Regina 15-1/2

Nick Brooke, organ, Michael Lipsey, percussion

I've become interested in reworking tunes that are so familiar that I'm no longer inspired to listen, their meanings having become cliches. I'll often play a recording of one of these tunes for months, until remembered fragments of the tune take on a new order in my mind. I then try to "speak" the tune in tongues, using a pigeon language made up of the offbeats and asides of the tune. My aim is to create a doppelganger of the original that is both familiar and alien.

The American Regina was a music box popular in 1900. It played giant tin discs that would slowly rotate full circle as the tune played through. This piece, too, circles around itself, and at every repetition, the original tune becomes more complete.