Catalog

Avner Finberg’s album THE FOUR SEASONS OF ISOLATION is a moving meditation on the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns. Finding himself separated from his fellow musicians and beloved concert audiences, Finberg took the opportunity to focus on composition and began writing this large-scale work for solo violin and electronics. Freed from the need for an accompanist, he worked in solitude to develop this musical essay reflecting on his year in isolation. The result was a nod to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons called The Four Seasons of Isolation. Also included on the album is The Raven, which incorporates a dramatic reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s masterpiece accompanied by violin and looper. The music combines electronics and violin to create haunting, ever-expanding chords that illustrate the story.

On the coasts of the Atlantic, sparrows whistle atop the trees, Eastern winds whisper through spartina grasses, and fiddler crabs skitter within their sandy burrows — a great symphony of shorelines soon to be left incomplete. As rising sea levels continue to threaten coastal reefs, shores, and the hundreds of lifeforms inhabiting them, the Coastal Conservatory urges us to consider our efforts of restoration and offers us an avenue for restoring coastal futures, a meditation on the music of the most integral barriers to the ever-pressing Atlantic. SOUNDSCAPES OF RESTORATION is both an exploration and a reflection, a listening experience that leaves one changed with the desire to make change further. It is a journey that cannot, and should not, be forgotten.