When I first hear and saw a Sruti Box in the village of Agios Lavrentios around the year 2008 I instantly fell in love with the instrument. Something deep inside me was activated and till this day my love for this simple little breathing box has not diminished My first Sruti Box which came to me around 2010 was a cheap one bought in an antique dealer in Berlin. Though dear to me, she had suffered from all of my travels, broken in parts, the wood had fallen off the sides, as she had taken several knocks along the way (much like the Saxophonist who was carrying her with him). Still though, she sounded out beautifully as ever. In that time I gradually developed my piece “The Well Tempered Sruti Box” in which I simply move around the 12 keys and play freely over each one.
I had studied in India way back in 1997, taking lessons from various teachers, but I never had carried any aspirations to play the music in an authentic way. Rather I had simply let the knowledge and approach seep into my being through osmosis and perhaps one of theteachings that remained in me after many years was that the time axis can be stretched to allow the tones and especially the relationship between them to gradually unfold in the space without rushing.
Anyhow, around 2013 a certain person in my life observed that my Sruti box was perhaps in the dusk of her dear life and kindly gifted me with a new one. Now, for the first time I was able to enjoy the sound of the two Sruti Boxes together and how glorious that was.
It so happened that at this time I was experimenting with mixing two tonalities in a single piece. The two Sruti Boxes were ideal for this as I could underscore the tonalities with the drones and improvise on top. Thus, these pieces from “Oracle Hymns” are a kind of natural extension to my first work for Saxophone and Sruti Box The Well Tempered Sruti Box (MT11). Usually when playing I just use my first impulse to choose two keys at random. Then I quickly set the drones and kick off without thinking too much about the melodic strategy to unify them within the piece. Generally speaking, it feels that the art lies in choosing the right notes to omit.
As with my earlier work though for the saxophone and Sruti Box, the satisfying part is mediating the sonic dialogue between bamboo, metal, wood, and air. The rest seems to fall into place on its own. These pieces were recorded in the warm sounding space of the P4 Nalepa Strasse Studio. I’ve mentioned this place a lot in my notes to the recordings as so much of my work was made in there and I find it terribly sad that it is no longer viable as a place to record- yet it remains as a beautiful memory.
And so here are two videos, the first being the original “Well Tempered Sruti Box” in a version live in Cologne in which I was preparing the space for the wonderful Lula Pena to come on stage and the second, Oracle Hymns, in which Evi Fillipou plays the two sruti boxes allowing me to use both my hands on the saxophone- what a luxury!
