Babel could not build the Tower of Babel. 

The task was too great. So they paid wages to outside hands.

But the hands that built the Tower of Babel knew nothing of the dream of which the head that had conceived it had been fantasising. 

The hymns of praise of one man became the curses of others. 
The same language was spoken, but these men did not understand one another.

Great is the world and its Maker and great is Man 

Head and Hands require a Mediator. 

The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart.
In the cathedral, Freder witnesses a monk at the pulpit who preaches.

"Verily, I say unto you: the days of which the Apocalypse speaks draw nigh!" 

The monk's hand points to the Bible, in which it is written: 

"And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 
And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, having a golden cup in her hand. 

And upon her forehead was a name written, a mystery: 
Babylon the Great, the Mother of Abominations of the Earth. 

And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the Saints." 
Verily, I say unto you: the days of which the Apocalypse speaks draw nigh.

All Seven Deadly Sins, on her behalf.

Death overtakes the City.

Intermezzo

Metropolis, Fritz Lang
Music by Bill Stevens from the album Movie Music
Spoken Word Narration using Narakeet, an AI text to speech program

From the movie Metropolis, Second Movement: In The Depths

2. In the Depths          (In den Tiefen)

Deine großartige Stadt, Vater und du, das Gehirn dieser Stadt und uns alle im Licht dieser Stadt…

...und wo sind die Menschen, Vater, deren Hände deine Stadt gebaut haben?

Wo sie hingehören...
...in den Tiefen.

Und wenn sich eines Tages diejenigen in der Tiefe gegen dich erheben?


2: In The Depths

Your magnificent city, Father and you the brain of this city and all of us within the light of this city...  

...and where are the people, Father, whose hands built your city? 
Off where they belong... 

...in the Depths. 

And if those in the Depths one day rise against you?

In The Depths

Metropolis, Fritz Lang
Music by Bill Stevens from the album Movie Music
Spoken Word Narration using Narakeet, an AI text to speech program

From the movie Metropolis, First Movement: Prelude - The Eternal Gardens

Prelude/The Eternal Gardens          (Auftakt/Die Ewigen Gärten)
Der Mittler zwischen Kopf und Händen muss das Herz sein.

Tief unter der Erde lag die Stadt der Arbeiter.

So tief unter der Erde wie die Stadt der Arbeiter lag, so hoch über ihr ragte der als „Sons‘ Club“ bekannte Komplex mit seinen Hörsälen und Bibliotheken, seinen Theatern und Stadien.

Väter, für die jede Umdrehung eines mechanischen Rades Gold bedeutete, hatten ihren Söhnen das Wunder der Ewigen Gärten geschenkt.


1. Prelude/The Eternal Gardens

The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart. 

Deep beneath the earth lay the City of the Workers. 

As deep beneath the earth as the City of the Workers lay, so high above it towered the complex known as the "Sons' Club", with its lecture halls and libraries, its theatres and stadiums. 

Fathers, for whom every revolution of a mechanical wheel meant gold, had bestowed upon their sons the wonder of the Eternal Gardens.

Prelude The Eternal Gardens

Binaries are social constructs composed of parts that are framed as absolute and unchanging opposites. Binary opposition is a key concept of structuralism. As the basis of this composition, I used the structural formulations of the artist Paul Klee from his Pedagogical Sketchbook written in 1923. The composition was assembled as a sound collage using material from my recorded collection spanning from 1983 through 2021 where players were recorded in an acapella setting as part of specific original compositions. This setting was then cut, pasted and paired with other recorded examples to create a series of solos, duets and trio settings that incorporated the musical equivalent of an active line, or an active line with fixed points all resulting in the union of two or more parts. The settings were created without regard to tempo, key, style or any fixed element of music. What was conceived as structuring binary opposites actually explored the gray area between the combinations of musicians and what can result from those perceived differences.


