“Measurement as Contrition: Three canons”…
or…
when people become time and sound becomes clay and rocks and sand and wood and twigs and metals…
and suddenly you feel like there is a dome made of air, right there above and under and around you, helping you hear and listen the inside of your thought.
Evan Johnson‘s music often makes you feel like you are witnessing a wonder that you should not have access to. That should not be perceivable to you, to any of your senses. It is like… you are becoming a voyeur into this hidden world of sensible treasures. And it makes you want to rethink how you feel, what you feel, which sense should feel what.
All the extended occupying of time and space, the uncertainty what is sound and what silence, it all heightens every sense to try a little bit more, hear a little bit more, feel a little bit better. You start to hear with your eyelashes… with your fingertips… with your earlobes… as if every part of your body wants to extend, to get closer to the sound. To see whether there is a sound. Or is it the echoing of the silence that seeps through every pore and through your body and becomes a sound.
“It is then that you realise, while your whole being is listening, that you are not a voyeur. It is a piece for you. You are not an intruder sneakily stealing someone else’s moment and experience. Rather… you are experiencing an “everybody’s piece” that is somehow directly dedicated to you. To you and to each and every creature individually and on a very personal level. Because of this invitation to listen beyond space and time. A nudge towards finding that another dimension in which this music is happening and existing.
Hope to have a chance to once hear it live, but in the meantime… “Measurement as Contrition: Three canons”, as heard at its premier the Tectonics Glasgow, performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Ilan Volkov, starting at 25:11 and streaming still for another 11 days on BBC3. Don’t miss a chance to give it a listen… or fifteen.
Edit: 07.01.2019.