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Before the World Sleeps

18 tracks

duration ~ 50 minutes

An album of music for piano performed by Miranda Wong
Release: November 15, 2024

 

Before the World Sleeps is a collection of pieces for piano, mostly written between 2023 and 2024, during a time when the world seemed to be steadily on course towards ecological, political, and technological disaster. During this time, the rift between human experience and political reality appeared to be norm, to the point where counteractive measures trying to “combat” or “fight” an inevitable outcome, no longer felt sufficient.

I made the decision to create this album in the fall of 2023, wanting to spend the following year writing and organizing music for piano from within this context—using some sort of post-hope perspective—where there was no assumption of control or even an expectation for having a long-term future. The goal was not to celebrate despair or calamity, or to come up with music filled with ideas about the end of the world. It was to reorient the compositional process to creating small pieces of music that I could finish quickly, and using an archiver's mindset, commit them to a recording rather than prepare them for public performance.

 

In an era filled with existential anxiety, locating meaning in creativity felt like a useful way of spending time that is concerned only with the experience of the here and the now. Composing music for Miranda and intended for recording, felt like engaging in an act of preservation rather than an act of self-expression. In the end, the 18 compositions included in this album were organized around four main "chapters" that I see as germane concepts to writing music during this time: narrative, memory, colour, and weather.

ALBUM TRACK LIST

Chapter 1 — A Council of Apparitions

I. Zaloasymphnesis

II. Castle Keep

III. Two Worlds

Chapter 2 — Memory, I often think of you as time ash...

I. A New Culture of Nostalgia

II. The Feeling of Forgetting

III. Lessons for Oblivion

IV. Phantom Étude

Chapter 3 — Colours

I. Fuchsia

II. Marigold

III. Aegean

IV. Wheelbarrow Red

V. Absinthe

Chapter 3 — Little Ice Age

I. The Cold Gathers

II. Ice Gods Don't Keep

III. The Introvert

IV. Prayer to a Vanishing Sun

V. Snow Dirge

VI. The Last Hymn

ALBUM CREDITS

Miranda Wong Pianist

Alfredo Santa Ana Composer

Mark Takeshi McGregor Producer

Don Harder Recording Engineer & Editor

Nick Storring Publicity

Scott Harker Piano Technician

Robert Darch HippoSonic Studio

Piano by Yamaha Corp. | C7 #B2690561 | Made in Hamamatsu, Japan in 1978

ASA Records - ASA05

November 15, 2024

Edited Image 2015-8-10-18:51:6

This recording was made possible through the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.

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