The library of projects on this website is unified by each project's use of field recordings. Also called environmental recordings, these are non-musical sounds collected using a portable digital recorder - and perhaps, a sense of adventure. Each image documents the place and time each field recording was made. This is common throughout the library, but each project treats its set of recordings in a different way.
This project is an open collection of duets between found sound and piano. Each field recording is less than five minutes in length. An image taken at the site where each field recording was made ties the recording to a place and to a lesser extent a time.
Each duet is both a reaction to the general impression of the sounds as well as a dialog with the inherent narrative of each recording. In some cases, these narratives are nearly static. In other cases, more dramatic. The role of the piano is to react to the specific sonic elements in each short recording and expose the unique narrative found within each one.
Chicago Loop is a collection of field records made downtown in Chicago's Loop neighborhood. Each photograph was taken at the same place each audio recording was made.
The character of these recordings is much more static than the Meditations series. Eschewing an obvious narrative, the focus is to highlight the subtle events and changes occurring over the course of each recording's longer duration. The purpose of these recordings is to serve as a basis for a series of duos based on the acoustic material in each field recording.
Each of these eleven recordings were made in August of 2015 while studying at the University of Chicago Booth's Hong Kong campus. Together, they paint an aural picture of the incredible intensity and diversity of the city. The variety of sounds is particularly surprising given that each of these recordings was made within a five miles radius within the Wan Chai and the Central and Western Districts.
Hawaiʻi Island is the largest island of the Hawaiian Island archipelago. Despite only a total surface area of 4,028 square miles (and growing), the big island hosts a variety of ecosystems covering eight out of the thirteen total Köppen climate zones. The island's rainfall pattern is spectacularly diverse with a range from only eight inches annually on the summit of Mauna Kea to three hundred and ten inches or more near Hilo on the eastern side of the island. The substantial rainfall and warm temperatures create a tropical rainforest climate on the windward side of Hawaiʻi Island with lush vegetation and dramatic waterfalls.
The chief tributary of Penobscot Bay, the Penobscot River, winds through a total of 264 miles with a drainage basin of 8,610 square miles. The river includes four branches each originating in mountain lakes. The Penobscot River is the longest river system contained entirely within the state of Maine. The islands of the Penobscot Bay archipelago are innumerable but some of the larger include Deer Isle, Isle au Haut, Matinicus Isle, Nautilus Island, North Haven and Vinalhaven.