The Walkings

Episode 27 of The Relache Chronicles consists of thirteen preludes from The Walkings. A full recorded performance of all twenty-four preludes is available HERE.

PROGRAM NOTES & BACKGROUND by AJ Sabatini

The Walkings began over two decades ago when composer Bill Duckworth and media artist Nora Farrell invited me to create a character for a live performance and web-based project called Cathedral. They already had a narrative and a sound/image concept for Cathedral. The music was composed and the website was created. They even had a few concerts lined up for The Cathedral Band. Bill and Nora wanted to produce an enduring framework for music, song, imagery, performance and ideas that could weave together concerts, websites and interactive platforms into the future.

Arthur Sabatini and The Cathedral Band getting set up

They asked me to write narratives, sayings, poems and to speak as a character called The Chronicler in performance. When we played in Tokyo, New York or Australia, local musicians joined us. Bill and Nora had developed an extensive range of musical compositions, and a web-based instrument called the Pitchweb, (see Duckworth’s Virtual Music: How the Web Got Wired for Sound. Routledge, 2005).

The mythic narrative of Cathedral centers on ‘Five Mystical Moments’ in human history when extraordinary projects occurred. Science, the arts, mystery, belief, politics are all present in the five moments, which are: The Pyramids at Giza, The Cathedral Chartres, The Ghost Dances in the American West and Southwest in the 1890s, the first atomic bomb tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico and the founding of the world wide web in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Chronicler, a time-traveler, was present at each moment. As a storyteller and informed though reluctant observer, The Chronicler often spoke cryptically. His sayings, “It’s all relation, you’ll hear that again” and “He was a witness, but he should not have been. Like you” made it clear that he, too, was uncertain about this role or the meaning of the events he witnessed.

Cathedral set the stage for other projects, the iPod Opera and iOrpheus. Both were aimed at commemorating the 500^th anniversary of the performance of what is regarded as the first opera, Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo in 1507. This involved 24 podcasts (2006) and performances of The iPod Opera on the exact date of the premiere of Orfeo, February 24, 2007. (This took place in Second Stage West, Arizona State University). This piece was followed by iOrpheus, a large scale day-long outdoor processional performance – with dance, various ensembles and sound/space installations - in Brisbane, Australia. (The Chronicler, of course, was around when Orpheus met Eurydice then followed him through his descent into the underworld and travels on Earth.)

Arthur Sabatini in iOrpheus

Bill and Nora’s conceptions happened pretty much as planned. I had known Bill since the 1980s. We talked often and spent time together when our schedules allowed. A few years ago, he told me about his contact with a producer in Beijing who wanted to stage iOrpheus in the streets there, with thousands of performers.

Bill wrote seven books and over a hundred musical works. He married Nora in the mid-1990s. Her knowledge of music, digital technology and the internet was an inspiration for their collaborations. By 2011, Bill was set to retire from Bucknell University, where he taught since 1973. In his last semester, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and, after painful, uncertain treatments he died on September 13, 2012. Nora made her way back to Australia and pursued her remarkable work. She met someone and had a loving relationship. Then, in 2017, she had a heart attack and died on a quiet afternoon. I miss her dearly.

The Walkings is dedicated to Bill Duckworth and Nora Farrell.