Birds EP
Released December 28, 2020
This digital release features two commissions that paint vivid portraits of birds.
Music of Foghorns & Seabirds by Natalie Draper
Alchemical Birds by Octavio Vazquez
Akropolis Reed Quintet
These two pieces were commissioned for Akropolis by the I-Park Foundation at their 2018 Composers + Musicians Collaborative Residency in which Akropolis was the resident ensemble. Akropolis would like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to the i-Park Foundation and I-Park's president Ralph Crispino, Jr. for not only supporting Akropolis and these magnificent composers, but for his love of new music, his commitment to artistic creativity, and for providing a place for so much ground breaking creativity to occur. This EP is dedicated to Ralph and the I-Park Foundation and for all of the amazing work they do to support artists.
About the works
Music of Foghorns & Seabirds
“Music of Foghorns & Seabirds” was written in 2018 for Akropolis Reed Quintet and premiered in East Haddam, Connecticut, and New York City in August of 2018. This piece is the product of a collaborative residency at the I-Park Foundation. Much of Draper's recent music has reflected visual landscapes and nature. “Music of Foghorns & Seabirds” evokes a scene from the ocean—undulating foghorns, shifting boats, and murmurations and chirpings of seabirds. In this sense it is a soundscape, very much influenced by impressionism and experimentalism. Each movement presents a unique scene: I. In the Distance, II. Murmuration, III. Stillness, and IV. Into the Haze.
Alchemical Birds
In alchemy, the raven, swan, and phoenix traditionally represent the three alchemical stages known as Nigredo (Blackness), Albedo (Whiteness), and Rubedo (Redness). Widely understood as a process of personal transformation, nigredo brings images of death, the decomposition of personality through a chaotic, even reckless phase driven by desire. Following the chaos or massa confusa of nigredo, albedo represents an after-death limbo, a spiritual cleansing which is sometimes referred to as ablutio—the washing away of impurities. Rubedo symbolizes a rebirth out of nothingness, a state of presence or constant renewal, the culmination of the Magnum Opus, the Great Work.