available here on Cold Water, Dry Stone new music with traditional roots
Cold Water, Dry Stone (1998)
Cold Water, Dry Stone was inspired by a trip my wife and I made to Albania in 1995. The first movement, The Cold Water of Himara, is based on the semi-improvisational instrumental form called kaba, which is sometimes described as "music with tears." The title refers to one of the many famous streams of cold, clear water that begin in the distant mountain peaks, and flow down through an otherwise hot and dusty landscape. While composing the music I had an image of icy water flowing out over the parched and aching land, providing comfort and relief from the great sadnesses of the place, finally crashing over rocks into the sea.
Kaba are often followed by a short dance, and The Road to Gjirokaster is a rhythmic evocation of an eventful journey which included twisting narrow mountain switchbacks, a flat tire, plunging gorges, and thunderclouds. The trip ended with a visit to an Ottoman fortress towering over the city of Gjirokaster, which was the site of yearly folk festivals during communist rule. Standing on the overgrown festival stage above the broad valleys and distant brown foothills, I could almost sense the ghostly residual presence of the musicians and costumed dancers of the past flashing all around me. Yet the place also had a grim bleakness seeping up from among the weeds: the sinister shade of the cruel dictator seemed to be dancing there too.
"These are the stones of my village." Petrit Hoxha
The Dry Stones of Dukat is named for the home village of Mustafa Hoxha, and his son Petrit who showed us overwhelming generosity and kindness. The Hoxhas sang amazing polyphonic songs that made the walls shake and the room ring--made the air all around and between us palpable, charged, and brilliant. The power and intensity of their singing, the fierce pride and the sheer inexorable weight of the sound was overwhelming. I wanted to write my own hymn to the experience, to the songs and to their singing, which seemed almost like storage vessels for power and strength, holding a sustaining and triumphant defiance that launches itself from the distant past well out into the future.
Cold Water, Dry Stone (1998)
Cold Water, Dry Stone was inspired by a trip my wife and I made to Albania in 1995. The first movement, The Cold Water of Himara, is based on the semi-improvisational instrumental form called kaba, which is sometimes described as "music with tears." The title refers to one of the many famous streams of cold, clear water that begin in the distant mountain peaks, and flow down through an otherwise hot and dusty landscape. While composing the music I had an image of icy water flowing out over the parched and aching land, providing comfort and relief from the great sadnesses of the place, finally crashing over rocks into the sea.
Kaba are often followed by a short dance, and The Road to Gjirokaster is a rhythmic evocation of an eventful journey which included twisting narrow mountain switchbacks, a flat tire, plunging gorges, and thunderclouds. The trip ended with a visit to an Ottoman fortress towering over the city of Gjirokaster, which was the site of yearly folk festivals during communist rule. Standing on the overgrown festival stage above the broad valleys and distant brown foothills, I could almost sense the ghostly residual presence of the musicians and costumed dancers of the past flashing all around me. Yet the place also had a grim bleakness seeping up from among the weeds: the sinister shade of the cruel dictator seemed to be dancing there too.
"These are the stones of my village." Petrit Hoxha
The Dry Stones of Dukat is named for the home village of Mustafa Hoxha, and his son Petrit who showed us overwhelming generosity and kindness. The Hoxhas sang amazing polyphonic songs that made the walls shake and the room ring--made the air all around and between us palpable, charged, and brilliant. The power and intensity of their singing, the fierce pride and the sheer inexorable weight of the sound was overwhelming. I wanted to write my own hymn to the experience, to the songs and to their singing, which seemed almost like storage vessels for power and strength, holding a sustaining and triumphant defiance that launches itself from the distant past well out into the future.