I.  Duet				
Jay Bianchi, keyboard 2012
Peter Allen, electric bass 1983

II.  An Active Line		
Don Dietrich, drums 1988                          
Corey Larson, guitar 2019
Bob Cesari, tenor sax 2020
Charlie Gushee, tenor sax 2019

III. Trio				
Jeff Carney, upright bass 2012
Daryl Pugh, upright bass 1983
Elliot Honig, piano 2019

IV. An Active Line with Fixed Points	
Ben Gramm, drums 2012                            
Luca Rosenfeld, upright bass 2017
Gary Fogel, drums 2017
Richard Philbin, tenor sax 2017
Eric Peters, drums 2005

V. Three Conjugations	
Paul Pricer, upright bass 2019
Jimmy Johns, drums 1983
Steve Yamasaki, soprano sax 1988
Rich Russo, upright bass 2019

VI. Trio 2				
Sean Moran, guitar 2018
Rosdeli Marte, voice 2018
Phil Owens, guitar 2020

VII. Trio 3 - Structure	
Luca Rosenfeld, upright bass 2017, 2018                                                                                                                                                                                                         
Gary Fogel, drums 2013, 2017, 2019                                                                                                                                                                                                              
Bill Stevens, trumpet with effects 2021

Binary Systems

Lecture on Nothing
John Cage, arr, by Bill Stevens

The narration is performed by Francis-Marie Uitti, an American cellist and composer known for her use of extended techniques and performance of contemporary classical music.
…with…
Bill Stevens, trumpet
Ken Lieberson, bassoon
Steve Wylie, cello

Cello Improvisation - Steve Wylie
String Quartet No. 1 (1988) - Bill Stevens
Music for Brass in Three Movements (1987) - Bill Stevens
Trio in d minor (After Bach’s Second Suite) - Ken Lieberson, with trio improvisation
Bassoon Improvisation - Ken Lieberson
Improvised Duet - Bill Stevens & Ken Lieberson
Trumpet Improvisation - Bill Stevens
Cello Improvisation - Steve Wylie

John Cage famously delivered the lecture to the 8th Street Artist’s Club, or “The Club,” established in 1948. The Lecture on Nothing was written by Cage as a musical composition. The essay culminates in the concept of nothing, or no-thing. By this point, Cage had more or less abandoned the idea that music could describe any specific emotion. Sound can evoke a host of associative ideas, but they are easily transposed to different planes. A sequence can be altered dramatically and still heard in a similar way. For my part, by placing music, both improvised and composed, within the lecture, I was curious if and how emotion might be brought into the narration. Additionally, all of the music was performed without any knowledge of its use in this project allowing for an element of chance in how the piece was assembled, as a collage of sound(s).

Unfinished Journey

Lecture On Nothing

Bill Stevens has been driven by a quote he attributes to Miles Davis, “I have to change”, but he will be the first to tell you that his music is embedded in a deep understanding of history brought to the present and beyond. He is always thinking about the process of creation, finding the new, pushing boundaries both in his playing and especially in his compositions where he has always looked to follow the voice inside of him toward his own spiritual path throughout a life in music. 

Although Bill’s current music is based in sound and color through electro-ambient sound settings that often utilize spoken word, fine art inspiration and field recordings, he also has a robust back catalog of straight ahead Jazz, modal Jazz in an ECM style with an emphasis on Impressionistic harmony and Romantic based melodies, free Jazz and avant-chromatic funk.

It has been a journey with many accomplishments (signed by iti Records, grants from the Seattle Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, conference speaker and guest performer in Norway and Australia to name a few), but there have been challenges on the path as well (years of overcoming a distinct fear of performing, a break from the exhaustion of maintaining a career in music that turned into a six year sabbatical to a debilitating almost career ending bout with bells palsey that affected his ability to play the trumpet. Bill refers to his sound on the horn today as a ‘fragile beauty’). But Bill’s middle class upbringing in Syracuse, NY taught him the value of hard work, that anything worth caring about as much as he cares about his music is worth fighting for. It was out of these trials that Bill began to commit toward sharing his love of music with a younger generation in the New York City public schools. Bill has worked to inspire and provide his students with creative experiences through his love of music, performance and composition.

Bill wants his fans to know how important they are to him. He always ends his newsletter by saying, “Thank you for being the most important part of my music”. For Bill this is not just a slogan, but his mantra. He genuinely cares about the lives of the people who listen to his music by often saying that his mission each time he performs or each time someone listens to his music at home is to transport them away from their daily grind, to have them momentarily forget about their job, issues at home, whatever the case may be to find a moment of relaxation and inner peace transforming them through instrumental abstract concepts as a fuel to empower and enlighten.

Bill Stevens Music

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