IMAGE: The spiraling wood of a Whitebark pine snag, Eagle Cap Wilderness, OREGON. This tree was very likely already dead before Lewis & Clark passed by in 1805/06 not far north of here. Whitebarks, which can reach a thousand or more years of age, live in a much slower timespace, much like the musical movement of the piece featured here, THE SCOURGE OF DISINFORMATION.
The avian soloist which begins the piece is the Lark Sparrow(Chondestes grammacus). I call them the “One Man Band” of the sagebrush steppe because of the marvelously rich complexity of their music. Lark Sparrows are the less visible companion of the Western Meadowlark. They are a true joy of high country buckwheat biscuitroot desert spring. No disinformation here!
(Here's another LARK SPARROW field recording made around Summer Solstice in the South WALLOWAS: Cliff-crego – Zoom0114_mono-m4a
The YIDAKI (also called sometimes a DIDG or DIDGERIDOO or MAGO) ground is played by Australian new music trombone virtuoso, Simone de HAAN.
A KEY FEATURE of my NEW MUSIC, POETRY & DANCE PROJECT The Circle in the Square www.cs-music.com is its new philosophy of living sound. SEE soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/sets/the-circle-in-the-square-a-new This is in an interesting way connected to THE SCOURGE OF DISINFORMATION.
The piece is dedicated to David JENSEN--our finest photographer in OREGON www.djensenphotography.com/ -- and his Australian/American wife, Cathy PATTERSON. Cathy is connected to this piece by way of a beautiful letter she sent to my Office a while back about TUNINGS in Western Music, especially about ideas around the meaning of lower standard reference frequencies like A 432 instead the currently dominant A 440.
Instead of talking about this here, I thought it might be better to demonstrate a much wider circle of of thinking about sound as flowing movement which features a slow turning from SIMPLE to COMPLEX and back, with sounds within sounds (some based on A 432, some based on Equal Temperament 12th root of 2 A 440, some Phythagorean and following the natural whole numbers of freely vibrating columns of air....). These all, it seems to me, can happily co-exist and both balance and complement each other.
Perhaps this is true even for our Lark Sparrow, a far better musician than any of us, I think, might agree!










