Book of Hours (Bob Ostertag)

Composition for three vocals and an instrument.

Bob Ostertag about his piece Book of Hours:
In all of this I am further developing the compositional techniques I created in the 1990s with my Say No More quartet and its four recordings. There also, I began with solo improvisations recorded separately, which I then fashioned into compositions via thousands of splices. The only methodological difference between Say No More and A Book of Hours is that there are digital tools for altering the pitch and duration of recorded sound that were not available in the 1990s. The Say No More project progressed in cycles, with the composition I created on the computer from the fragments of the solo improvisations in turn becoming the “score” that the live ensemble used in its performances; the live performance recordings then becoming the source material for another composition spliced together on the computer; and so on. Given the present world financial crisis, I am unsure if the resources to pursue A Book of Hours through a similarly ambitious set of cycles will be available, and at any rate I am traveling much less in an effort to reduce my carbon footprint in the face of global warming.

Theo Bleckmann, Audrey Chen and Phil Minton were invited to Prague for performing Bob Ostertag's piece.