Minimal Music Festival | Primordial / Lift

Music is more than sound and silence; it also incorporates the space in which it comes alive. Pauline Oliveros propagated this insight her entire life, notably through her concept of ‘deep listening’. Her monumental 1999 drone piece, Primordial / Lift, literally ventures into space. For this work, Oliveros takes as her starting point the very vibration generated by the Earth itself. The specialist electroacoustic collective MAZE will be performing this piece. Primordial / Lift takes root in a Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO) - an electronic tone generator that produces a low frequency. This LFO symbolises certain extremely low sound waves that encircle our planet, known as the Schumann resonances. Around this drone, which rises almost imperceptibly in pitch as the piece progresses, the musicians create an organic mass of sound that constantly changes shape. The intoxicating sound thus becomes a metaphor for the healing power of the Earth.