Flute Clouds

This piece is included on the Six Projects CD/LP released on the Innova Recordings label in 2015.

This piece was created in 2007 for the unveiling of Atmosphere: a large site-specific sculpture installation created by the sculptor Joyce Crain, with choreography by Susan Gingrasso.  The work was installed at the University of Utah in Blanding.  This is another of my fragment-based compositions.  I recorded Tom Keyhoe performing a variety of improvisational gestures on an assortment of different types of Western and nonWestern flutes.  I then edited that material and constructed the finished piece in the computer using the various musical fragments as source material.  The piece also makes use of a homemade wind chime made up entirely of old keys, and some natural sounds of rain, wind and distant thunder. 

The metaphor upon which the sculpture was based is a meteorological phenomena called virga.  These are cloud formations that consist of rain clouds with rain falling from them that never quite reaches the ground.  This falling rain forms long wispy tails that extend beneath the clouds.