Inside Voice is inspired by the work related to the construction of an organ. This work was inspired by my experiments on a new organ, built by Fisk, an instrumental company, and recently installed in Philadelphia.

For the moment, a large part of the organ pipes have been placed on the instrument but some of the locations are still empty. By pressing the keys, a pipe system activates the air. However, the keys that are not yet connected only produce a filtered white noise, quite different from what is usually expected of an organ. It’s also a wonderful sound. […]

To translate these sounds, both metaphorically and musically, the two ensembles of musicians form a system of bellows and human sampling. Each of the instruments is equipped with a microphone whose activation is controlled by a midi controller keyboard. Then the transient sounds and frequencies produced are filtered and spatialized through the loudspeaker network, using a system developed in collaboration with GMEM.

Commissioned by the GMEM and the Christ Church Preservation Fund, Inside Voice is written for a flexible instrumentation that reflects both the specificities and similarities between the ICE and C Barré ensembles. Movement extracted from the piece In Plain Air”.

Nathan Davis