What can we find in the activities of bees to learn more about ourselves?
– Peggy Polias
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Hive takes a tour around a beehive and honeybee colony to explore some of the behaviours and activities of bees. The question is not so much “What do bees do all day?” but “What can we find in the activities of bees to learn more about ourselves?”
“In recent years I found myself stumbling upon news of Colony Collapse Disorder, an eerie and initially inexplicable phenomenon that kept haunting my feed as a reminder that the environment is very fragile, and the loss of something so small as bees could have huge and devastating effects on food supply for people. I started to read a little about bees, and while I’m just scratching the surface, the information I discovered about roles and social structures in the colony, gender and genetics, and about activities such as “dances” and the building of honeycomb, were fascinating and profoundly inspiring.
“The theme wove itself organically into the activities around it: chatting with Neil and Catherine about the amazing properties of honey from the Greek island of Ikaria; the chance to finally collaborate with my husband Kieren Paynter, an artist (oil painter) who has been painting bees for many years, and who has created the cover image for this album recording; watching TED videos with our four-year-old daughter who learnt about the lifecycle of the bee at daycare.” -Peggy Polias
Hive is in 13 movements, including solos and duos as well as electronics only, and each movement hones in on an aspect of the colony or the hive, but also departing from this core to reflect on migration, heritage and lineage, community, socioeconomic class, geometry, serialism and the classical tradition of the cl/vla/pno trio format.
TRACKLIST
- Honeycomb I
- Queen Bee
- Drone Bees
- Worker Bees
- ElectroSwarm I
- Melissa
- Colony
- Buzzing
- ElectroSwarm II
- Drones and Workers
- Queen and Drones
- Queen and Workers
- Honeycomb II
THE TEAM
Composer | Peggy Polias |
The Nano Symphony: | |
Viola | Neil Thompson |
Clarinet | Catherine Thompson |
Piano | Lee Akinsanya |
Sound Engineer | Jayson McBride |
Producer | Cameron Lam |
Cover Art | Kieran Paynter |
Graphic Design | Luke Moseley |