Reconfigurations
The Mehta-Metric Ensemble

1. Part 1 {15:23}
2. Part 2 {21:13}
3. Part 3 {16:18}

I've been preoccupied with that question since my earliest days in Calcutta. Couldn't avoid it in that environment - population statistics pressed all around , the sheer density of sensory impressions and happenings was awesome. But there were many other takes on number. Number mysticism pervaded daily life: from the number of repetitions of a mantra before one went to sleep, to the collective obsession with astrological calculations, and even the X number of hours or days that one had to fast. Of course, mastering numbers and their properties was also a sport: how facile one could play and manipulate them - a prevalent game. However, I've been allured by the poetic dimension in mathematics. Numbers have always been animated, numinous entities for me ... possessing a snake like charm.

Reconfigurations is a reflection of that ongoing affair I have woth number and mathematics and their relationship to music. The organization of the extended piece divieded invot three parts was created by the application of a self-designed pattern generating tool. The resulting graphiec score visualizes the dialectic between the micro-level metric material and the sonic regions defined by similar patterns which govern the macro-form of the entire piece. The structure I provided within which the musicians had to navigate reveals a certain act of mathematical persuasion on my part- but that was the extent of it. These creative musicians filled this skeletal architecture with the meat of their personal languages and imaginations yielding the "mehta-metric" result I had hoped for.
(Rajesh Mehta, Berlin, August 2000)

Rajesh Mehta - trumpet, slide trumpet bass trumpet, hybrid-trumpet & extensions
Vlatko Kucan - clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophone, melodica
Aleksander Kolkowski - stroh violin, viola
Peter Niklas Wilson - double bass
Ray Kaczynski - percussion