Dave Lisik: Donated by Cantor Fitzgerald; A Threnody (Rattle)

 |   |  <1 min read

Dave Lisik: Donated by Cantor Fitzgerald (extract)
Dave Lisik: Donated by Cantor Fitzgerald; A Threnody (Rattle)

If you are reading this in New Zealand on September 11, 2011 -- the 10th anniversary of 9/11 -- Canadian-born, Wellington-based composer Dave Lisik will have performed this evocative, hour-long work in Virginia yesterday for re-broadcast on a New York radio station on the 11th as part of the day-long commemorations there.

Recorded in Wellington with pianist Amy Rempel, tenor saxophonist Tim Hopkins, bass clarinetist Colin Hemmingsen and with Lisik and Jorge Sosa on electronics, this improvised work is less demanding than its duration and conception might suggest.

It is commanding however (as it should be), but the piece moves through evocations of place (people bustling about on New York's busy streets, traffic, a sense of impending menace) and intimate moods so the listener is pulled into this changing soundscape world of chaos, melancholy and reflective passages and emotional confusion.

The title incidentally refers not to anything Jewish (a cantor can lead worship in synagogues and teach in Jewish schools) but to the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald which was providing free space in one of the World Trade Center towers for Sarah Ferguson's children's charity.

None of the charity's employees were killed, but nearly 700 CF employees in their offices were.

For more on this recording go here

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Chris Isaak: Always Got Tonight (Reprise)

Chris Isaak: Always Got Tonight (Reprise)

The composed and moody Isaak isn't a guy you'd credit with a sense of humour but his TV show, sort of sitcom-cum-real life, was so self-deprecating he's going to get a fairer hearing round my... > Read more

ONE WE MISSED: The Skull Eclipses: The Skull Eclipses (Western Vinyl/Flying Out)

ONE WE MISSED: The Skull Eclipses: The Skull Eclipses (Western Vinyl/Flying Out)

It's widely accepted these days that when it comes to sonic innovation, studio techniques and the post-modern assimilation of ideas from the vast musical past of recorded music, that hip-hop... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Triplets: The Triplets Book (iii/bandcamp)

Triplets: The Triplets Book (iii/bandcamp)

Another installment in the on-going release of live recordings by the busy saxophonist Jeff Henderson of Auckland who appears as a soloist but also within small ensembles (where it seems only the... > Read more

Lou Reed: Families (1979)

Lou Reed: Families (1979)

Lou Reed probably never struck you as having a sentimental streak, but this song (from his album The Bells) is as nakedly autobiographical and pained as John Lennon's Mother. It is the... > Read more