Delilah from Spanning Tree by Aventa Ensemble and Michael Oesterle

Alan Turing rode his bicycle.
He rode his bicycle to work.
He rode to Bletchley Park.
Riding, the chain on his bicycle comes off.

He rode his bicycle, counting - until the chain came off.
He rode his bicycle, counting.
Counting, he stopped before the chain came off.
He fixed the chain.

Riding again, counting,
he rode his bicycle to Bletchley Park.
Counting.

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, computer scientist, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner. In 2012, Turing’s 1944 reports on his “speech system” Delilah, were finally pulled from the British National Archives and opened to the public. This functional machine, designed to scramble and descramble voice messages, was so far ahead of its time that it resembles the way we currently store music in digital format.

The musical construction of Delilah for solo flute (2014) was motivated by Turing’s unorthodox search for humanity or human intelligence within patterns and systems. It uses modules within a scheme of triangular number sequences, applied to a metric grid of constant alternation between two and three. The music constantly resets, like the chain on Turing’s bicycle (one of the stories of Turing’s eccentricities related by his colleagues at Bletchley Park - headquarters of the code-breaking brain trust for Britain in WW II). It searches for answers to an unasked question, allowing this systematic approach to creating subtle emotional shifts. Like Turing, it presents its puzzle playfully: in its persistence, it becomes serious and then, as it begins to wallow in the process itself, lightens its mood again: a simple arc in a pattern of system, method, and discovery, its greatest motivation – the joy of moving forward.

Delilah was commissioned by Mark Takeshi McGregor, with financial assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts

Tracklist

1.	Delilah	11:39

Credits

from Spanning Tree, released November 1, 2021
Described as a “mind-blowing” musician of “huge physical energy” (Times Colonist), flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor is one of Canada’s leading interpreters of classical, contemporary, and experimental music. As a soloist, chamber musician, and flutist of the Aventa Ensemble, Mark has performed extensively across five continents. Recent engagements include Innovations en Concert (Montreal), Ding Yi Chinese Chamber Music Festival (Singapore), Museo Leonora Carrington (San Luis Potosí, Mexico), Melos-Ethos Festival (Bratislava), Núcleo Música Nova (Curitiba, Brazil), and the ISCM World New Music Days in Vancouver. In 2020 McGregor was named “Classical Artist of the Year” by the Western Canadian Music Awards. www.marktakeshimcgregor.com

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