Klangspuren Festival, Austria

Michael Pisaro-Liu's * A Wave and Waves* thrives on barely audible micro-events: seeds on glass, sandpaper on stone, the tearing of paper, a soft brush on a tam-tam. One hundred percussion instruments, one hundred performers, together create a paradox: from barely perceptible individual actions, a collective sound emerges, condensing into a continuous wave motion—an ocean of small sounds. Pisaro-Liu himself calls it "confounding the small and the large." 

The structure makes this audible: a single, 35-minute arc of sound—followed by four minutes of silence—and finally, one hundred small waves that ripple through the ensemble. The audience sits amidst it, surrounded by sound rather than facing it. The Australian ensemble Speak Percussion develops the work with the participants—a polyphonic collective that carries this final evening of the festival. "Love is Louder" doesn't end here as a slogan, but as an experience: in listening together to what we otherwise overlook.