Liner notes:

During the summers of 2015 and 2016, I spent several weeks composing at my aunt’s house in the mountains near Cambridge, NY. This suite is the result. We invite you to close your eyes and imagine threads intersecting or appearing in different planes, following a narrative or creating a texture, voices conversing with each other and interacting with the feelings and intent of the pieces.

Sketch in 12 – For all our acts of self-determination and insights, we exist as extensions of others, continuing and sharing the teachings that help make us who we are.

Spring Song – a ballad of optimism undeterred.

Refuge – Now, again, and still, we search for peace, home, and sustainable existence. We reject a value system based on gain at all cost, with its wars and hatreds that benefit a few materially. We seek to live, to thrive, to pursue ultimate ideals and possibilities.

Ten Billion Versions of Reality – Each of us experiences our own reality; it’s part of the fascination. Included in this “ten billion” are the dolphins, orangutans, and others who experience love, grief, and consciousness in their own ways.

Ashgrove is a valley that gives way to smaller, higher valleys, different shades of green, paths known only to the deer.

Through the Clouds

Infinite variety of brilliant color,
beating hearts and wings, wind in the ears,
primordial beginnings
an abstract symphony, high in the hills,
tones for the rain and evening and rhythms for birth,
of ancestors and descendants,
touching the soil of all continents,
metamorphosis, continuum, return
belonging, sufficiency
swoop and soar, guided by the stars,
endangered, yet full of strength and perseverance,
rising above fear.

Questions for Lucy, who lived 3.4 million years ago…

Dawn, the beginning,
the moment of comprehension, of possibility,
of the need for motion, action, of not doing it alone,
to face hunger and cold,
to find satisfaction, warmth, laughter,
the moment when our forerunners
stepped out of the trees.

All compositions by David Bindman, David Bindman Publishing, BMI

Recorded December 17, 2016 at Systems Two, Brooklyn, NY
Recording, mixing, editing, and mastering engineer: Jon Rosenberg
Second recording engineer: Andrew Cavaciuti
Cover art and design by Malin Abrahamsson
Saxophonist drawing by Iliana Zamorska
Produced by David Bindman

© ℗ 2017 David Bindman. All rights reserved.