PROJECT SCHEDULE

September/October '08

Travel to La Push to record field recordings with Quileute elders and to work with the tribe to archive all existing field recordings of their language

June/July '09

Final workshops of Counting in Quileute (New York and Melbourne). Travel to Australia to work with Speak Percussion, visit the national media archives in Canberra as well as native speakers of aboriginal languages in their Arnhem Land to expand recorded materials.

July/August '09

Travel to Hokkaido (and elsewhere in Japan) to gather existing field recordings of the Ainu language

August-December '09

Continue Japan fellowship in Tokyo - work on (complete?) the writing of each of the pieces

Spring/Summer '10

Coordinated premieres of all of the pieces throughout the world - recording of CD.

scroll down for the project calendar, description, partners, sponsors and donations link

This performance helped raise funds for Kevin to spend time with the Quileute this Fall recording tribal history and individual stories in the Quileute language. Some of the resulting work will become a part of this piece of music. Kevin continues to work with the tribal council to help them to archive documentation of their language and culture.

Many thanks to the Quileute Tribal Council and to Shure Microphones for their support.

Next I'll be heading to Australia to join up with Seb Harris for a field recording expediion in Arnhem Land and workshop performances with Eugene Ughetti and Speak Percussion in Melbourne and Canberra. To be a part of this adventure, please consider a tax-deductible contribution and click on the tab at the bottom of this page.

Counting in Quileute is the first of four pieces based on aural qualities of nearly extinct languages that Kevin will be completing between now and Spring of 2010.

The languages Kevin will focus on are to include Quileute, a Native American tribe of the Pacific Northwest, two Australian aboriginal languages, and Hokkaido Ainu, the aboriginal language of the large northern Japanese island.

Between now and then Kevin will be collecting archival recordings of each of the languages as well as creating new field recordings. So he'll be going on the road - to La Push Washington, Melbourne and Arnhem Land in Australia and Hokkaido and Tokyo in Japan.

Please check back here for links to news articles, blogs, media and information on some of the folks who are sponsoring this project.

MEANWHILE - We kicked it all off with a series of in-progress performances by the new music all-stars of the the [kaj] ensemble. on September 21st. The performances were held at a fantastic Greenwich Village loft that beautifully intensified the intimacy of the performances.

Check out the pics to the left and we'll get some sound samples up here as soon as possible.

photos courtesy of Natasha Kermani.

On January 24th, 2008 Marie Smith-Jones passed away at the age of 89. Despite Ms. Smith-Jones’ stereotypically American name, she was the last native speaker of the Eyak language of Alaska. We are currently in the midst of a unique period in the history of the human race in which, for the first time, rather than increasing in number the known languages of the world are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. Half of the languages currently spoken will disappear from the Earth by the end of the century. The Quileute language has but three remaining native speakers.

This project will be a large scale exploration of the extraordinary subtleties of human language. It will result in works with musical palettes never heard before and it will introduce uniquely intimate and personalized approaches to performance and musical communication. As all of the pieces will be accompanied by taped material culled from the field recordings of the various languages, it will both seek to acknowledge the world's consumption of this most fragile resource and to embody it's renewal.