Kara-Lis Coverdale – A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever

Music

Kara-Lis Coverdale presents a program of solo piano works, A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever, in PS21’s Black Box Theater. Taken from her recent album of the same name, the works are in a way classic nocturnes (i.e. inspired by night), but also evoke tangential, abstract associations: an animation of melodic webs; moving through a thick substance; sound objects in space. Written and recorded during winter in a small rural studio in Ontario, they also reflect Coverdale’s retreat from maximal sound and a return to acoustic fundamentals.

A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever is slow and focuses as much on the decay of piano melody as on its attack. Mood emerges from deceleration and restraint; emerging melodies, inspired by modal influences from the late Renaissance, post-war minimalism, and Coverdale’s idiosyncratic sense of musical ecology, bloom at their own pace.

In her own words: “This [music] is an exploration of harmony in space, music as an antithesis to silence. A silence that does not exist.”