Chamber Cairn by Jack McNeill

Chamber Cairn is a personal waymarker, recorded shortly before the birth of my son and moving as a family to steward a woodland in Cumbria. It felt important to document this moment in my musical journey, as I wasn't sure when, or if I might be able to return.

It was recorded in two days, deep in the Cumbrian landscape.

I hope it's heard as subterranean, airborne, connected to the ancient but speaking from the present. I hear it as a kind of contemporary instrumental folk music for this landscape I call home, the continuation of a line, the keeping of a flame.

The four main pieces are interspersed with musical "Cairns" - improvisations using sound tables, stones and whistles. I commissioned the two tables from a local woodworker out of olive ash. They are tools for composing with gesture and amplifying ideas about soundscape ecology in my creative practice, I use them to make composition accessible to communities of people without needing a prior instrumental language.

clarinettist / composer / maker

director at www.propellorensemble.com

jackmcneill.co.uk