Rising

LYON-TRAILS-08-Rising

"But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age.  I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft tender gentle memories that come with them..."

      -Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Father Zosima speaking)

Kristina Dutton - Violin
Teddy Rankin-Parker - Cello

Recorded winter 2014, El Cerrito, California.
Mixed and Mastered by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 4 January 2015 (Moorworks // Japan).

image: unknown (from Thalman family archives).

Granville

LYON-TRAILS-07-Granville

It takes days and days to drive through Pennsylvania.  Or at least that’s how it feels when you’re twenty-two and on the verge of setting sight on New York City for the first time.  Not that I minded.  Passages on I-80 East through a quintet of state forests replicated and extended the unreal pitch of autumn I had just experienced for the first time in Ohio.  A long, undulating stretch of America, then through New Jersey so much faster than expected, the world quickening, expanding, New York a flickering, pluming goliath through the geometry of cantilever bridges.

Shan-Ken Chieng - Second Violin
Sascha Groschang - Cello
Michalis Koutsoupides - Viola
Noemi Miloradovic - First Violin
Andrew Morgan - Guitar / Piano

Recorded spring 2010, Lawrence, Kansas.
Mixed by Mike Giffin.
Mastered by Doug Van Sloun.
Remastered by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 18 February 2011 (Moorworks // Japan).

Image: unknown (viewfinder card from Morgan family archives).

For a Little While

LYON-TRAILS-06-For a Little While

My own stint in New York was brief – half euphoria, half panic.  I had tried to move there from Kansas nearly two years prior in the fall of 2000, in love with versions of the city I had dreamed of while reading biographies of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles in high school, and feeling desperately stifled and out of place in Lawrence after a life-changing year studying abroad at Oxford.  I dropped my classes – mostly post-modern philosophy – petitioned to graduate early, and got a job delivering pizzas.  I saved up two thousand dollars, and thought that would be enough to find an apartment in Greenwich Village – that it would be just like winter 1961 as recounted by Dylan.  Needless to say, I bounced off the atmosphere. 

Michalis Koutsoupides - Viola

Recorded spring 2008, Lawrence, Kansas.
Mixed by Jim Vollentine.
Mastered by Doug Van Sloun.
Remasted by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 15 January 2008 (Moorworks // Japan).

Image: Chicago Harbor (from Thalman family archives; restored by David Marquardt).

Leaves (III)

LYON-TRAILS-05-Leaves (III)

It was in Ohio where I became enamored with autumn, started measuring time by its approach or departure.  I’d left Kansas that morning in a t-shirt.  Hundreds of miles east and slightly north, I found myself rubbing my arms to warm up while stopped at a gas station that evening, rummaging through my backpack for a sweatshirt and a bit caught off guard by the bite in the air.  The sun had begun to set and, with the wind picking up a bit, the scenery took on a different character as I left the interstate for older roads leading up to Mt. Vernon.  On narrowing lanes alongside farmland, leaves already showing shades of red and orange that would not visit Kansas until closer to Halloween waved in the wind.  It was as if a portal was opening up, drawing my eyes away from the road for increasingly dangerous intervals.  Soon, it was nearly dark and I was lost, in a bit of a panic but at the same time entranced, wondering how there could be a place so beautiful that I’d never heard a word of.  Back on track and passing through Mt. Vernon toward Gambier after nightfall, leaves still fluttering in bunches showed their colors intermittently just above street lamps as if a light switch were being flipped off and on.  The feeling, like playing hide-and-seek in gardens of the wealthy as a child, was quietly electric. 

Kristina Dutton - Violin
Andra Kulans - Violin
Andrew Morgan - Guitars / Piano / Harmonium / Melodica / Feedback Bed

Recorded summer 2012, Lawrence, Kansas / spring 2013, Chicago, Illinois / summer 2014, El Cerrito, California.
Mixed and Mastered by Matt LaPoint.

Image: Hartford, Connecticut (from Thalman family archives; restored by David Marquardt).

Parc de la Tête d'Or (II)

LYON-TRAILS-04-Parc de la Tête d'Or (II)

In wandering years, parks were portals.  In Korea, I would tell myself if I could just hike the next ridge line, I would be home.  As if parks were points of teleportation, all connected in the same grand spirit park.  Hampstead Heath in London, Yogogi Park in Tokyo, Lincoln Park in Chicago, Boston Common, Griffith Park, Central Park, even little Marvin Grove in Lawrence, Kansas where my parents would take us on fall Saturdays – all connected. Parc de la Tiete d’Or in Lyon was no different.  On my first visit, I stayed past dark and thought I was losing my mind when I became frightened by the sounds of wild birds and animals.  I didn’t yet know that the park contained a zoo – the Jadin zoolólogic de Lyon – so I wondered if it was somehow a close spirit connection of a park in Africa.  On my many subsequent visits I would stay late to hear the wildlife welcome the darkness and pretend that I had still not solved the mystery of the zoo.

Audrey Herren - Cello
Andra Kulan - Violin / Viola

Recorded spring 2015, Chicago, Illinois / Lawrence, Kansas.
Mixed and Mastered by Matt LaPoint.
Release Date: 22 September 2017.

Image: Heidelburg Castle, Germany (viewfinder card from Morgan family archives).

Fourvière (II)

LYON-TRAILS-03-Fourvière (II)

     Atop Lyon sits La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière  – a 19th century cathedral of white marble and stained glass.  More magical than even views from its terrace that on a clear day reach the Alps beyond Lyon's edges is the tumble of subtle wonders from the basilica down to the Saône.  A long road winds around Parc des Hauters and the Jardin de Rosaire, offering glimpses of city lights through the branches of trees.  Slopes of stone descend to narrow cobblestone streets that flow away from Place St. Jean, spilling out onto Quai Romaine Rolland and its curve along the river.  An ethereal cascade, unfurling sight upon sight from the tallest spire.

Audrey Herren - Cello
Andra Kulan - Violin / Viola
Andrew Morgan - Guitar / Piano

Recorded summer 2012 and spring 2014, Chicago, Illinois / spring 2015, Lawrence, Kansas.
Mixed and Mastered by Matt LaPoint.
Release Date: 22 September 2017.

Image: Place de la Concorde, Paris, France (viewfinder card from Morgan family archives).

Prologue

LYON-TRAILS-02-Prologue

When it was all over, I would walk down 57th Street, cut down Blackstone Avenue to 55th, and make my way to Promontory Point – known simply as “The Point” to Hyde Parkers, and something of a secret spot where the children of university professors were rumored to take LSD, a drug no longer particularly fashionable in the early 2000’s but perhaps of enduring local interest for sharing an acronym with the very Lake Shore Drive that separated the “The Point” from the rest of the neighborhood.  LSD on LSD.  Layers of meaning – a penchant shared with academic parents educated in the 1960s.

I went to “The Point” to look out across Lake Michigan, its vastness so incomprehensible to my Kansas eyes that I would sometimes refer to it as “the ocean” in conversation, eliciting the ridicule of Chicagoans and outing myself as an outsider.  But that was what I loved most of all about the lake – that it could alter perspective, play tricks on the mind, conjure the California coast on an Illinois plain.  And I needed a portal to California, a way to access all that had happened in the preceding eleven months.

Jesse Henkensiefken - Cello
Michalis Koutsoupides - Violin / Viola

Recorded spring 2003, Lawrence, Kansas.
Mixed and Mastered by Matt LaPoint.
Original Release Date: 6 June 2004 (Broken Horse).

Image: unknown (viewfinder card from Morgan family archives).