Other Minds is pleased to present …we return to ground…, a new recording by Irish composer Karen Power and Quiet Music Ensemble. This double CD features three of Power’s large-scale pieces pairing natural sounds with musical instruments, written for and with Quiet Music Ensemble over an 8-year period.
Beginning with instruments of ice in 2015, Power’s experience of pairing natural sounds with musical instruments has evolved into a transformative body of work. Her approach to composition, creating space for interactions between field recordings and human performers, allows for the emergence of new sonic dialogues with the natural world. In his liner notes, David Toop writes, “What we are hearing is not reducible to ‘music’ and ‘nature’; there is an acknowledgement that the senses are not separate. They are fluid, sometimes interchangeable in their perception of worlds, and those worlds overlap, become each other.”
Power’s approach to scoring reflects her belief in the diverse ways of experiencing music and sound. Her works build on the long-standing traditions of graphic, text, and even video scores while in pursuit of a new kind of score for the ear, what she calls an aural score. An aural score is similar to a tape part, but differs in that it functions as both materials for the audience to listen to and materials to guide the performers.
This approach to scoring benefits from Power’s deep collaborations with Quiet Music Ensemble. She credits these works as being “uniquely shaped by QME and written knowing and trusting their ears and interpretative skills.” Through this collaboration with Quiet Music Ensemble, Power invites listeners to immerse themselves in unique sonic ecosystems, offering time and space for individual interpretation and exploration.
There’s nothing new about new music that blends fixed media with live playing, but on this beguiling double-CD, Irish composer Karen Power transforms her own environmental field recordings into something more interactive and participatory…Power asks us to listen closely, locating the music that occurs in the natural world. Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily, July 2024
This is not purely field recording nor chamber music, improvisation nor composition, but a form that thrillingly transgresses the boundaries of each of these practices to present us with a new way to listen to—and interact with—the sounds of nature. Matthew Blackwell, Bandcamp Daily, September 2024
Power, whose artistic practice has been focused on environmental sound for more than a decade, spent eight years working on this project, composing for and with the Ensemble. Released on the outward-looking San Francisco label Other Minds, the result is three pieces totalling a mammoth 109 minutes…The soundworld created is vivid and immersive, but what becomes an absorbing facet of the album is the mysterious nature of the collaboration between Power and the Ensemble. Don O’Mahony, The Journal of Music, September 2024
[T]here’s a lot to sink your teeth and ears into…It’s work that rewards patience and an open mind. Eoin Murray, Anois, Os Ard, January 2025
CD 1:
1 · …we return to ground…, 30:03
2 · sonic pollinators, 39:19
CD2:
3 · instruments of ice, 40:14
