Lucy Railton - Blue Veil [CD]

The first release to document the solo cello work of musician and composer LucyRailton, the 40-minute composition Blue Veil recorded at Église du Saint-Espritin Paris invites listeners into the realm of precision-tuned states of resonance:states made manifest through Railton's careful traversal of her cello's most subtleacoustic characteristics as they harmonically interlock with mind's embodiedmodalities of attention and imagination.Blue Veil arises out of, is sustained in and finally dissolves back into Railton'smomentary presence with her intimate connection to the cello, a way of hearingthat allows for a deeper engagement with harmonic resonance, one that opens aspace for immediate encounters of mind and sound.Railton's exploratory practice of harmonic perception emerges from a focus onthe physical qualities of intervallic and chordal sounds, their textural qualities,degrees of friction, and inner pulsations. Composing in the moment guided byresonances within the cello's body, her own, and their shared vibrational space,Railton moves through Blue Veil by giving sounds what they ask for: sounds ofpure texture manifesting as a move through temporal transparency, sounds ofrough texture marking regions of dimensionally dense space.Railton's creative and highly refined use of just intonation harmony deformssound's inner movements in ways that suggest a mode of listening that activelysupplies imagery of sounds implied or completely absent rather than merelysavouring those fully present. This active mode of "listening-with", playfully andsemi-metaphorically referred to by Railton as "sing-along music", allows listeningto reflexively participate in the music's movement as it gradually passes throughrichly saturated domains of harmonic imagination. And just as the precisiontuned tones of Blue Veil lose their individuality when fusing multifaceteduniformity, listening's structures of reference and recognition dissolve intonameless waves of intensity, continuously unfolding themselves upon andmerging with the listener.Blue Veil is the result of a deep exploration of the inner worlds of tuning, anundertaking in turn informed by and emerging out of Railton's realisations ofthe music of Catherine Lamb and Ellen Arkbro, her collaborative work with KaliMalone and Stephen O'Malley as well as her interpretive practice in performingthe work of Maryanne Amacher, Morton Feldman and others.