The title Summer 2015 reminded me of Samuel Barber's famous work for voice and orchestra entitled Knoxville: Summer of 1915. I can think of two similarities between his work and mine: the word 'summer' and the number '15'. Beyond those two things Barber's impressionistic tone painting of a six-year old boy's memories of idyllic life in Tennessee just prior to the death of his father could not possibly be more different than my music presented here. Summer 2015 bears no relationship, connection or comparison to Knoxville: Summer of 1915 - in this universe or in any other.
Summer 2015 is more than one and a quarter hours long and it contains 57 minutes of complete silence. If you're not a regular MM reader you may well wonder why anyone writes music which is 75% complete silence. Actually, some Seasons have an even higher percentage of silence. Answer: I hope that listeners will combine these long Seasons with other music at exactly the same time. This requires someone to choose which Seasons to play simultaneously with which other music. Feel free to choose from any music whatsoever. There's an awful lot of music out there, too much; the possibilities are literally infinite.
(If you want to listen to several Seasons together - something I often do myself - go to The Seasons page and click on several [listen] links in the first section The Seasons. You'll need a pretty good Internet connection. Need a suggestion of what to click on? You might try all the Spring seasons at once or all the 2013 seasons. Four is a good number.)
Once you make the necessary creative decisions just carry on with life - let the sounds be background. The result will inevitably be filled with many unintelligible moments, occasional bursts of intense chaos and the periodic bright flare of pure serendipity. It does not make sense to evaluate the result the same way you would a conventional piece of music. This is a random process, like life.
You could listen to Summer 2015 and Knoxville: Summer of 1915 at the same time. I tried this. At first I put the Barber on repeat play and Mr. Barber dominated the mix. I was happier with the results when I listened to all four Summers (two of them are based on classical music) and then added Knoxville: Summer of 1915 just one time. I'm sure Samuel Barber's publishers will spin in their graves when they read about this.
Click here to hear Summer 2015 from The Seasons - by David Ocker, © 2015 by David Ocker, 4494 seconds
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