Jachin Pousson - Tumulus

"A tumulus is a burial mound built by pagan cultures found throughout Northern Europe, and Asia to house their dead. I encountered the Viking tumuli in Uppsala, Sweden in the winter of 2011 and their huge and lonely curves stretching into the snowy distance left me with a deep impression. No amount of ideological conflict and change that occurred between Christian and Pagan peoples in the last 1500 years have erased these markings from the landscape. A poignant reminder of wrestlings with our own beliefs about death and the afterlife from the perspective of a long and mostly forgotten history.

The music juxtaposes the sound of Christian and Pagan worship and ritual, structured in sections that reach further and further back in time. Electronic effects create canonic, textural, and timbral changes thoughout the work. These can be controlled live offstage, or be fully automated." /Jachin Pousson/

Performed live by Arvydas Kazlauskas at Riga Saxophone Days festival on April 11th, 2017 in JVLMA.
Video by Guntis Lēmanis.