Of the Near and Far by Patricia Brennan

For fans of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Rob Mazurek, Cisnienie, experimental neoclassical music, and the seemingly random harmony of our natural universe, Of the Near and Far by Patricia Brennan builds a new musical language based on the positions of stars in the night sky. We’ve seen a trend in experimental circles of artists converting datasets into music, assigning notes to numbers in order to elevate the mundane machinery of industrial life into a piece of thought-provoking art. However, Brennan takes this idea a significant step further, charting the layout of popular constellations to create new rules for music theory, leaving the human performer to act within those rules. The resulting work proves perfectly the concept of man participating in the act of creation, harnessing the natural beauty of the stars in the sky and humbly entering the scene to sculpt these detailed, emotional vignettes. Moments of whimsical jazz improvisation, tense string soliloquies, and anthemic orchestral power all fit into the perfect order of the universe, pointing up in awe as they dance gracefully below.