In the Amazonian rain forest of Ecuador.

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Time Plays Music by Percival

At the beginning of the composition Civilization – a Purgatory, a concrete music happening performed by Percival, you hear distorted Swedish voices talking about music, Pythagoras, and his idea about the harmony of the spheres. The answer to that harmony is of course not the following music that describes the purgatory that our civilization has created within and without the human beings. But it is just a description. The music composed by the author and composer Percival is the purgatory itself. Or at least an interpretation of this purgatory in accordance with his experience. It is his first composition and it was at that time (1965) the only way he could express the situation of a creative outsider in a conservative environment full of life-threatening devices. The composition ends with words taken from the long epic poem Vents (Winds) by the French poet Saint-John Perse. “And the citizens in the town down below were surprised by the scream, the piercing scream of the god.”

Meditation is a composition for metallophone and sea sounds. It might be compared to the minimalistic music that was in its initial stages during the time of this composition.

Junction at Sunrise is a text-sound-composition. The text can be read in Percival’s book Time Plays, published in 1999 and 2000 by Art Distribution, Askrikegatan 13, SE-115 57 Stockholm, Sweden. – The elements have always been a source of inspiration to Percival, and of course also to a poet like Saint-John Perse, who inspired Percival’s early writings. – In Junction at Sunrise you can hear the wind, electronic sounds, Tibetan cymbals, voices and a flute from Mexico played by Percival. The title Junction at Sunrise is in a sense inspired by James Joyce’s book Finnegans Wake, that in a mixed multi-lingual way shapes the history of humanity and its great cycles. After the time of civilization – the funeral – a new time of wholeness is born. The junction is seen as a meeting-place at dawn, and the flutes of the composition At Daybreak are “calling all downs to dayne” (Joyce). The night of corruption has ended and the Day begins again. The flutes are played by the composer and two young musicians (Nadia and Leila) at the studio Art Distribution.

  Information text (see above) © 2000: Art Distribution, Askrikegatan 13, SE-115 57 Stockholm, Sweden. 

  Time Plays Music by Percival. Running time: 46.31.

  1. Civilization – a Purgatory (17:16) – Concrete music. Primitive instruments played by Percival. Technical realization: Anders Lind, Studio Decibel.

  2. Meditation (16:32) – Metallophone: Percival. Technical realization – including sea sounds – Anders Lind, Studio Decibel.

  3. Junction at Sunrise (8:56) – Voice: Percival. The choir part: Percival and two collaborators. Tibetan cymbals and Bolivian flute played by Percival. Electronic sounds produced at EMS, Stockholm. Technical realization: Miklós Maros, EMS (Electroacoustic Music in Sweden).

  4. At Daybreak (2:57) – A composition for three flutes and bird song. Flutes: Percival and two young Art Distribution musicians (Nadia and Leila). Realized at Art Distribution’s studio.

  CD box photo ( the composer at Sion, Switzerland, 1991).

  First performance of the pieces mentioned above: The National Swedish Music Radio (P2). Music and texts (including information) © Percival, Askrikegatan 13, SE-115 57, Stockholm, Sweden. 

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PLAYS 2000-2

All Rights Reserved

Time Space Music by Percival

  Time Space Music could be looked upon as invocations in order to create a possibility for mankind to see its own true role in this earth stage. The first compositions, Hommage a Antonin Artaud I and II, are dedicated to Antonin Artaud, the French theatre man (1896-1948) who tried to revolutionize European theatre, to raise it up from a state of a so-called realistic entertainment to a dimension where myth, incantation, breath, sounds, and movements could create a transfiguration of man in his society. He visited the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico and was inspired by the rites created by these Indians in Mexico and also by the dance and music culture on the island of Bali.

