Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Piazza San Carlo reimagined by Fari Bradley. "The piece was made by listening and playing segments, as in a performance, recorded 'as live'. My approach was linguistic first, as Italian is my most beloved language. I let the ambience of the piazza swell out and ornamented it with snippets of celebratory language."

New Year's Eve celebrations in full swing in Piazza San Carlo, Turin, Italy. Recorded by Cities and Memory.

The sounds inside St. Peter's Basilica, Rome - recorded by Cities and Memory.

Trevi Fountain reimagined by Ian Dean. "I was determined not to lose the vibe of being there surrounded by the fountain sounds, an attempt at a quick version of Morricone!"

Mercato di Porta Portese reimagined by Juan José Ripalda. "I heard this recording of a market and immediately wanted to use the wide variety of sounds to talk about commerce, trade and how I feel when I’m in a big market or mall surrounded by repetitive sounds and voices. I wanted this piece to be very rhythmic and colorful and to have separate sections or episodes, so I thought of doing something in the spirit of “It’s gonna rain” by Steve Reich. I made this piece using only editing and very little processing."

Santa Maria delle Grazie in Rome reimagined by Ian Haygreen.  "I kept it simple this time. A little reverb was used and I added an organ which was phased."

The sounds at the world-famous Trevi Fountain in Rome, recorded by Cities and Memory.

A service inside Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy - recorded by Toni Dimitrov.

A walkthrough of the market at Porta Portese in Rome, recorded by Cities and Memory.

Recorded by Michael McDermott. "As a practicing American Buddhist in the Theravada tradition it was a sacred experience for me to see a Buddhist country first hand. As common as churches are in Europe, Thailand and Myanmar have Buddhist temples every few blocks. Also seeing monks and sometimes nuns in orange or maroon robes walking around the cities, interaction with people and living their lives was very special and serene. Many of the temples were very small, sometimes just the size of a corner church in Europe or America. However, Yangon is home to some of the world’s largest pagoda temples. One place we visited twice was the Schwedegon Pagoda. It’s a massive golden structure that you can see from all over the city. It’s a beautiful complex of smaller shrines, altars and places where Buddhism pilgrims light candles, ring bells and pay homage. After we took our shoes off and climbed up the stairs and escalators to the top, I took out my binaural headphones and recorded some of the sounds at the top of the pagoda."

Recorded by Michael McDermott. "Yangon has many beautiful public green spaces. We found time to visit many lovely parks, square and areas along the river. Because Yangon is a very crowded city with cars, like many South East Asian cities, despite moments of visual beauty, we could never escape the constant din of cars and car horns."

Recorded by Michael McDermott. "Walking around Yangon you can get a feel for the various sections of the city. Often blocks are divided up into sections, for example a block of clothing stores, a block of vegetable stores. Below is a quick recording on a block of electronics stores that looked like a maze of wires and all manner of electronics and appliances from the last 60 years."

Recorded by Michael McDermott. "One of the things I loved about Yangon was the food. Myanmar food is quite different than the food of its neighbours Thailand and India, but somehow a mix of the two cuisines. Often food markets and cafes would serve people on the sidewalk or under a canopy and you would sit on tiny plastic children's chairs and table enjoying freshly made soups, salads, curries and rice dishes. This is a quick recording made at lunch by a roadside cafe."

Recorded by Michael McDermott.  "This part of the city was busy area with many small temples, the historical house where current president of Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for 15 years and home to crows. Many, many, many crows. In our flat on the fifth floor we were awoken each morning to a chorus of crows circling, nesting and walking on the roof. There were so many giant crows all over the city, I wondered what they ate to maintain such a high population and such a giant size."

Crickets in Scopello reimagined by Jeff Dungfelder. "To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything." — Goethe "The foundation of this piece of music is based on a field recording (by Tenute Plaia Scopello) of crickets in Sicily at 1 am (creating musical melodies with their wings). The bottom of a cricket wing is covered with teeth-like ridges that make it rough, and the upper surface of the wing is like a scraper. When crickets rub the upper and lower parts of their wings together, they create a chirping sound called “stridulating." Listening closely, I discovered the stridulating melodies reveal a delicate beautiful world, layer upon layer. Hence the name of this piece, "Pentimento" (a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas). Pentimento is a Mediterranean requiem of sorts - an act of remembrance for all the many poets, writers, philosophers, intellectuals, architects and painters that have their roots in Sicily. An experimental ambient/drone re-imagining of 18th century Italian music, what might have been heard in aristocratic circles in church, at the theatre and at court, but updated with a variable density of sound that unfolds in time. Like in Pentimento, layers of shifting sounds and textures allow the listener to consider an Italian past, rich with history, contributing to the present ambient experience. And to think this all started by listening to crickets. Headphones recommended."