Hello Benoit,
One evening last year, at my Berlin home, I was listening to the CD "Kurtág‘s Ghost," a compilation of piano pieces by Kurtág and his colleagues, compiled and recorded by Marino Formenti. At the end of the first CD, my CD player suddenly took over the tempo and started generating additional ambient noises. I heard the lens reading individual bits irregularly and erratically, stopping, repeating a single note very frequently, and suddenly carrying on. In short, the CD started skipping. Thus, minimal shifts and repetitions in the rhythmic and percussive sound material occurred. I took my audio recording device, positioned it at a distance of the three meters from each the two speakers and started recording. I am sending you part of this recording. You will get a message for the download immediately.

The next day, when I wanted to make another recording, the CD player worked normally.

While making this "field recording," it occurred to me that it could also be a score for a composition for piano. I imagined it could be quite fascinating and strange to replay this "field recording" as realistically as possible. Certain sounds, such as the ambient noises of the CD player, will be hard to imitate. Hopefully, the random rhythms and numerous repetitions of the same sound generated by the player can be performed. Would you mind giving it a quick listen and telling me whether you like the idea and whether it is feasible for you to realize? If so — the sheer possibility of which already makes me happy — this field recording would be the score of my composition, which you would play on February 21 at the concert in the series B.E.N.K. at Schloss Balmoral.

By the way, the pieces during which the CD player got stuck are Béla Bartók’s "Rumanian Folk Dance n. 6" and György Kurtág’s "Do-Mi d’arab."

Cordially, William