Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

The edifice has a thousand stories. Here and there one beholds on its staircases the gloomy caverns of science which pierce its interior. Everywhere upon its surface, art causes its arabesques, rosettes, and laces to thrive luxuriantly before the eyes. There, every individual work, however capricious and isolated it may seem, has its place and its projection. Harmony results from the whole. From the cathedral of Shakespeare to the mosque of Byron, a thousand tiny bell towers are piled pell-mell above this metropolis of universal thought. At its base are written some ancient titles of humanity which architecture had not registered. To the left of the entrance has been fixed the ancient bas-relief, in white marble, of Homer; to the right, the polyglot Bible rears its seven heads. The hydra of the Romancero and some other hybrid forms, the Vedas and the Nibelungen bristle further on. Nevertheless, the prodigious edifice still remains incomplete. The press, that giant machine, which incessantly pumps all the intellectual sap of society, belches forth without pause fresh materials for its work. The whole human race is on the scaffoldings. Each mind is a mason. The humblest fills his hole, or places his stone. Rétif de La Bretonne brings his hod of plaster. Every day a new course rises. Independently of the original and individual contribution of each writer, there are collective contingents. The eighteenth century gives the _Encyclopedia_, the revolution gives the _Moniteur_. Assuredly, it is a construction which increases and piles up in endless spirals; there also are confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labor, eager competition of all humanity, refuge promised to intelligence, a new Flood against an overflow of barbarians. It is the second tower of Babel of the human race. [Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, or, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Volume I, Book Fifth, Chapter II, “This Will Kill That”.]

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Many contemporary artists have recorded albums that reflect diversity.

• Julio Botti, “Tango Nostalgias” (2013) (53’): the saxophone is not common in Argentine music. Julio Botti has brought it in. “By embracing his Argentinian roots, Botti has in effect found his own voice on his chosen instrument.”
• “Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz” (1992) (53’): “The tunes on Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz were drawn from Katz’s recorded legacy, which Byron studied, transcribed off the old recordings, and adapted for a band of jazz musicians that he assembled and subsequently immersed in the fine stylistic points of the genre.”
• Dennis Rea, “Giant Steppes” (2021) (50’): “recorded over many years, Giant Steppes is Dennis’s second travelogue/interpretive album, this time centred on a vagarious trip through the music of Tuva, a region that straddles Mongolia and Russian Central Asia, and is about as remote – both geographical”
• Antonio Adolfo, “Hybrido: From Rio to Wayne Shorter” (2017) (55’): what if Wayne Shorter had been born in Rio de Janiero?
• Daniel Weltlinger, “Koblenz: A tribute to the family Reinhardt” (2014) (43’): making the case the Django Reinhardt’s Gypsy guitar music is similar to Klezmer
• Beyond Borders Band, “It Just Happens” (2018) (60’) (“. . . an integration of Western harmony with Arabic styles . . .”) [Cadence magazine 2019 annual edition, p. 285.]
• Joseph Tawadros, “World Music” (2016) (79’): “Joseph Tawadros combines Middle Eastern, western classical and jazz and various global music influences.”
• Erik Griswold & Australian Art Orchestra, “Water Pushes Sand” (2017) (59’): “. . . composer Erik Griswold and the Australian Art Orchestra team up with all-star musicians and performers of Sichuan to create a wild and beautiful intercultural celebration. The ten-piece band fuses Sichuan melodies and rhythms with contemporary Western composition and improvisation to produce surprising juxtapositions of music and culture.”
• Eliane Elias, “The Three Americas” (1995) (52’): “My intention for this recording is not only to present some of the innumerable sounds and rhythms of North, Central and South America but also to capture the musical essence of each America and combine their various rhythms and sounds to beat as one heart.”
• Pharoah Sanders, “Izipho Zam” (My Gifts) (1973) (50’): “. . . Sanders followed his own path to Far Eastern music and sometimes completely beyond the boundaries of what one could call jazz.”
• Jeff Albert Quartet, “Similar in the Opposite Way” (2007) (45’)
• Hamiet Bluiett, “The Clarinet Family” (1986) (63’): every kind of clarinet joins in this collaboration (here is a live performance in Berlin, 1984)
• Avalanche Kaito, “Avalanche Kaito” (2022) (41’): “A Burkinabe urban griot (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse) meets a Brussels noise post-punk duo (Drummer/dataist Benjamin Chaval and guitarist Nico Gitto).”
• Toumani Diabaté and the London Symphony Orchestra, “Kôrôlén” (2021) (44’): the gentle sounds of a kora combine with a world-class symphony orchestra, marrying two musical cultures.
• Marsida Koni, “Albanian Piano Music” (2018) (69’); “Shqpëria Në Art: Albanian Piano Works” 

Compositions:

• Olivier Messiaen, Catalogue d’oiseaux, pour piano (Bird Catalogue) (1958) (approx. 148-153’): “Messiaen's love of nature, as displayed in the cycle (each movement not only has a title bird but also an actual French geographic region assigned to it), is nearly matched by his love of musical arch form.” “What prompted Messiaen was much more like what prompted Janacek, wandering about Moravia notebook at the ready, to jot down speech-rhythms and natural sounds, doubtless including birdsong” “The complete work consists of thirteen pieces that progressively present a main group of birds, followed by representations of other birds.”
• Nikolai Kapustin, 24 Preludes in Jazz Style, Op. 53 (1988) (approx. 42’) draw on influences from classical and jazz music.
• Ross Edwards, Double Concerto for Alto Saxophone, Percussion and Orchestra, “Frog and Star Cycle” (2015) (approx. 30’): “Composing this double concerto presented me with an exciting challenge: the need to satisfy the virtuosic requirements of two very extraordinary soloists, saxophonist Amy Dickson and percussionist Colin Currie, while at the same time preserving the substance and direction my music has taken over many years. As ever, it brims over with shapes and patterns which have inadvertently acquired the status of symbols, derived from the ecosphere as well as from myth and ritual of diverse cultures.” [the composer]

Albums:

• Garefowl, “Cliffs” (2020) (49’): “Most of the pieces draw on music collected on St. Kilda or recorded later by those who had lived there. Others, composed for this album, find their inspiration within the grater orbit of St Kilda and its history: family stories, journeys on the water, or a glimpse of someone on the street.” The album commemorates “the last British seabird made extinct”.

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Emily Bear, “Diversity”

Visual Arts

• Garden in Great Britain
• Paul Klee, Six Species (1921)

Film and Stage