If – Sherre DeLys and John Jacobs
This is a stunning piece produced in 2002 and inspired by the New Children’s Hospital at Westmead. It lives in a blurry grey spot between radio documentary, sound art and music,
Cello and voice: Ion Pearce. Featuring Andrew Salter.
If won the Best Documentary: Silver Award in the 2002 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition.
Recommended to me by Emma Lancaster.
Cypress Knees – Jay Allison
Produced for All Things Considered way back in 1996, this piece about cypress knees (who knew trees had knees?!) is a real delight. It’s not just about tree knees though, it’s also about memory, hardship and death.
Darcy Christ (maker of Audio Envelope – the plugin that facilitates my What I’m Listening To playlist), reminded me of this piece and we listened to it again together.
On Conquering Fear – The Open Ears Project
I’ve been really enjoying The Open Ears Project. It describes itself as “Part mixtape, part sonic love-letter”, In each daily episode, a different person shares a classical track, and explains why it’s important to them in about five to ten minutes. Then we hear the track. I like this for its simplicity, and for the way it is reinserting classical music into my life. This episode features a New York City firefighter, Rob Vogt. Vogt spent the months following 9/11 as part of the “bucket brigade”, searching the rubble for the bodies of those killed in the attack. His chosen track is quite galvanising and I can totally image wanting to have that blasting into your ears as you looked through the rubble of the twin towers. The first episode, with Alec Baldwin, was also particularly enjoyable because turns out Baldwin is quite hilarious. Who knew?