专辑简介

This is the 11th Cd in Hayden Chisholm's magnum opus, the 13 CD box set "13 Views of the Heart's Cargo". In the words of Hayden Chisholm: "The Well Tempered Sruti Box" is a piece of mine which forms a tiny matchstick bridge between the deeply rooted raga of india and the flexibility of transposition championed in the west. From the liner notes: My Sruti box is a small laptop-sized wooden drone instrument originating from India that has become very dear to me. Last year I discovered a way to play my saxophone and the Sruti box at the same time. Since then I have enjoyed their dialogue together. This piece was born in Berlin in the wonderful P4 studios, the old East Berlin radio studios. I had spent several days recording and my embouchure was completely through. Out of pure desperation I reached for the Sruti box and saxophone and began to improvise some simple lines over a simple drone. That was the beginning of a journey inside the keys. Yes, this little wooden box is chromatic and well-tempered, meaning the 5ths that make up these drones are slightly off from the perfect overtone 5th - only with the Sruti box as opposed to the piano this provides some useful higher overtones which can be played with. “Sruti” are the small intervals in Indian music, the finer shades of tonal color which add depth to the Raga, which itself means “hue”, or “beauty”. The word Sruti is thought to mean “that which is heard”, and even “truth”. By this token I sometimes call her my “listening box” or my little “truth” box. The Western tradition prides itself on its flexibility of transposition through the means of well tempering- but gaining this meant losing the deeper core of individual keys. After all, how can I get to the soul of a key when not a single note I have, other than the octave, is in tune with the keys’ natural overtones?In this sense this piece explores some of the terra incognito between the tempered and the natural harmonic landscape - the desert between the light, movable tonality of Rome, and the deeply rooted raga of Rajistan. I have often wondered if the different keys really do have different colors, as some claim. Because the individual pieces are so short in this work, one has a good chance to appreciate them as different colors, if one were so inclined to do so. I leave this question open for the listener to decide. Hayden Chisholm recording in P4 Studios, Berlin “My Well-Tempered Sruti Box” modulates through all 24 major and minor keys. In each of the keys the saxophone embarks on a short improvisation above the Sruti box. The exact scale was chosen on the spur of the moment but the 12 major and minor keys remain intact. The entire work was recorded on June 16, 2011. For me this has always been a special day- Bloomsday- the day on which Leopold Bloom set out in Dublin after his pork kidney breakfast and changed the world and the word forever. This small work does not aim to change anything as large but it also works with hyper-perception of the ordinary and a retake on an ancient tale, in this case the tale of the tones. Amongst the rubble of the Western harmonic model, still surrounded by more than 4 and a half minutes of sculptured silence, it is like a little match box house that has been carefully rebuilt by a curious soul. Now I can sit back and observe it before the tramontana wind blows it away. Hayden Chisholm Post Scritum: This recording contains a live version of the piece recorded at the Sendesaal Bremen in the series “Konzerte im Dunkeln” ( Concerts in the dark). The Sendesaal has one of the most beautifully clear sounds of any hall I know and to play inside it in complete darkness was a fascinating experience. 1.48 seconds of honey-like reverb allows each tone to develop and decay in a perfectly protected wooden shell. No, I did not begin to “see” any colors in the sound. The experience of the sound was intensified and I felt I was able to get deeper “inside” the tones. I can imagine though, that in the darkness of the cosmic womb, the impulse of sound can become light in some form.