Parthenogenesis , which means Virgin Birth, is partly a happening that took place at a theatre in Sweden and partly sounds from nature answering man’s call and behaviour by earthquake and turmoil that finally are changing into peaceful sounds from the sea and a bumble-bee. During a speech delivered at a theatre where the audience became partakers, the Speaker-Composer says:

“The Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries reappeared in a new form. Artaud reappears, muscle after muscle, breath after breath, beat after beat. The masculine, the neuter, the feminine, breaking clangs, infernal and celestial sounds, provocative, cried-out screams – a whole world is waiting for its birth.”

A world has come to an end and another is rising. People can once more greet the sun by singing Hail Thee Oh Sun, and finally Anno Domini opens a new stage, a new world reality by organ music and bells.

Percival has always been interested in multidimensional and polyrhythmic reality. His realization of his intentions in a musical context has, at least to some extent, been carried out in the compositions you can find on his compact discs – Time Space Music, Time Plays Music,  and Dreams and Ballads – where sometimes you can hear rhythms on different levels, and voice within a voice within a voice…

Time Space by Percival. Running time: 41:15.

  1. Hommage à Antonin Artaud I (4:56) Flute: Franciska von Koch. Drums (Chinese and Tunisian): Percival. Tibetan tuba: Stephen Frankevich. – Produced at Studio Art Distribution.

2. Hommage à Antonin Artaud II (9:11) AUM-voices and flute: Bissa Abelli and Percival. East African drums, Tunisian drums, and triangle: Percival. Tablas and xylophone: Andrey Edelfeldt.

  3. Anornas framstötande fackeltåg (4:00) The last poem in Glühende Rätsel (Glowing Riddles) by Nelly Sachs. Translation from German into Swedish: Percival. Drum and xylophone: Percival. The final lines (stanza) of the poem sung by Bissa Abelli and Percival: “Rich I am like the sea/ of bygone times and future/ and entirely out of death matter/ I am singing your song”.

4. Parthenogenesis (7:45) At the beginning: recitation by Percival from his book Crosswords . At a theatre: drums, voices, screams… Foreground drum, flute and speech: Percival. Background drummer: Christer Nygren. Shouts from crowds and nature sounds, including earthquake. Technical realization and wind flute: Göran Freese.

5. Hail Thee Oh Sun (3:16) Poem by Percival published in his book Words. Song: Franciska von Koch and Percival.

  6. Anno Domini (14:50) Organ-player: Anders Hernqvist. Traffic sounds. Initial voice and bells: Percival. Technical realization: Anders Lind, Studio Decibel.

  First performance of the pieces mentioned above: The National Swedish Music Radio (P2). Music and texts (including information) © Percival, Askrikegatan 13, Stockholm, Sweden.

  CD box photo (Rhodes, a Mediterranean island) © Percival 1996

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SPACE 2000-3

All rights reserved

  Notes

Percival (first name and surname; no pseudonym), who lives in Stockholm, Sweden, is a writer, artist, and composer. He has exhibited his paintings and published books in Swedish and in English. His music and some of his plays have been performed in Stockholm and elsewhere. Information about his work: 

For more information send an e-mail to: artdistributionstudio@gmail.com 

Dreams and Ballads by Percival

  The ballad in Dreams and Ballads are Hearsay and Life is a Field (or: Until One Day ). They are sung by Percival and a Swedish actress called Soría – a name she used during a short period at the beginning of her career. The ballads are poems songs) published an Percival’s first book in English, Words .

In Hearsay, that could also be called Soon is the Day, there is a slight allusion to a passage in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, a book that has always inspired Percival in his own work in progress. You can read more about that in his book Time Plays, published in 1999 and 2000 by Art Distribution, Askrikegatan 13, SE-115 57, Stockholm, Sweden.

The songs are easy to understand and still riddles as if they were dealing with deep secrets within the history of humankind.

Innovation is a meditative and innovative prelude to the longest piece on this disc – Dreams. And Dreams is –  you soon will realize – a shamanistic journey into the deepest recesses of man’s mind. You just have to relax, forget about time and start the  discovery of an inner continent where you might hear your own voices behind the drumming and the xylophone sounds. It could be compared to a quest in a dream land where you perhaps can find a key that opens a door to a consciousness man neds for hiis survival on planet earth.

