TRANSMISSION ART ARCHIVE

Sooner or Later

1991
Bob Ostertag
A musical work that grew out of the composers ten year stay in El Salvador. "There is a boy and his father is dead. And no angels sang and no one was better because of it and all that is left is this kid and the shovel digging the grave and a fly buzzing in the air. If there is beauty, we must find it in what is really there: the boy, the shovel, the fly. If we look closely, despite the unbearable sadness, we will discover it." (Ostertag) The music is made by breaking the original recording into very small events, and stringing these events into musical structures, creating shapes radically different from the original. An unusual and haunting composition.