Energy Journeys

Production notes

This work, presented in a three-CD boxed set, is a sonorous journey from the origin of organic life on Earth to the singularity inside a black hole.

CD 1, track 4: The Parasaurolophus Walkeri is in Love

The Parasaurolophus Walkeri was a herbivore dinosaur more than ten metres tall, with a crest containing a metre-long resonating chamber. It was possibly the first musical instrument in the organic world. Scientific research has recreated the original sound so that, in our opinion, it was likely to have been very similar to the sound emitted by a tromba marina, a one- or two-stringed musical instrument no longer in use. The track is a tromba marina solo performed by Oreobambo.

This instrument refers to the type of trompette marine organisee, whose development took place in France in the 1700s. It was so called because it was equipped with sympathetic resonant strings fixed inside the sounding board. This one-stringed tromba marina was specially built by the Spanish lute maker Maestro Marino Gutierrez Garcia to Oreobambo's specifications. Spruce from Val di Fiemme was used for the sound board. It houses an incredible 48 sympathetic strings and is more than two metres tall.

CD 2, track 3: Volcanoes and Islands

In this composition you can hear the aeolian harp, an instrument played by the wind that appeared in Europe in the Middle Ages and was known in the Renaissance. It was built in its modern form in the middle of the 1600s but was used and appreciated mostly in the Romantic period for its mysterious, ethereal, heavenly sounds.

The harp was built by the American lute maker Maestro Robert Corrigan. This evocative track was recorded on the volcanoes of the Aeolian Islands, homeland of Eolo, the god of the winds.

CD 2, track 4: Trombe Marine

Representing these natural events, and for the first time ever, three Fazioli 308 grand pianos are played and recorded together. The live recording took place at Fazioli Concert Hall in Sacile.

CD 3, track 3: Jumping into the Giant B Flat Black Hole

The Infinita Conscia Symphony Orchestra performs a composition that represents the black hole at the centre of the Perseus A galaxy, part of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster. This black hole emits a continuous frequency in the key of B flat so strong that it reaches Earth, 250 million light years away. The sound is usually outside our threshold of perception because it sits 57 octaves below middle C. Yet it pervades us all.

You can hear hints of the little tromba marina, an instrument that completely disappeared except for a depiction in a painting by Hans Memling in 1480. From this representation, Maestro Marco Salerno was able to recreate the two-stringed tromba marina piccola used in this recording. The drones of the Great Highland Bagpipe, built by Maestro Tim Gellaitry using mammoth ivory for the mounts, bring the whole work to a close.

During mastering an analogue process designed by Oreobambo, ColourfulTone Mastering, was used for the first time. Thanks to this the sound has acquired a particular and unique bright, vital and three-dimensional quality.