Tom Ryan's Harmonics

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Mostar May 2001

An Andrea Amatii violin and Stari Most were completed in the same year, 1566. When I discovered this in 1994 I heard men singing uunder a shelf of rock down by The Neretva River in Mostar beside where Stari Most had arched before being destroyed in 1993.
Explosion sound loud between the faces of stone in the valley People never get used to that.
I was reminded of the young people who leapt from the high point of Stari Most passing into adulthood as they hit the cold water of The Neretva each July.
And Ithought of Angels watching over the young, who now seeing the coming awful conflict, cried a warning and knowing it would not stop, rose above it, calling.

I understand harmonic vocalisation in the Tuvan Region of Siberia reflected wind blowing over rocks and ice.
I liked the sound and could use it myself, practicing for about 10 years to myself, when I realised after asking singers could they help record a piece that it was as well that I should do it. The piece was performed in 1997 in Limerick on The Abbey River, at the moment the ghost of Stari Most was represented as a swimmer passed in the darkness of nightfall underneath the artwork with a float of lights at the moment the artwork Star Bridge - Bridge of Leaps was illuminated.

The piece you hear is newly recorded and rpresents more work and thought about this vocalisation.