George Lewis’ Soundlines at NYU Skirball

October 18, 19, 2019

Soundlines: A Dreaming Track is MacArthur Fellow George Lewis’s musical interpretation of percussionist and composer Steven Schick’s journal documenting his 700-mile walk from the US-Mexico border to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006. Directed by Jim Findlay, Schick performs as speaker and percussionist, joined by a chamber ensemble featuring eight musicians from the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and electronics.

Reminiscent of Alexis de Tocqueville, and Henry David Thoreau, and the Great Migration, the Lewis’s libretto describes Schick’s inner moods, doubts, meditations, aesthetics, his personal musical practice, and social commentary, in a fashion that recalls the Australian aboriginal notion of the songline, or “dreaming track,” where repeating a song while navigating a landscape gains access to ancient stories related to the land. A surround-sound space will be created electronically, enabling text, music and field recordings related to the piece to be experienced more intensively.