Passage

Passage is the record of a number of journeys, all very much interconnected, some still underway. The first journey was a physical one, and took me to India, Nepal and Thailand for six months when I was but a wee lad of 19. Within that journey was a photographic odyssey which generated a collection of around 1000 slides and prints… The other journeys are more nebulous; perhaps it’s better to let the music tell that story…

To sum up Passage in a few words is very difficult; quite simply it was, and remains, one of the most elaborate things I have ever undertaken. The initial idea was to select 12 photographs that told the story of my journey, and compose a suite of music around them, each piece exploring the mood and texture of the image it was based on. The results touch on everything from jazz to ambient, classical to trip-hop, worldbeat to elecroacoustics to minimalism, from rigorously composed complexity to freeform trance-like improvisation. It is realized on piano, synthesizer, trumpet, flute, acoustic guitar, fretless bass, and a selection of ethnic hand percussion.

If you’re curious about the process behind Passage, you can take a look at what’s left of our hand-coded website from 1996, courtesy the Way Back Machine…
https://web.archive.org/web/19980129020211/http://www.dataspace.ca/low_res/dca/Passage/intro.htm