David Shea - An Eastern Western Collected Works (2025)

From David

This reissue is an unusual project that fell between the cracks my global wandering and the years of the late 90s and all the diverse projects that came with constant touring. It also came at a time between acoustic and electronic works, stepping away from sampling and a time of immersion into the work of Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman and Luc Ferrari, who a few year later became a friend for an all to brief period.

These pieces also followed two intense periods of working with the ictus Ensemble in Brussels for the creation of the1st Symphony and three projects with Italian folk musicians called Nuestra Signora organised by Tullio Angelini.

It is also the period of living between New York, Brussels and on tour and within two years being in Australia and beginning to focus on work in Asia. As with many of the works in the late 90s film music and films play a big role as well. Italian and Hong Kong films in particular. The films of Nicholas Ray and Mario Bava are direct tributes here in On Dangerous Ground and Elegy for Bava. It was this mix of experiences at the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s that made this collection unique from any of the other previous recording projects.

It is interesting to look back on this. As it again, in 2025, a place I find myself creating diverse recording projects and still focusing on the connections between Buddhist cultures, Asia, the Mediterranean and my upbringing of being surrounded by electronic media.

Then, as now, I was never interested in using or synthesising the mythology of a mythical eastern and western culture, neither of which really exist in any fundamental sense but exploration of searching for connections between tradition. Exploring ancient music with new technology and connections between mental and meditational states that was the core of my very early solo vocal work. And the deep listening that Pauline Oliveros and Phil Niblock had exposed me to in the mid 80s.

These are some of the last recordings I had done with the New York musicians that I had worked with since the late 80s all through the community that John Zorn had brought together, and I had played in ensembles with.

I left New York the year this CD was released and miss
Dave Douglas, Jim Pugliese, and the other musicians and friends as I re-listen to these pieces again. The year after this as an interesting side note I came to Australia for the first time and met a young ambitious writer and organiser named Lawrence English.

So, I want to revisit these works and connect them to nomadic life that was the source of this album and find the roots of the albums that will be released this year and my more centred yet strangely diverse life now of teaching, recording and exploring virtual/ online ways of performing now being in Australia. The mixture of all these is a new collected works and mediums but with a focus 25 years later that wasn’t possible in those days and that will be the next steps and next three projects – The Meditations, The Electro-Magnetic Piano Project and the 3rd Symphony.