Messier by Kory Reeder

Recorded in one take as a single-movement work January 2020 in Denton, Texas.

Edited for convenient listening and because the files are... huge. If you'd like the single-take file please send me an email (it's about 3/4 Gigs)

Charles Messier (1730 – 1817) was a French astronomer who had a particular talent as a comet hunter. Through the course of his career, Messier discovered several fixed objects in the night sky easily mistaken as comets. Marking them down as not to waste time with repeated observations, Messier compiled a catalog of 110 unknown objects that were distinctly not-comets. Unknown at the time, Messier itemized a beautiful collection galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Today, we know several of these objects by their new names, such as the Crab Nebula, the Eagle Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Whirlpool Galaxy. More recently, M88 (Messier Catalog No. 88) was directly observed to contain a black hole, providing our first images of such a titanic event.
With this piece and in this space, I invite us to work as Messier: thinking in the vastness, always searching. Here, we are not hopelessly swimming in the void, rather, peacefully bathing in it, and taking away any teleological movement; it’s going here, there, and there, and even there! At times, taking diversions, taking suggestions, and introducing a new dynamic energy into this vast expanse.
You will not hear 110 discreet sections, although they are somewhere in the space. Rather, you will hear the structure described by Messier placed into several situations of varying length, instrumentation, texture, and harmony. We have a surface structure here; there are pitch areas, harmonic material, considerations on performance practice, etc. However, the deeper structure is in an engagement and communication across time. There’s evanescence here; this coming and going, subtle interaction, and a patient atmosphere.
We are all connected to the timekeepers of the universe; we are rarely given the authority to decide how long a moment lasts, or where a situation might take us. Still, we have decisions to make; our actions in the periphery effect the environment in our socio-collaborative (or cohabitative) spaces. We must give time and bathe in these experiences.

Kory Reeder is a musician based out of Denton, Texas.

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