Horizon

Joanna Bailie
2022

For quintet, video and tape (20') premiered by Nadar, commissioned by Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, DE SINGEL and Nadar

Horizon weaves together many different sound and film recordings of railway lines and motorways captured in Belgium, Berlin, Geneva and Portugal. In many ways the piece is an attempt to demonstrate the sameness of these landscapes by combining, via superimposition or rapid alternation, two or more separate locations at the same time. Motorway noise, station announcements, elevated railway tracks and cargo trains are so ubiquitous that they give us idea that we could be anywhere in the world. The result is an audio-visual aggregate of similarity compressed into a piece that follows its own logic. The instruments play partial transcriptions of the sounds of the various locations, interwoven with harmonic material.

Joanna Bailie
Composer
Bailie