Search - Philip Corner, Steve Peters :: Gong ear in the desert

In April 1991, composers Philip Corner and Steve Peters visited
a remote canyon in northern New Mexico, bringing with them a pair of Korean cymbals and a portable DAT recorder, respectively. With no plan and little discussion, a lengthy duet ensued between Player and Listener. Both were immersed in their roles, Corner sounding the metal discs in and with the landscape in every way imaginable; Peters and his mic attuned to both the granular details and the larger soundscape. This continued for over an hour without interruption, resulting in a very special recording.
The private, almost subliminal, performance comes from a period when Corner was practicing a daily personal ritual of quietly ecstatic improvisations,
under the principle of 'withinstascy', of which the Metal Meditation: Gong (in this case cymbals) is a subset. The occasion of a visit to Santa Fe was taken by Peters to provoke this unusual documentation
of one 'day in the life'.
Eighteen years later, this mythical session finds its way out of Corner's personal archive, sounding every bit as compelling as it did when it was first recorded. 'Gong (Cymbal)/Ear in the desert' captures all of the intimate, tactile nuances of Corner's ecstatic performance, accompanied
by the ambient sounds of insects, birds, wind, and trees. This release meticulously documents this singular event, a moment of pure being in time and place: Philip Corner in a high desert canyon on a fine spring morning playing, listening, fully present.