Songs and Clouds
Cold Blue Music
Forthcoming, February 2027
Performed by Andrew Anderson, piano
Recorded at Architecture (Los Angeles, CA)
Recorded and mixed by Scott Fraser
Artwork by Jim Fox
Songs and Clouds is music for solo piano, performed on this recording by pianist Andrew Anderson, and electronics. Its score, which builds uniquely in real-time during each performance, is generated using spectral analysis and notation tools created by the composer. Notes are introduced to the pianist on animated staves, slowly fading into view and then away again, using opacity as an indication of dynamics. As it drifts by, the pianist sculpts motives and contrapuntal lines from its animated notation. The resulting music is like the turning of a hanging mobile: slow loops, overlapping to form harmony, falling in and out of shadows, always changing perspective.
The songs hidden in Songs and Clouds are derived from spectral analyses of William Billings’s “The New England Psalm Singer” (a collection of choral pieces published in 1770), which also form the materials of Sargent’s concert-length work for two string quartets, Separation Songs (released by Cold Blue Music in 2019). In the first half of Songs and Clouds broken outlines of the songs gradually emerge, floating within silence. In the second half of the piece, the electronics open fully, creating clouds of ringing harmonies above a thicker landscape of piano.