DCist Hume Interview

DCist just posted an interview with Brit Powell of HUME. Brit discusses his recent trip to India, his newest composition "Mirroring", and the future of music in Washington, DC. Here's a highlight:

How did you get the idea for the Mirroring project?

Britton: I had this unfiltered energy and I had to do a big project. So I came to thinking about what instrumentation would bring about a lot of energy and immediately I went to the rhythmic aspect of music and set up a piece for two drums. Then I wanted a very melodious aspect to it and I immediately thought saxophone. Then I went to my instrument which is the bass and I decided to double up on that.

And I had this graphic image of two rivers colliding into each other and at the base of those two rivers, two trees with the foundation of the roots and at the moment when those two rivers collide there are two birds in those two trees whose bodies run into each other and collide.

So I had that graphic image in my head and essentially that graphic image was a journal of the last six months of my life, traveling and reading. The music reflects my use of this thing called retrograde which is taking a musical theme and inverting it somehow either rhythmically or melodically or harmonically. So I used this technique for the second half of the piece when it reaches its pinnacle, when the two birds collide and then it completely retrogrades to the first fifteen minutes which are exactly identical to the last fifteen minutes of the piece.

That’s basically what we did on tour and it was quite an experience. It’s something that I’ve never done before and I’ve learned so so much. The past three weeks have been the longest three weeks of my entire life.

Read the rest of the interview over at DCist.