Pano Hora Ensemble
Charles Calomiris: Evloga
This album is about all Gods blessings - especially the puzzling ones - and about all those questions. It begins with the setting of a poem about the universal aspiration for transcendence, seeking union with all creation ("una integridad generosa") depicted in Pablo Nerudas poem, Demasiados nombres. The second track explores the Greek pagan spirit world, where encounters with immortals can be risky. Adventurers with a guide to direct them might be drawn to converse with the playful and benign water sprites, explored in Conversating Sprites. Interactions with such spirits are fleeting, but the ephemeral quality makes them all the more precious. In the pagan world, identity and even memory were sometimes believed to be lost after death, as one merges into a nameless whole (similar in some respects to the vision in Demasiados nombres), after one travels the dark waters of the five rivers of Hades (Styx, Lethe, Acheron, Phlegthon, and Cocytus), the waters which inspire Styx and Stones. At that journeys end, what have we become? Catatonics? Or perhaps, vapid clowns?