The Long Sky

Lap steel guitar and samples by Michael Grigoni.

Piano, sample construction and abstraction, and additional samples by Bill Seaman.

Initial mixing and production by Bill Seaman with final mixing by Michael Grigoni.

Recorded and mixed in the homes of Michael Grigoni and Bill Seaman in Durham, North Carolina in 2022.

The performance from which Grigoni’s lap steel guitar samples were derived was recorded by Christopher Scully-Thurston in The von der Heyden Studio Theater, Rubenstein Arts Center, Duke University, April 8, 2022.

Seaman’s piano samples were recorded by Rick Nelson in Bone Hall, Duke University, May 3, 2022.

Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k.

About the album:

On April 8, 2022, Grigoni accompanied a dance performance at the ChoreoLab Spring Dance Concert at Duke University. The performance was a work by Brooks Emanuel titled, ‘What Should We Do’, which arose out of a choreographic processes course taught at Duke by Michael Kliën. Grigoni’s accompaniment was an improvisation on lap steel guitar that responded to the movements of the dance ensemble, and it had a number of audio qualities related to room sound, the use of effects pedals, and the nature of the performance itself that Seaman felt would be amenable to his style of composition. Seaman constructed a sample library from selected fragments of the performance and then composed an initial pass of ‘The Long Sky’ using these samples, as well as samples from his own improvised piano performance. The piece then went through several iterations, with Michael adding additional lap steel from his home studio.

In ‘The Long Sky’, Grigoni and Seaman explore how elements of movement and dialogical exchange might be carried over from the space of an improvised music/dance performance to the arena of collaborative musical composition. Over the 2021–22 academic year, Grigoni participated in many such improvised dance performances in the context of Michael Kliën’s Lab for Social Choreography, providing music for choreographic situations involving both professional and non-professional dancers. He found that, within these performances, a feeling of openness, exploration, and experimentation naturally emerged between the musicians and dancers. ‘The Long Sky’ explores how these qualities, preserved and made accessible in the form of samples, might inform and structure a collaborative composition that centers dialogical exchange—a call and response between piano and lap steel guitar.