studio recording

Studio Walk

There is still time to make your year-end tax deductible donation!

For the past two days, we have been in the studio finishing the piano parts! Here’s a little tour going from the control room to the piano room and back:

What a gift to be able to work!

Your contribution ensures the recording of Aberfan continues! Please give what you can and tell someone else about it!

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible. Your contribution ensures we can return to the studio to complete its recording.

Thank you!

Music from “Aberfan”

October 21, 2016 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan Disaster.

As promised, here is another sample of the piano music from our first recording session in Boston a few weeks ago.

“Altered Interlude” is representative of the children’s walk to school on the morning of the disaster. There are 144 beats in each interlude, one for each person who died, ordered in shifting rhythms:

Aberfan (7 pianos, percussion, voice and tools of rescue) is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501 (c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Contributions are tax deductible.

Photo courtesy of Alan George

Music from “Aberfan”

Over the next few posts, I would like to give you samples of piano music from our recent, first recording sessions, in order of their appearance in the piece.

In the beginning is “Rain Sequence”. Here is an excerpt in which you hear the gentle, gradual layering of pianos one upon another, coming to represent “over a week of heavy rainfall” prior to the Aberfan Disaster:

Both Michael and I are deeply excited to continue recording, but we’ll need your support to do so. Every donation is greatly appreciated.

Photo IC Rapoport, Aberfan 1966

Extraordinary Next Steps for “Aberfan”

What an incredible, full experience to start recording!

Driving into Boston, walking through Michael’s large maze of a studio for the first time, finding the piano had a wonderful touch that was not too hard for my hands, recording ’til near midnight, leaving to find the Walker Center in Auburndale, Newton, where I was to stay overnight, then coming back into the studio on the green line the next morning after 3 1/2 hours sleep.

Michael and I worked on one musical sequence at a time, talking about it some, recording, then listening. We accomplished an incredible amount — 1/3 of the piano parts — over those 11 hours! A musical sample will be posted soon.

Aberfan is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501 (c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Contributions are tax deductible.

Your donation helps us continue!

Studio Tomorrow

Going into Boston tomorrow to begin recording Aberfan with Michael. Almost hard to believe. Excited!

Here is a demo excerpt from the initial “Rain Sequence”, written for seven pianos on the same part at different tempos. Seven is representative of Tip No. 7, the one that collapsed:

Aberfan is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501 (c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Contributions are tax deductible. Please become a part of this endeavor by making a donation. One specific, immediate need is payment for the piano tuner: $125

Photo Aberfan Memorial Garden

MAP Fund application, by invitation

MAP Fund image

After months of preparation and not a little stress, another application made it out. What astonished me, in finding answers to questions on the application, was to realize the deep thread that has been running through my work all along. A great gift to find meaning.

Here is an excerpt:

“Aberfan articulates a broadening and deepening of practice far beyond what I’ve experienced before, yet inclusive of everything before it. What began on my knees, crouched in a narrow darkened tunnel cut towards a far away light opening into vast space, over years has been the search for my own creative voice in composition. Aberfan became symbol of the greater, where time and form are permeable — where opposites are contained and held together in agonizing fusion, irregular shapes of risen cadences into a whole.”

Deep thanks to Ian Smith-Heisters for his part in helping me with the application.

To contribute to the recording of Aberfan, please go to www.tinyurl.com/FundAberfan.