Happy 2019!! As January comes bursting in to all of our lives, we here at Loop38 thought it might be nice to take a moment to reflect while looking forward. What better way to do this than with the music of our time, inspired by our city?
That being said, our program on January 29th is BAYOU BORN, happening at the Live Oak Meeting House in Shady Acres. The meeting space in was designed by James Turrell. For those of you unfamiliar with James Turrell, he is an artist whose work primarily deals with light and space. He designs rooms that welcome in the sky and ask us to look out and above to the beauty of the world around us.
All that being said, when percussionist Craig designed this program he thought Live Oak Meeting House would be a perfect compliment to this music that asks us to listen to our own internal pulse and look outward.
Composer Pauline Oliveros, the genius behind “Deep Listening”
The program is conceived of as a single meditation to be performed without breaks. The central work is by Annea Lockwood and is a graphic score written in honor of Houston-born and recently deceased, Pauline Oliveros. Pauline Oliveros is most famous for her concept of “Deep Listening”. ‘Pauline Oliveros herself described Deep Listening as “listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what one is doing.” Basically Deep Listening, as developed by Oliveros, explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature – exclusive and inclusive -- of listening. The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, interactive performance, listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination and dreams, and listening to listening itself. It cultivates a heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal, and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration, playfulness and other creative skills vital to personal and community growth. Annea’s piece takes Houston’s Bayous and puts them central in her work. “Each of [our] six players in the piece represent a different bayou; how they flow apart and together is how the music is formed.”*
Composer Annea Lockwood
The other incredible pieces on the program include magnetic works by Julia Wolfe, René Eespere, Evan Chapman, and Arvo Pärt. We’ll be telling you all about these pieces throughout this week, so make sure to check back here!
What is so compelling about this program is that it is an invitation for all of us to participate. We all live in this beautiful, complex, and sometimes confounding city. We know the sounds of our bayous and of our own lives. This concert will be a journey in exploration and an invitation to quiet our minds and hear what fills us.
We really hope you’ll come and join us for this evening of music, meditation, and love for our city.
*Thank you to the Deep Listening Institute for the information on Pauline’s mission and brilliance!
Ally Smither