One night, one bird, one tree, one spot by the Spree River in Berlin—
a virtuoso nightingale perched in his tree at midnight.
There we stood, Lucie singing, David on clarinet and iPad sampling the bird and playing synth sounds he thought the bird might like.
One piece, one take, no editing, just live. What two people and one bird can do.
From Shelley's "The Woodman and the Nightingale":
Make a green space among the silent bowers,
like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion—and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone, which never can recur, has cast
One accent never to return again.
The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.
credits
released December 9, 2015
Lucie Vítková, voice
David Rothenberg, clarinet, iPad (Samplr, Addictive Synth, Animoog)
One talented nightingale
Lucie Vítková, accordionist, vocalist, and composer, hails from the Czech Republic and is writing a dissertation on Christian Wolff.
www.vitkovalucie.com
David Rothenberg, musician and philosopher, is the author of Why Birds Sing and records on the Terra Nova and ECM labels.
www.davidrothenberg.net
the Nightingale, like most of his compatriots, spends his winters in
East Africa and flies to Europe for the spring and summer, returning
each year to the exact same tree, for up to twenty years. We know
exactly where to find him.
www.nightingale-song.com
Recorded May 5th, 2015 live at midnight in Berlin.
Mixed and Mastered on B Street, Cold Spring.
published by Mysterious Mountain Music (BMI) (c) (p) 2015
Terra Nova Music TN 1512
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