Goodbye to Banff

I wrote this piece to say goodbye to Banff.

Thank you to this beautiful place for keeping me quiet for a year and giving me the space to study, compose, play music and to come back to myself again after a little over four hectic, unquiet years working for Cirque du Soleil. I am grateful to have had the time to hike in these incredible mountains and breathe fresh, clean air.

Thank you to everybody here who smiled at me, spoke with me, and welcomed me. Monica and Carolyn for being good friends and taking my hand in these sometimes challenging times. Jessa, thank you for talking about music with me. I don’t know what I would have done without the support and mentorship from two amazing people, Robert P. and Violaine – thank you, thank you, thank you, you both helped me stay sane; thank you for your wisdom and teaching (and thank you to skype!). Most of all, my biggest thanks to Andrew who stood by me, supported me, and helped me to find a new home in Canada (for the moment). Now it’s time to move to the city and rejoin the rat race.

Composition, lyrics, recorders (Paetzold contra bass, bass, tenors, ganassi in G), vocals, sump pipe, Futujara, and mixing – Racheal Cogan.

Lyrics:

goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

i will wander

i will wander forever

forever, forever, forever, forever

i have no home

no place, no place is home

 it’s inside me

forever, forever, forever, forever

the wind blows through me

forever, forever, forever, forever

goodbye coyote, goodbye elk, goodbye friends

thank you thank you thank you thank you

fare thee well

the wind blows through me

This idea for this piece of music started exactly a year ago, in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

My new home had a 180 degree view of snow covered mountains and a vast wilderness that was totally new to me. The bears that live here were just starting to emerge from hibernation. I realised that from my home, I was looking out on an expanse where bears slept through 6 months of bitter cold (up to minus 40 degrees celcius) in hollows, caves, snow and ice. The music in my head became a meditation on sleep. Such a long sleep with the fear and connotations of death that the human mind brings to it and finally the hope of  awakening in spring with the rebirth that this time of year brings to all of us. I originally thought it would be amazing piece of music for a choir and a group of four soloists with recorders. Being new to Banff and not knowing anybody, I didn’t have access to a choir! So I kept it to a short length (5:52) with only the four solo vocalists.

It’s a meditative slow piece – enjoy the icy cold of it in a quiet, dark space.

Many many thanks to Robert Poliquin’s generosity and wonderful rich voice in this recording.

Robert Poliquin – male vocals. Racheal Cogan – composition, lyrics, recorders, sump pipe, female vocals, mixing.

My spirit feels you bear,

Inside the ice, the cave of ice.

My breath, my breath becomes still.

The darkness has embraced me

Darkness, embraced.

In incandescent, in incandescent light.

Inside the ice, my breath, my breath becomes still.

The darkness has embraced me in incandescent light.

I will awaken.

the black bear I saw last spring

Frunk *explicit language warning*

I have a show in my head

I want to get it out of there and into the world.

Racheal and Her Virtual Recorder Orchestra

This is the first piece that spawned the idea:

Racheal Cogan – recorders, vocals, lyrics, recording and mixing.

***********************************************************************************

If you have nothing nice to say

then, then, then keep your, keep your, keep your, keep your,

 keep your mouth shut.

F——————ck

F, F, F, F, F, F, F,

F, F, F, F, F,

F-ck F-ck

Truth is dripping in oil as she slithers right out of your hands.

The truth has balls, she isn’t nice,

but she can heal you.

She is a snake and will whisper you

She will whisper, she will whisper and she will whisper you away,

From false prophets and gods

(you’re welcome have a nice day).

from false prophets, from false prophets, from false prophets, from false prophets, from false prophets, from false prophets, from false prophets, from false prophets, from false prophets, from false prophets….

Among, among, among: Among the lies

Among, among, among: Among the lies

Among the Lions.

What is truth in all the lies?

F, F, F, F, F,

Find it, find it and set the word,

F, F, F, F, F,

Find it, find it and set the word free.

Photo by Sandrine Bretaud
http://madsushie.net
Frunk – Recorders

Into the Dark – a song for Winter Solstice

This is a piece of music I wrote over Christmas. I had just been to a carols concert that really didn’t resonate with me.  At all. I left early, feeling a bit like the Grinch and wondering if Christmas really meant anything to me. As I sat backstage waiting for my partner to finish working the show, the words to this piece came to me and I spent the time waiting scribbling and refining the lyrics for a melody that had already shaped itself. I spent the next few weeks slowly making it whole; working out a piano part and a recorder arrangement to work with the song.

