What is the earth telling us to do?’ is the question at the heart of Earth Voices. A piece both about the world and ourselves, Riley’s five-movement work built from the unpredictable and ever-transforming patterns of nature is a timely encouragement to deeper engage with our natural world. With each movement a suggestion of how we might find ourselves closer connected to the Earth, they are suited to performance as stand-alone works. Yet throughout is a sustained plea for greater humility and empathy in face of the current environmental crisis.
The work was commissioned by the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra to which environmental consciousness is integral to their functioning as an organisation. Riley himself travelled to and from Sweden by slow travel on trains – developing a deepened sense of place through the changing languages, cultures and landscapes, the journeys took were as fundamental to the compositional process as the crafting of the music itself.
https://soundcloud.com/broken-edge-music/sets/earth-voices