Program Note

"After the Second World War my grandparents dragged a used 1902 upright piano down the road and installed it in their living room. This is the first instrument I can remember. My grandmother’s collection of yellowing song sheets sat in the piano bench my entire life with watercolour illustrations of well-dressed couples dance across each page, beaming out at the reader, overflowing with sentimentality for a dance culture that was slipping away. A beautiful memory, but eventually the piano had to go, and it would go by chainsaw.

When she died, I inherited my grandmother’s musical materials. Beloved music cuts a path through format, technology, and time, an idea that planted the seeds for Metatron. A more fully formed concept came from my 95 year old grandfather. During one visit I was greeted in the garage by a dull chainsaw and a stripped down piano. “Finish the job,” he said. With grim determination and a dull tool, I dismembered my first musical experiences, thinking of the strange place technology holds in our lives." — Eliot Britton