[0:20] FEMALE VOICE
You are listening to the fifth episode of “Organ Archipelago”, a series of radio programmes composed by Arturas Bumšteinas as part of his ongoing project entitled “Organ Safari”. Bumšteinas spent one month traveling around his native Lithuania, visiting more than twenty churches, and with the help of organist Gailė Griciūtė and sound engineer Paul Paulun, recorded their pipe organs in the conditions that they were found. From these recordings Bumšteinas created a 70 minute composition, that he shared with five different improvisers around the world. They were asked to take the recording to an outdoor location of their choice, put on headphones and improvise along with what they heard.
The fifth episode of “Organ Archipelago” features Polish vocalist Ola Bilinska. Bilinska described the recording process, “I recorded on a portable recorder in the forest near Sejny, a small, lovely Polish town close to the Lithuanian border.. The forest, called "Borek" by the locals, is a place situated somewhere between urban and natural space. It used to function as a local park: there was a football pitch where the local teams would have matches. There even was a bar set up on the meadow on such occasions. Nowadays the pitch is overgrown and "borek" is growing wilder and wilder, sucked-in by the greater forest beyond. So it’s mostly empty - especially at dusk. My general idea was to take a long walk in this space on the border of the human and natural - in a moment between day and night - and to record this short journey accompanied by the weird organ music. At some point along my path I entered a meadow, where I found myself standing face to face with a hare. After the briefest moment of mutual consternation the animal fled swiftly across the grass and into the woods, flashing its white bum on me”.
[02:40] MUSIC PLAYING
[12:40] FEMALE VOICE
You’ve been listening to the fifth episode of “Organ Archipelago”, a series of programmes composed by Arturas Bumšteinas with participation of five solo improvisers. In this episode you heard Polish vocalist Ola Bilinska improvising to organ music gathered in churches throughout Lithuania. In the next episode you’ll hear…
[13:04] MALE VOICE
…Varguona did not move, and I began to fear that after all we should not get him, as it was near evening, and half a dozen more trees would have to be cut down before the one he was on would fall. As a last resource we all began pulling at the creepers, which shook the tree very much, and, after a few minutes, when we had almost given up all hopes, down he came with a crash and a thud like the fall of a giant. And he was a giant, his pipework being as large as the trees in the forrest. His outstretched manuals measured 10 feet across, and his height, measuring fairly from the top of the pipework decoration to the pedalboard, was 29 feet 7 inches. On examination we found he had been dreadfully wounded. Three soundboards were broken, eleven note valves and all of the resonators completely shattered! Yet he was still alive when he fell. The two Russians carried him home tied to a pole, and I was occupied with our orgānist Gailė the whole of the next day, preparing the skin and boiling the bones to make a perfect skeleton, which are now preserved in the archives of Australian Radio National. About ten days later, some natives came to tell us that an Orgān had nearly killed one of their companions. On being alarmed he retreated towards the forrest which was close by, and a number of the men, armed with cables and dynamic microphones, ran out to intercept him. The man who was in front tried to run his mike-stand through the animal's body, but the Orgān seized it in his hands, and in an instant got hold of the man's arm, which he seized in his mouth, making his teeth meet in the flesh above the elbow, which he tore and lacerated in a dreadful manner. Had not the others been close behind, the man would have been more seriously injured, if not killed, but they soon destroyed the creature with their reel-to-reel tape decks and spools. The man remained ill for a long time, and never fully recovered the use of his arm…
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