Work commissioned by the 50th International Festival of Contemporary Music "Warsaw Autumn" in partnership with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Poland.

Work recommended by the 56th UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers, Paris 2009.

Work nominated for the OPUS Public Media Prize 2008, Poland.

For a moment he had the power of the possessed - the power to awaken in the beholders wonder, pain, pity, and a fearful near sense of things invisible, of things dark and mute, that surround the loneliness of mankind.

Joseph Conrad. Tales of Unrest.

things lost things invisible is a hybrid work combining features of a large orchestral form with a spatial sound installation, exploring periphony. It involves a symphony orchestra divided into groups and a 3-dimensional speaker system to reproduce the electronic layer. The work is a large-scale acoustic experiment, where the entire sound environment is being treated as a body of a one complex instrument, with the audience located inside the resonance box of that instrument.

The initial sound material was recorded by the composer with the use of the Soundfield ST-250 Ambisonic microphone in one of the most acoustically unique spaces in the United States: the Dan Harpole Cistern in Fort Worden, Washington State. This legendary space is located underground, on a former military base. It is characterized by a 45-second reverberation time and bizarre sound trajectories. 

Orchestral parts and the final shape of the entire work have been derived from those recordings, so the spatial features of the Cistern became the major formative principle.

Special thanks to:

Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), University of Washington

Centrum, Port Townsend, Washington

Mark Haslam, for his on-going support for my projects and his assistance in recording sessions

PREMIERE

September 22, 2007 50th International Festival of Contemporary Music WARSAW AUTUMN 2007 XXI International Expocentre Warsaw, Poland

K.Szymanowski Academic Symphony Orchestra

   Arturo Tamayo, Szymon Bywalec, conductors 

Virtual Soloists (electronic layer):

   Josiah Boothby, French horn 

   Toby Penk, trumpet 

   Colby Wiley, trombone

Arturo Tamayo studied composition in the Conservatorio de Música de Madrid and conducting with Pierre Boulez in Basel and in the Musik Hochschule in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he later taught courses on 20th-century music interpretation for two decades. He has conducted most of Europe’s major orchestras and has appeared as a conductor at the most important European festivals, and with the greatest singers and virtuosi of our day. He teaches professional courses for conductors at the Conservatorio di Lugano and Musikene in Spain.

Szymon Bywalec graduated in symphonic and opera conducting from the Academy of Music in Katowice after studies with Jan Wincenty Hawel and in oboe from the Academy of Music in Cracow where he studied with Prof. Jerzy Kotyczka. He developed his abilities at master classes taught by Gianluigi Gelmetti and Lothar Zagrosek in the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. He is the permanent conductor of New Music Orchestra and a lecturer on the faculty of the Academy of Music in Katowice.

Karol Szymanowski Academic Symphony Orchestra

Founded in 2002, directed by Szymon Bywalec, the ensemble continues the tradition of the student orchestra directed and conducted by Karol Stryja, Napoleon Siess and Jan Wincenty Hawel. It has also performed under such eminent conductors as Gabriel Chmura, Larry Livingston, Krzysztof Penderecki, Arturo Tamayo, Takuo Yuasa, Jacek Kaspszyk, Michał Klauza, Nicolas Cleobury, Klaus Arp and Andreas Weiss.