 Most of my life I’ve had summer Christmases. It is a fresh experience to have Christmas in a very cold northern place where the marking of the Winter equinox makes such sense.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

The wild geese have flown away, some time ago

I too would fly away, but will remain

through the long dark white of the coldest Winter I have ever known.

I fear you Winter,

you stalk me from behind.

♦

The river slows as it turns to ice

I walk upon her now.

Darkness comes this is the longest night.

My breath is ice and my heart grows still,

as the earth tilts slowly back towards the sun.

Christmas is darkness turned,

yet Winter has just begun.

♦

The wild geese have flown away,

but the raven stays behind.

Into The Dark

Music and lyrics: Racheal Cogan

Recorders, vocals and keyboard: Racheal Cogan

Recording and mixing: Racheal Cogan

Two Geese

This music is beautiful. Tony Lewis has done a superb job mixing this piece and breathing life into the tangled spaghetti I had made creating and recording the recorder parts. He also created and played the perfect and intricate percussion parts that are as much a part of this composition as my original work on recorders.

Sit down quietly with some great speakers and enjoy. I have been.

I have no words able to express how grateful I am to have this time to be working on creative projects again and with such amazing people like Tony, who has given so much time, energy and knowledge to this small piece.

Tony Lewis – tombak, bass drum, tambourine, handclaps, cymbal and finger cymbal.

Racheal Cogan – Paetzold Contra Bass recorder, Bass recorder (Kung), Tenor recorder Takeyama), treble recorder (Michael Grinter), Ganassi in C (Michael Grinter).

Two Geese began in my tiny, but quiet living space with a stunning mountain vista. The snow was beginning to melt and I had no idea that my quiet-ish haven was about to be suddenly transformed by an impressive gaggle of geese returning to their summer quarters. They settled directly outside my window (for months): feasting on the fresh shoots of grass in the newly exposed earth, fluffy goslings in tow and generally making a louder noise than I ever thought possible. Recording was a frustrating exercise – but somehow I found quieter moments and they became the foundation for this short piece. It was named for a couple flying on an unexpectedly quiet day that I managed to do most of the recording in. It was lovely to see them, but I was also afraid that they just might have been the harbinger of the entire skein of geese returning to their home, and that my recording time was about to be cut once again by their raucous honking.

Vermillion Lakes, near Banff. Alberta, Canada.

The Sky Moves Above Us

Music for recorder ensemble. 19 tracks – 17 instruments!

Featuring the Paetzold Contra Bass in F. The main Paetzold line uses three tracks; I wanted this line to have some presence! One mic up top to record – one down the bottom. Because I only have one mic input (!), I played the line twice. Once with the mic up top, and the other time, below. The top line was split onto two tracks and generally panned wide left and right for a stereo effect.

Lots of recorders on this one:

3 Paetzold Contra Basses

5 Basses (Kung)

3 Tenors (Takeyama)

3 Trebles (Michael Grinter)

3 Descants (Michael Grinter)

I wrote the music, played the instruments, and mixed the track.

Stanley Glacier, Kooteney National Park, British Columbia, Canada.

Cold Water Frozen Sky

This is a piece of music I have been writing, playing/singing on and recording/mixing. It has been a really interesting process! There are 16 different tracks all with separate lines. For example, the big square recorder in the photo that looks like it came from IKEA plays two different lines. And the bass next to it (which in real life is actually kinda big – but dwarfed here by Mr IKEA), has a section where it plays four different lines. At the moment I have been using just the one mic through an MBox MIDI on Pro Tools. I think I’m going to branch out soon, get something bigger so I can (gasp) use two mics at once – or perhaps even more…

It was all recorded in a tiny, well-lived-in studio apartment overlooking the beautiful mountains with frequent halts whilst recording to wait out the big long freight trains passing that blare their horns to frighten the bear, elk and deer off the tracks or the odd tourist’s car alarm going off in the popular recreational park under my windows. Like I said, an interesting process.

Learning to record and produce my own music has been a really big change for me, I often feel really overwhelmed at how much I really really don’t know – but I try to poke my tongue out at this nasty feeling and keep slowly chugging away. And that’s just one part of it. Writing music again feels great, but whoah that is also it’s own lifetimes work. And then there is the playing and singing…it feels like a lot, but the more I work at it the easier it will get. Right?

The main melody I wrote whilst thinking of my friend Alya: taking a moment of quiet to listen to some gentle and soothing music:  putting on makeup in a Cirque dressing room on a noisy Sunday morning for yet another show.

Enjoy!

These are the instruments played in Cold Water Frozen Sky:  Paetzold Contra Bass, Bass recorder (Kung), Tenor recorder (Takeyama), Treble recorder (Michael Grinter), Ganassi recorders in C and G (Michael Grinter).