Weston Olencki

Commissioned and presented by Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik.

Four computer-controlled electric reed organs, rural field recordings, household lamps, telephone pickups, photodiode amplifiers, antique missionary-style pump organ, Vermont “Imperial Marble”, Sacred Harp tune “Windham”, cassette deck loaded with hydrophonic recordings of CT river transduced through slate roofing tiles, “VT Copper” coins (minted as currency of the sovereign Vermont Republic (1776-1791)), exposed speaker cones filled with debris found on CT river watershed.

Film version made in collaboration with Jack Langdon. Footage taken in the now-abandoned Freedleyville Marble Quarry; East Dorset, Vermont.

Full recording forthcoming in 2022 as a part of “Old Time Music”. Released by Tripticks Tapes.

An ear training exercise for the oral tradition of an obsolete future. 

Antique Estey pump organ, Sacred Harp tune “Vernon” with combinatory tones transduced via organ body, field recording of Vermont Marble’s industrial gang saw (Danby, VT), track processed via custom convolution reverb software using handmade impulse responses of local barns, grain silos, train stations, discarded sheet metal, slate roof tiling, covered bridges, milk bottles, churches, beer tankers, frozen lakes, & more. Made in/from land and histories we now call Vermont.

ORGANS [2022-]

collaborative performance/installation piece conceived by Weston Olencki and Cleek Schrey.

Organs is a meditation on our various organs: musical, liturgical, historical, corporeal, mechanical, metaphorical. Desiccated and discarded technology reanimated for the production of physical and metaphysical resonance. For 1890s era Estey pump organ, 1915s era Estey pump organ, two mid-century electric organs, nineteen salvaged wooden organ pipes, DC cooling fans, custom software, sine tones, speaker array, fiddle, acoustic bass, saenghwang, banjo (with homemade magnetic resonators), field recordings taken in various locations all over Vermont and coastal Maine.

Featuring guests Henry Fraser (bass), Nora Brown (banjo) and Gamin (saenghwang).

Selected shape note tunes from The Southern Harmony and the Musical Companion (ed. William Walker) [1835 edition, pub. Spartanburg, South Carolina] 

• Montgomery, C.M. (170) 

• Rockingham, C.M. (300)  

• Wondrous Love, 12 9 6 6 12 9 (252) 

• Sharon, P.M. (124)