While I was at Yale I participated in a project entitled El Salto, or The Leap. My co-collaborators and I chose pieces of music and literature which, when stripped from their original purposes and placed next to other forms of media resulted in a new experience for the listener.

For me, as a student of the Institute of Sacred Music, I was in constant contact with music, art, and writing which I found to be both beautiful and challenging, but I was not a firm believer in the Christian faith. I found as much aesthetic value in a Nick Drake song as I did with an aria from Bach’s St. John Passion. Finally, we were working on a non-churchy non-preachy venue for experiencing ‘new’ music in a completely new context.

Robin McClellan, fellow composer and collaborator has uploaded a video on El Salto. The video is not of the highest quality, but he gives a great explanation into the motivation behind this idea. We’re hoping to start it up again in the city, now that we’ve all left the ivy-league nest. I’ll be sure to keep you posted. (And the singing you hear is me, including a segment of my loop pedal performance of Bjork’s Desiring Constellation- which I STILL don’t have a decent recording of!!! And be sure to check out Robin’s El-Salto song at the end, inspired by Gaelic congretational Psalm singing.)