Category: Of Interest
Titicaca
Gallery

This gallery contains 11 photos.
Lake Poopo, present and ancestral home to many Uros communities, dried up this summer due to a mix of El Nino patterns, water diverted for agricultural exports, and climate change. Weeks before the announcement I stayed with Uros friends on Isla … Continue reading
One Maybarduk
Northern India
Gallery

This gallery contains 24 photos.
Delhi, the Golden Triangle and Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama in exile at the outer Himalayas.
Center for Artistic Activism Barcelona
Gallery

This gallery contains 15 photos.
Access to medicines advocates from around the world recently gathered in Barcelona for a week-long seminar on the creatively persuasive arts. After a couple days’ lessons in history, neuroscience and organizing by the Center for Artistic Activism we took a … Continue reading
Vencido Lead Sheets
Peter Reppert, a Washington regional jazz pianist, has been good enough to transcribe lead sheets to help musicians perform some of my songs. Here are his posts and links to lead sheets for “Darker Days” and “Caught in a Lie,” each on No Hay Pueblo Vencido (2009).
Museum of Musical Instruments
Making A Ring Around the Atlantic
Recording A Ring Around the Atlantic (2011-12) offered a chance to create richer arrangements than I had previously, and experiment with layers of music. Peter Gabriel records, with their cathedral of sounds, were one reference point in our studio discussions.
Cellist Gordon Withers pointed out that Atlantic seems to sit in a world between popular and classical music. Take track six. Messages Across the Atlantic begins with a sparse piano line and vocal, then adds string instruments, drums and choral vocals in an uncommon blend of styles. We made a conscious decision to exclude electric guitars.
Messages gives way to Very Very Suffer, a field recording of me playing a nylon string guitar on a rooftop in Guatemala City, with the attendant sounds of birds and a plane passing overhead. This is matched to a second recording of a friend, Abu Kamara, speaking about his life in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The chords transition into The Hard Path to Peace, which features a jazz rhythm section made modern pop through electronic manipulations.
Atlantic is meant to be heard as an album, straight through; even with an A and B side (the latter beginning with “Conjured Lights”). There is an industry trend toward making songs as loud as the technology will allow, even for songs or moments within songs you might otherwise think of as naturally quiet. Atlantic is mastered with quieter points. This technique gives songs room to develop and lets our ears rest; to enjoy silence before a dynamic build.
I’m back trying out new musical directions again now, toward a future fourth album tentatively called Trans-Pacifica.
Thank you for listening. — Peter, November 2012
Siddhartha on his Raft
Gallery

This gallery contains 14 photos.
Estimados compañeros, We’ve just finished a music video for “Siddhartha On His Raft.” “Siddhartha” interprets Herman Hesse‘s novel about a man’s overzealous quest for inner peace. “Siddhartha On His Raft” is the third track on my second album, No Hay … Continue reading