Before creating Dreams the composer was experimenting with certain rhythms until he finally sound the keynote and the rhythms he needed in order to investigate the dream world.

  Dreams and Ballads by Percival . Running time: 40:27.

  1. Hearsay or Soon is the Day (2:10) – Drum: Percival. Song: Soría and Percival. Produced at Art Distribution’s studio.

2. Life is a Field (2:47) – Drum: Percival. Song: Soría and Percival. Produced at Art Distribution’s studio.

  3. Innovation (3:25) – Metallophone: Nadia and Leila, young musicians at Art Distribution’s studio. Drums: Percival.

  4. Dreams (32:16) – Xylophone and electroacoustic sounds: Percival. Tin barrels: Christer Nygren and Percival. Technical realization: Thomas Hammar, EMS (Electroacoustic Music in Sweden).

Note that Hearsay was first heard on the Swedish Radio during a programme where a short novel by Percival describing the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten was read.

Dreams was first performed on the Swedish Music Radio at the end of August 1986.  

CD box photo: Percival at Lindos, Rhodes, October 1996. Music and texts (including information) © Percival, Askrikegatan 13, SE-115 57 Stockholm, Sweden. All right reserved.

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DREAMS 2000-4

  Note

Percival (first name and surname; no pseudonym), who lives in Stockholm, Sweden, is a writer, artist, and composer. He has exhibited his paintings and published books in Swedish and in English. His music and some of his plays have been performed in Stockholm and elsewhere. 

Play Time Music

by Percival

  Percival says: “In April 2002 a friend of mine (called Shanti) wrote to me: ‘Life in the world has taken a more serious turn in the last year, and it becomes more essential to be strong in one’s inner heart and also to play…’ – And I agree. You are playing a part in a playing time that has no real beginning and no real end. You can play time music. You can make a play of your playing during your playtime or just play it any time.

“A word, a wind, a world wind and a word wind… ‘A shaft of shivery in the act’ as James Joyce writes in his Finnegans Wake. You play your time music and whirl in the wind. You are the whirl wind and the whirl world, the whirl worlds.

“But to pass from one world to another is of course not an easy task, and the old era’s war mentality has not ceased and will probably not cease while you are passing, but still you have to, yes, you have to play. Your time music is here. It’s your hymn, you must play it. And while you are playing, meditating or dancing you may be able to discover what the play is about, and then the whole time will become your true play.”

Play Time Music has been an idea and a dream within the composer during a long time. This dream has now been realized in a studio for electroacoustic music in Stockholm, Sweden, in the year of 2002. Some inspiration has come from e.g. the sounds of the rainforest in South America… The composer was in Peru in 1999 and in Guatemala in 1999 and 2000.

He has collected instruments of different kinds during his travels in Africa, Asia, and America. Some of these instruments have been used in this composition.

The singer Hanna Hanski, who – like Percival – has been staying a long time in both Mexico and Africa, has also been inspired by the jungle sounds and the musical expressions of indigenous peoples in different countries.

But it must be stressed that Play Time Music is not in any way trying to imitate so-called primitive or indigenous music. It is a composition where the instruments and the voices create an organic wholeness within and beyond all cultures.

  Female voice: Hanna Hanski

Male voice: Percival

The instruments (drums from Africa, an Indian drum from Florida, cymbals from Tibet, and a flute from Bolivia) are played by the composer. Assistant drummer: Hanna Hanski.

  About Hanna: Hanna Hanski is a communicator on many levels. She uses words, images, and music in her creative work and takes a special interest in the expression of the human voices.

Hanna has travelled through outer as well as inner landscapes, and the impressions from her travels are often taking a manifest form through her playful vocal improvisation.

Her aim is to cross boundaries, inspire and contribute to the ever-ongoing process of the worldly and spiritual transformation.

