Hadal Zone by Žibuoklė Martinaitytė & Synaesthesis

Dark, mysterious and unforgiving, the ocean’s murky depths have always stirred the imaginations of poets, painters, authors and explorers. For composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, the deep conceals a haunting and hypnotic music that can bring about a feeling of ritual calm; in her words, it inspires a music that metaphorically can “make the darkness visible.”

Hadal Zone, written for bass clarinet, tuba, violoncello, contrabass, piano and electronics, seeks to plumb the lower ranges of these instruments, shaping a listening environment that is defined as much by sound and vibration as it is by the musical intent of the composer. Performed by the adventurous Lithuanian ensemble Synaesthesis, and featuring recorded samples of the San Francisco-based choral group Volti (conducted by Robert Geary), the hour-long work takes its title from the scientific name for the region of the ocean that extends below 6,000 meters, where sunlight can never reach.

“These instruments are rarely featured on their own,” Martinaitytė explains in her liner notes to Hadal Zone, “but rather, they serve as a backbone for harmonic structures. I’m taking them into the limelight [...] Darkness as we perceive it is not differentiated. The same can be said for low frequencies, low vibrations of sound; what we usually hear is some indistinguishable hum or a murmur, and we mostly feel the palpable vibrations of those sounds through our body.”

When performed live, Hadal Zone is meant to be experienced as a gradual descent through the five deep regions of the ocean — Epipelagic, Mesopelagic, Bathypelagic, Abyssopelagic and Hadopelagic. The concert hall gradually descends into a semi-darkness with the help of a site-specific light installation by visual artist Akvilė Anglickaitė, with the goal of transporting the audience into more meditative states of mind.

Synaesthesis vision extends beyond the sound into space, light, movement, and narrative — any medium that allows for professionally performed music to become a multidimensional experience and blur the lines between genres.

Having been awarded the Ernst von Siemens Foundation Ensemble Prize in 2020, Synaesthesis continues to widen its reach as a performing entity of considerable renown.

synaesthesis.lt