Sarah Davachi: The Will of Tongues

On September 10th in Los Angeles, composer Sarah Davachi returns to The Great Organs at First Congregational Church with a solo organ performance of works from her audacious forthcoming triple album, The Will of Tongues, on her own Late Music imprint.

This special concert will also feature L.A.-based brass ensemble Diapason, performing the microtonal 'Interludes' series from this new Davachi release.

Sarah Davachi cleverly considers notions of “early music” and subsequent canonical traditions while exploring the space opened by minimalism, experimentation, and psychoacoustics, pushing forward an aesthetic uniquely of our time. A constant in her project is a fascination with and study of keyboard instruments; Davachi has performed and recorded on dozens of historic pipe organs internationally. These concerts are a singular way to be enveloped within her sound – intricate and massive.

It’s fortunate for us then that one of the largest church pipe organs in the world is right here in Los Angeles. “The Great Organs” is a single instrument composed of several organs at the front, back, and sides of the church’s main sanctuary. Controlling them all from a single console, Davachi creates dramatic and unique spatialization effects with this fully acoustic instrument.

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The album notes reveal that The Will of Tongues “…seeks to articulate a deep reverence for the act of listening, and for the awareness that such listening can serve as a kind of imaginative negative space; one that critically promotes confrontation and creation rather than escape. This collection of music is not easy listening, and it’s not meant to be – when long durations and a reduction of materials are at play, the ear and the mind are forced to truly face the reality of sound itself and the significant mental spaces that it continually gives rise to, which can carry deep wells of meaning if the listener is willing to journey there…”