Benllech Shells
Andrew Lewis
Programme notes
To Esme
“High summer, a crowded, baking beach. Noise, movement, ice cream, diesel. Children and adults alike are drawn to the foaming shore, melodious squeals and cries bobbing up momentarily through the noise of the surf. Away from the water families stake their claim with colourful fortifications
Putting a shell to our ear to see if we can ‘hear the sea’ is perhaps the earliest experience any of us has of transforming sound artificially, creating a wholly fictitious but nevertheless magical aural impression of the sea. Benllech Shells employs computer technology to much the same end, lending an extraordinary aspect to ordinary and familiar sounds (those of a crowded beach in high summer). It also tries to draw some parallels with the way that memory transforms childhood events — in this case the sights and sounds of the seaside — to create an often fictitious but nevertheless magical impression of the past.
[xi-07]
Benllech Shells was realized in the summer 2003 at the Electroacoustic Music Studios of Bangor University (Wales, UK)
Premiere
- October 30, 2003, Concert, Neuadd Powis — Bangor University, Bangor (Wales, UK)
- Composer(s): Andrew Lewis
- Year of composition: 2003
- Cycle: Four Anglesey Beaches
- Duration: 8:33
- Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
- Publisher(s): Ymx média
- ISRC: CAD500722650
