November 29, 2007, around 10 in the morning.

I am on Saltspring Island, one of the Gulf Islands in Southern British Columbia, Canada. A thin layer of snow covers the pasture and trees. I step out of the little cabin - my recorder running, headphones on - and am stopped in my tracks by a raven call that I have never heard before, two throaty tones, descending. Another raven responds with a call that is much more familiar to me. It is the beginning of a long exchange between these two birds, with varying expressions and subtle changes in reverberance, as they fly in and out of the nearby forest across the field just underneath the steep cliff of Mount Maxwell - Hwmet'atsum (Bent Over Place) in Hul'qumi'num' (the indigenous Cowichan language).

I came here to find my way into a new composition commissioned by Vancouver New Music. The final piece, MotherVoiceTalk will occupy fifteen minutes in a 70-80 minute performance, entitled Marginalia, Re-visioning Roy Kiyooka (1926 – 1994), a visual and sonic tour-de-force in honour of Roy Kiyooka – a second-generation Japanese Canadian artist, who had left a huge body of writings, paintings, photography, sculptures, sound recordings and musical improvisations. Although I knew of Roy Kiyooka, I had never met him personally, nor had I participated in the cultural events in which he was involved while living in Vancouver.

I had accepted the commission without understanding “what I was letting myself in for,” as Kiyooka himself might have said. That’s why I had to leave town, go somewhere quiet for several days to “meet” the “real” Roy Kiyooka. I brought with me everything I had collected of Roy’s work up to that point: books, images, recordings, and my own notes. I also brought recording equipment, sensing that the soundscape of the island might offer some inspiration, if not actual sonic materials, for the piece. Since the West coast was “our” common chosen home, I thought that the sonic language of a more pure West coast environment away from the city might offer the context for a “dialogue” between two artists to happen and to be fruitful.

My search for inner dialogue with Roy Kiyooka and his work had been so intense during the previous months that my ears were alerted immediately to the two ravens “speaking” to each other, almost as if they were mocking my state of mind – like the tricksters that they can be. I was particularly delighted by the deeply sonorous two-tone call mentioned above. Strangely, it reminded me of how Roy Kiyooka had intoned the words “my mother” in a recording of one of his public readings. Not only and not surprisingly do these words and this raven call form the opening of MotherVoiceTalk, but also, the raven recording in its original field recording format – as it is presented here – ended up forming the ‘ambient ground’ for the entire composition, weaving in and out of its sonic textures, almost as if symbolizing my imagined dialogue with the “real” Roy Kiyooka.

Please listen with headphones or good speakers