Artship CD Release
2010

We are in the process of creating sample tracks and a way for people to subscribe electronically to our upcoming release.

The ARTSHIP Ensemble performance language finds its source in a signature “incubating rehearsal process” of simple tuning and singing together
at the edges, of feeding our bodies with beautiful sound, nourishing our inner worlds and honing our skills in the ensemble process.

Music is the lifeblood and the “oxygen” in this process and in our performances. For example, in our Tarantella, Tarantula show, the music is entirely live. Artship musicians perform an original score, after co-creating it completely with the rest of the company learning it by heart and performing it often in the dark.  Our musicians are like “acrobats of the heart,” creating the depth of the show’s emotional landscape through their subtlety and generosity.

This is our first CD. The ensemble typically produces a new and original site specific or theater performance every 18 to 24 months. The premieres and presentation of new work are punctuations in an ongoing process of creation. The mood and elusive spirit of this company are carried by a core group of professional artists in the ensemble process through several productions.  The core company members often work together for five to ten years, although some artists join the Ensemble and remain solely for the duration of a single project.  This continuity along with our commitment to art practice and community are the central elements of our work.

 For Tarantella, Tarantula the original live music, performed by Artship Ensemble musicians on cello, steel drum, flute and accordion for the dance and narrative sequences is grounded in folkloric, early music and classical works.  These include: motifs from Mediterranean/ Andalusian chants, 12th to 14th century Italian dances, the CODEX Vermel by Alfonso X, the music of Bellini and Aubers, pilgrim songs from the Monastery of Montserrat, Sicilian lullabies, an array of tarantella music from regional traditions, and 18th and 19th century composed tarantella pieces and sources. (See the engraving below with the image of music score for Tarantella, its region of Apulia and two tarantulas from  “Magnes, sive De Arte Magnetica” by Athanasius Kircher, Rome,1641.)

A. Kircher, perhaps one of the most significant writing on the Tarantella phenomenon, collects and writes down the most repeated examples of tarantella tune and dedicates a section in his book to the cure of the tarantula bite through music. He opens with a question:
                  
 

    
For the upcoming Burning of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, the music is inspired by our research into the origins of music e.g., deciphered Babylonian tablets with musical instruction, tribal chants from ethno-musicological archives ranging from Istrian, Albanian, Sardinian, Corsican  ¼ tone singing to Greek, Byzantine, Turkish, Gipsy and Egyptian historic recordings. Our original music is also based on the study and playing of African, Asian and Native American procreation chants.