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Saint​-​Jean​-​de​-​Luz

from Free State by Crash Ensemble

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about

Stephen Kuusisto describes cities he has been to but never seen. In the vast cemetery of Milan, there are tombs carved like sailing ships. In Buenos Aires, glass flutes, gold medallions and baskets filled with carved birds are seen through the eyes of strangers. In Tampere, the houses stand like wineglass stems in the broken shards of twilight and everything is see-through, even the walls of the church.

I first met Stephen and his guide dog Nira at the MacDowell Colony in 2013. One night after dinner – shining a lamp on the pages and holding the words up close to his left eye – he read from his “Letters to Borges”. The cities he describes are both real and imagined. He cannot see the world around him so he must reinvent it, partly out of necessity, and partly for amusement.

I’ve never been to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a small seaside resort on the Basque coast, across the bay from Ciboure where Ravel was born and where, in the summer 1914, he wrote his Piano Trio. I began writing Saint-Jean-de-Luz at Royaumont in 2014, initially as a septet, for ensemble recherche (I continued to tinker with it for a couple of years, eventually expanding the instrumentation to that of Crash Ensemble.) With Stephen’s letters still fresh in my mind – and Ravel’s music in my ears – the piece became, among other things, a sort of homage to an imagined place.

credits

from Free State, released October 6, 2021
Composed by Peter Fahey

Crash Ensemble
Flute: Susan Doyle
Clarinet: Deirdre O’Leary
Trombone: Roderick O’Keeffe
Electric Guitar: John Godfrey
Percussion: Alex Petcu
Piano: Michael Joyce
Violin: Mairead Hickey
Viola: Lisa Dowdall
Cello: Kate Ellis
Bass: Caimin Gilmore

Conductor: Killian Farrell

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Crash Ensemble Dublin, Ireland

Crash Ensemble is Ireland’s foremost new music ensemble.

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