dreams of the blind

	dreams of the blind ensemble of 9 . soundtrack . video text
for piano, voice, recorders, clarinets, trombone, percussion, elec guitar, violin, contrabass (35')
		1.supermarket guy (quick time clip 8 MB)
Dreams of the Blind is a suite of 5 pieces for ensemble, electronics and video. The dreams accounts of blind people seemed a suitable starting point, partly because it’s often describing sensations and images that language has limitations in describing. It’s the clumsiness by which we use language, its rationality, which sets up an interesting relation with how music functions, which is itself a language of sorts, but one that offers ambiguities and has direct access to certain emotional responses in us. The metaphor of the blind dreamer has also a strange relation to the fact that we a reading accounts of dreams that do not have to do with processing images memories but often sensations of hearing. Also, just as we are forming images in our minds when we read the dream texts, we also hear our mind’s voices reading the text to the music, a way of putting the voice of the audience at the centre, instead of hearing it sung or spoken by a ‘performer’.
Premiered at the Paradiso, Amsterdam on the 27th Feb 2007, by Ensemble MAE conducted by Otto Tausk. It has also been recorded for the Fab Channel and can be seen online, up to a year after the concert date. Go to: www.fabchannel.com/new_narratives "Dreams of the Blind" starts at around 80 minutes. It's the last piece on the programme. You can skip to that section of the concert with the scroll bar which appears under the small video window. One movement of the suite, with just text and music, can be seen on the link at the top of the page.