12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 231
Date: 08/19/2013
Instrument: Soprano saxophone
Location: Beside Locket Lake, located in the Necklace Valley and part of the North Cascade range. WA state.
Notes:
From August 18th-21st I hiked into the Necklace Valley with my friend and fellow musician Cameron Peace. In total, we covered approximately 30 miles of very strenuous backpacking, including well established hiking trails, game trails, rock scrambling, and short crossings over alpine glaciers. The three recordings from August 19th-21st detailed my experiences in some of the locations we visited.
Day 1: August 19th. First full day in the valley.
Locket Lake is only accessible by foot, and the trail leading to it is very tenuous at best. The lake can only really be reached by prior knowledge of its existence from a map, and then using the map as a guide to locate it. Locket is a medium sized, crystal clear alpine lake fed by visible glaciers in the mountains above it. It’s tucked neatly within steep-walled mountains of earth and rock. On my second day of the trip and our first full day at this location, I played alongside the lake. I was amazed by the extraordinary reverberation of my horn across the landscape. I played for at least an hour, exploring this natural echo, the likes of which I’ve never heard before. Lines on the horn seemed to suspend in time, only to come back in full-blocked chords that rang and rang around the lake. Today’s improvisation was an energy piece that explored this reverberation. Unfortunately, there was an error in recording and the delay in this improvisation in inaudible. This is a shame, but the audio captured here can be perceived an an “unfinished” improvisation, and the missing spaces once filled in with overlapping reverb can become true again in the listeners imagination. It still rings clearly in my ears.
-Neil
The image accompanying today’s post is Locket Lake in the Necklace Valley. WA state.