Program Notes

Sharing a serious concern for air pollution, artist Ana Prvački and Florian Idenburg, founder of the New York architecture firm SO-IL, are constructing 'wearable enclosures' made of air filter fabric which will purify air.

Each enclosure houses a musician, performing a walking meditation.

The original quartet is for voice, flute, tenor saxophone and tenor trombone, all wind instruments. The text of Hildegard of Bingen is extracted from the AIR section from the second book of Elements from Physica, her treatise on health and healing. The English translation is by Tom Sapsford.

The bell is the marker of time and progression. Symbolically, the sound of the bell is the symbol of creative power. Its mystic significance is that of all objects which are suspended between heaven and earth. Just as air is between heaven and earth.

Photograph by Iwan Baan.