  About Percival: Percival (first name and surname; no pseudonym) is a writer, artist, and composer who lives in Stockholm, Sweden. He shares Hanna’s interest in the human voice and its creative power. He has exhibited his paintings and published books in Swedish and in English. His music and some of his plays have been performed in Stockholm and elsewhere. Play Time Music is number six in his CD production. 

  CD box photos (front, back) and on the disc: © Percival. The photograph on the front cover: the composer at Chichen Itzá, Yucatán, Mexico 1995. On the back and on the disc: a cenote (a natural well) at Dzibilchaltún in Yucatán. See Percival’s book Letters to Shanti (2002).

  Technical realization : Daniel Eideholm, EMS (Electroacoustic Music in Sweden), Stockholm.

Production © 2002 Art Distribution, Askrikegatan 13, SE-115 57 Stockholm, Sweden. 

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PLAY 2002-2

The Waves. For Mary Magdalene

  In Percival's books Letters to Shanti (2002) and Time Plays (2000) you can find texts where Mary Magdalene is of utter importance and is more than just a legendary biblical figure. She is here at this moment.

Percival says: “Many of us feel that we are at the end of a very long human history, at the end and at the same time in the beginning ... Have we already passed Judgement Day, and do we now face an immense vastness that must be filled  with a new creation?

“The common degradation is an experience almost everybody shares, and who can save anybody? We know that the Master in the New Testament was able to heal people in a respectful way, but what happened to his companion Mary Magdalene after his resurrection? Did she – as legends tell – come to the coast of Southern France in a boat without sails and oars?

“Some say she spent her last days in a cave on a mountain called Sainte-Baume in Provence. Here she fulfilled her mission, but her real mission has of course never ended. Her true time has finally entered, and the long history of man’s degradation is also in some way her story that belongs to a past and present human experience.

“Can a new voice ... a new song ... or ... a new appearance ... hers ... and the song ... The Waves. For Mary Magdalene ... be a healing for the listeners?”

  In the composition The Waves. For May Magdalene the initial song is taken from Time Plays and the other song (written in an almost new tongue) was first published in Percival’s first book in English, Words . The introductory text (before the song) is a new poem by the composer, who looks upon his composition The Waves. For Mary Magdalene as an invocation opening a new Mary Magdalene time, the era of The Waves, M M, when woman and man can play and create together without degrading each other.

Since a very long time before the year 2000 Percival had the “waves composition” in his mind and had notes of a medieval character (concerning the text Carina sings at the beginning and at the end) but preferred that Carina put her soul and heart into her own musical setting. This text forms a part of a sequence of  poems called “Natasha” – published in its entirety in Time Plays.

The Waves. For Mary Magdalene

by Percival

  Female voice : Carina

Male voice : Percival

  The drums played by the composer are from various parts of Africa. A Tibetan bowl is played by the composer before the somewhat “Joycean” temple text (“Ablalong”) sung by Carina and Percival.

  You can read Letters to Shanti (Art Distribution 2002, see www.artdistribution.se) if you want to know more about the “new” Mary Magdalene, and there is, as you will realize when you listen, a secret story behind The Waves. For Mary Magdalene.

  Technical realization Pär Johansson and Daniel Eideholm, EMS (Electroacoustic Music in Sweden).

  About Carina :

  Carina is a singer, a songwriter-composer, and a dancer-choreographer trained in the performing arts since early childhood. She has appeared on stage in her own song and dance performances with songs of her   own, composed in a variety of musical genres. She has a background in music and dance drama, and today she performs mainly as a singer on stage – at music festivals, peace festivals, etcetera.

The Mary Magdalene song she sings in this composition is her own musical setting of a text by Percival.

  For Mary Magdalene

  It is as if you were

A memory in a world

I’ve never known,

a legend in a time

of silence...

A wave, and all history is gone...

No voice can be heard in this place

except your song – as a

far-away reminiscence...

