Score and audio materials available from the composer: john@johnpsathas.com

Duration: 40.00

a digital concerto for 6 pianos

by John Psathas

for Piano Circus

Voices at the End was originally inspired by the film Planetary. In this film, author and environmental activist Joanna Macy suggested there are three stories that we have to choose from, to make sense of our lives now, to make sense of our world. The first story that we could see and accept as reality is Business as Usual. All we need to do is keep growing our economy. We could call that the industrial growth society.

But there's a second story which is seen and accepted as the reality by the scientists and the activists. These are the people who lift back the carpet and look under the rug of Business as Usual and see what it's costing us. And it's costing us the world. We call that story The Great Unravelling. Unravelling is what biological and ecological and organic systems do as diversity is lost. They shred.

That's not the end of the story though, because there's a third narrative, another lens through which we can choose to see. And that is that a revolution is taking place. A transition. From the industrial growth society to a life sustaining society. And it's taking many forms, this third story, The Great Turning. It's our story of survival and it’s got huge evolutionary pressures behind it. After all, the story of evolution is everybody's autobiography.

These three stories - Business as Usual, The Great Unravelling, and The Great Turning, form the three parts of Voices at the End.

The title Voices at the End draws attention to each movement ending with voice or voices. In the prologue, it is the Mahabharata; in Business as Usual, massed crowds chanting in unison. In The Great Unravelling it is the voice of the natural world reasserting itself after we are gone, and in The Great Turning it is the voice of humanity's interstellar message being taken further and further into deep space. Finally, in the epilogue, it is the distant voices of children playing.

Our deepest thanks to Adrian Durham without whose generous support this project would not have been possible. Thanks also to Victoria University of Wellington for providing John Psathas with both research leave and research funding. And thanks to Aldeburgh Music for enabling Piano Circus and John to collaborate on the first realisation and sharing of Voices at the End at Snape Maltings in February 2018.

Thanks also to Jean-Claude Carriere who generously gave us permission to use the Honey excerpt from the Mahabharata in our performance. And thanks to Serj Tankian and Aren Emirze for their help with the lyrics of Yarko Parag. Thanks also to Lesley and Michael Shanahan for providing an invaluable composer’s haven during the creation of the music.

The brilliant sound design, sound effects, vocal textures, and percussion energising are by David Downes.

Joe Callwood and Briar Prastiti were recorded by Lee Prebble at Surgery Studios, Wellington, New Zealand. Renkei Hashimoto was recorded by George Kariotis in Paris, France.

*Strictly speaking, the plasma wave instrument does not detect sound. Instead it senses waves of electrons in the ionized gas or "plasma" that Voyager travels through. No human ear could hear these plasma waves. Nevertheless, because they occur at audio frequencies, between a few hundred and a few thousand hertz, we can play the data through a loudspeaker and listen. The pitch and frequency tell us about the density of gas surrounding the spacecraft.