Requiem for Fossil Fuels Part Four Offertorium

Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger (O+A) performed their composition Requiem for Fossil Fuels, an "8 channel orchestra of cities" at the Ear to the Earth 2007 festival in New York City. Performance featured singers Mezzo-Soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, New York Soprano Martha Cluver, Bass Baritone Joshua Smith, and Tenor John Young; and was presented by the Electronic Music Foundation (EMF).

"There come times in life when the passing of great events requires formal acknowledgment to assist in their comprehension. As we face the passing of our fossil fuel dependent way of life, we hope to gain insight by examining the sounds of our culture through the lens of the Requiem Mass." — O+A

Description of the Requiem for Fossil Fuels, from artists O+A website http://www.o-a.info/rfffny/info.html

Materials for Requiem for Fossil Fuels come from O+A's "alphabet of sounds". This collection of recordings is the result of an ongoing search for a "Hearing Perspective" of the sounds we make as a culture. Each section of Requiem for Fossil Fuels uses a location recording and its real-time flow as a cantus firmus. Over this cantus firmus, or baseline song, come soloistic voices of helicopters, jets, traffic, busses, horns, train wheels, footsteps of commuters, sirens: the found "Voices" of a fossil fueled culture organized as music. O+A have constructed this playable digital orchestra of extraordinary sonic voices extracted from cities around the world.

Requiem for Fossil Fuels is the culmination of twenty years of work by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, listening to and intervening in urban soundscapes. In 2004, Odland and Auinger presented an early version of their Requiem for fossil fuels at the SophienKirche in Berlin as part of Inventionen Festival.

Requiem for Fossil Fuels is presented by Ear to the Earth 2007 and produced by Electronic Music Foundation. Requiem for Fossil Fuels is sponsored by Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, Berliner Künstlerprogramm des Daad, Land Oberösterreich, This project was commissioned by Harvestworks with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, Österreichisches Bundesministerium Für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur, Ske & Austro Mechana, Stadt Linz.

For more information about the Ear to the Earth Festival, go to http://www.eartotheearth.org

For more information about composers Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger's work (O+A), go to
http://www.o-a.info/rfffny/info.html

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Ear to the Earth
• Electronic Music Foundation
• Requiem for Fossil Fuels
• Bruce Odland
• Hai-Ting Chinn
• O+A