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The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

    ‘The Voice of the Whale’ comes to life

    Guest artists Lindsey Goodman on flute, Joseph Dangerfield on piano and Hannah
    Pressley on cello came to Pottle Music Building to perform as the Leviathan Trio.
    The Lion's Roar / Elizabeth Brown
     

    The modern sounds of a flute, a piano, a cello and even, at times, a xylophone captured the attention and fascination of many by telling the story of how the Earth came to be. This story was told by the first-ever visiting Leviathan Trio.  

    The performance was performed by guest artists of the on-tour Leviathan Trio flute player Lindsey Goodman, cellist Hannah Pressley and pianist and composer Joseph Dangerfield on Monday, Feb. 1 in the Pottle Music Building Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. 

    To start the performance, the trio opened with Alice Ping Yee Ho’s “Seiren.” According to Dangerfield, a Seiren is a part woman, part bird creature of the sea that enchants those who hear her call. Dangerfield described the piece as lyrical and mysterious. 

    “The exploration of many different colors and effects, together with the provocative high melodic lines, bring a constant lyrical, yet intensely mysterious character to the work,” said Dangerfield. 

    To follow the opener, “The Knot,” Dangerfield’s original composition, and George Crumb’s “Vox Balaenae,” “Voice of the Whale”, were played back to back for the remainder of the performance. 

    “The Knot,” which had five movements, played as a prequel to “Vox Balaenae” which had eight movements. The movements of “The Knot” included: “The Moon (Stag),” “Cat,” “Fox,” “Swan” and “Butterfly.” According to Dangerfield, he personally related each of the animals to his family. The movements each related to specific eras of time including Planck Epoch for “The Moon (Stag),” Nucleosynthesis for “Cat,” Matter Domination for “Fox,” Recombination for “Swan” and “Butterfly” for Dark Age. 

    “In ‘The Knot,’ I tried to capture the atmosphere, pun intended, of each epoch, delineated by the major events that occurred during those eras, and represented them through the imposed personalities of Celtic spirit animals,” said Dangerfield. 

    The eight movements of “Vox Balaenae,” which are told from the point of view of a whale from the beginning to the end of time, included: “Vocalise (…for the beginning of time),” “Variations on Seat-Time,” “Archeozoic,” “Proterozoic,” “Paleozoic,” “Mesozoic,” “Cenozoic” and “Sea-Nocturne (…for the end of time).”

    To close the performance, the trio had a long, interactive discussion with mostly students on how the trio came to be, music and working together, and they even showed how some of the techniques used throughout the performance were done, relating to each instrument. 

    According to Pressley, the trio came to be mainly due to Goodman. 

    “Basically, Lindsey, our flute player, was the one that sort of put us together,” said Pressley. “I knew Lindsey from playing in the West Virginia Symphony with her, and Lindsey knew Joe from working at a summer camp, and this was all sort of her idea so she’s sort of the mastermind behind all of this, but actually Joe is the one who organized our southern tour here because we all met in West Virginia and we played together in West Virginia, but since he’s teaching at the University of Florida now, Lindsey had the idea that maybe we could do something in the South and maybe in the winter because it’s all cold up there [in the North].” 

    The Leviathan Trio will travel to Amy William’s Cineshapes Workshop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For a full calendar of events, visit www.lindseygoodman.com for more information.

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