  ( A poem by Percival, read at the beginning of this CD )

  About Percival :

  Percival (first name and surname; no pseudonym), who lives in Stockholm, Sweden, is a writer, artist, and composer. He has exhibited his paintings and published books in Swedish and in English. His music and some of his plays have been performed in Stockholm and elsewhere. 

CD box photos (front, back) and on the disc: c Percival

The photograph on front cover shows the Sea of Galilee

Back cover: Morning at Tulum, Yucatan, Mexico.

  Production (c) 2002 Percival, Art Distribution, Askrikegatan 13, SE-115 57 Stockholm, Sweden. 

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WAVES 2002-1

Eternal Voices by Percival

Percival says: “Eternal Voices is a composition and a song and sound meditation that has been a work in progress since time immemorial. There is naturally no end to these voices, and no beginning. I know some people have other ideas, but as far as I can see, you can see beyond all limits and all borders. And I don't belong to the Big Bang believers.

“In ancient Egypt initiated men and women saw a picture of eternity when they saw the pyramids. And when they listened deeply enough they heard the pyramids sing an eternal song. They took part in this song that filled their lives with holy spirit. The eternal song is a gift many peoples on earth have felt, acknowledged and realized.

“You pass away and you turn back. You transfigure and transform. You are always here. And you sing: ‘I am a Builder, Sun is my name …’

“We have heard and we hear our time’s disturbances. But we also have an inner voice keeping on singing in harmony with the unheard song of the universe that can be felt in every living cell.

“Ramses II and Nefertari knew. And of course pharaoh Akhenaton knew this when he reigned c. 1370 bc. He saw the Sun mirroring his true self and said: ‘I am a Builder, Sun is my name.’ Nefertiti, his consort, did the same. – And all peace people (on all continents) joined in the song. It is still going on. It will never end.”

In Eternal Voices Percival is singing together with three voice artists: Aishling De Cléir, Hanna Hanski Grünewald, and Torun Wilderwind. Whispered words from Percival’s book Time Plays – poetry, plays, and prose – are heard at the beginning and at the end. Listen carefully, you will be surprised. All the universe is full of singing voices – heard and unheard.  

About the singers in Eternal Voices

Aishling De Cléir , a soul-warming singer/songwriter from Dublin, Ireland, now enthusiastically calls Stockholm, Sweden, her home. She enjoys visits to her birthland to hold workshops and share her music and always embraces her return to the land of pines and northern spirit. What she loves most is reaching people’s hearts through her creativity and sparkle ^{H H H}.

Hanna Hanski Grünewald  is a painter, a poet and a singer/songwriter who has performed her songs e.g. on Hawaii, and in Mexico, Scandinavia and Africa. She is a free-flowing spirit who likes to experiment with her voice and her other means of expression.  

Torun Wilderwind  is a fairy-tale singer. Untamed, unframed, she channels the everlasting wild stream of songs and stories glowing forever, flowing from within all … Bringing “well-fairy” … she loves to turn darkness into light.

  Percival (surname and first name) is a poet, playwright, and composer. His interest in the human voice shows e.g. in one of his speeches: “The Solar Consciousness Era and the Human Voice” – delivered in Ecuador 2002 during a conference when he also had voice workshops. He has published books (plays, poetry, novels, essays, etc.) in Swedish and in English. In 2004 he staged his musical choreo-drama “The Waves. For Mary Magdalene” at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt. – Information about his works (CD compositions, books, plays …):  www.percival.nu 

Instruments in the composition (organ, keyboard and bells) are played by Art Distribution musicians.

  CD box photos (front, back) and on the disc: © Percival.

The photograph on the front: a solar ceremony on the top of a Mayan pyramid, Uxmal, Mexico 1995. On the  back and on the disc: the temple of Nefertari, Abu Simbel, Egypt.

Technical realization and producer:   Lars Åkerlund, EMS (Electroacoustic Music in Sweden), Stockholm