Tea With Warriors

A few years ago, I was obsessed with Yes' "Tales From Topographic Oceans" album. A lot of people (especially music critics) really put it down for being long-winded. I would have to agree that it is long- the first time I listened to it, I thought, "this is a lot of aimless noodling". I put it away and didn't listen to it for another 5 years, when on a long car ride through the hills of Kentucky at sunset it all made sense. There are a lot of beautiful themes running through it, and I found that after several listens, those themes became like landmarks on a long journey, and with familiarity, the trip becomes more enjoyable.

In 2006 and 2007, I chose my favorite themes from "Tales" (and one non-"Tales" Yes song- can you spot what it is?), and arranged them as a string quartet. I recorded the individual parts at home, playing the violins myself, and using a pitch-shifting plugin on the violin to get the viola sound. The cello is just a sampled cello, so sounds a bit artificial. Recently, I got a convolution reverb plugin, and I convolved everything with an impulse response from the Concertbegouw, to make it sound like I'm playing in a great hall in Amsterdam. That's also me doing the chant on "The Ancient".

I sometimes fantasize that David Harrington and the Kronos Quartet would want to play it- I think it may be too conventional for them, but on the other hand I think I remember hearing in his interview on "Echoes" that David Harrington is a prog fan. So who knows.

Here are the mp3's, free to distribute. The score and parts are available upon request.

The Revealing (Science of God)

The Remembering

The Ancient

Ritual