Program note

Distance in the piece manifests through sounds that are far and near: when instrumentalists move in and out of their original positions to each other and the audience; when the soundscape of the recordings changes their proximity to one’s ear; when sounds one thinks to have heard reveal something else. Distance is there when I think about the various cityscape recordings and their representation as composed sounds to the memories of the day I took them or when I imagine the day that someone else took them. Distance is in the recordings themselves as they are of cities sometimes listening to themselves, dreaming of the past from post-industrial rubble, or of the future as cranes pull the weight of slates up into the sky. 

Together there are varied soundscapes from four different cities: Lviv, Montreal, Copenhagen and Toronto. There are many different kinds of distances between them, in time, space, and also in the materiality of recording quality. The absence to make a connection between them is sometimes heard or masked depending on how one hears it; it may be hiding or revealing something new just like one’s favourite city or person.