PSALTERY

Performance on bowed psaltery (an American folk instrument). This project has been in development since 2020, with an album released on October 6, 2023, on the Infrequent Seams label.

“In Neutral Buoyant, Nathan turns his attention to the bowed psaltery in a series of composed improvisations made with and without electronic processing. Approaching the psaltery as a glorious collection of monochords, Nathan employs violin bows, electromagnetic bows of different kinds, and guitar slides to activate the harmonics of its 32 open strings. Evoking ambient works by Eno and Laraaji, and spectral soundscapes of Saariaho, these six pieces display undulating drones, prismatic shifts of harmony, and microtonal vibrancy, creating motion while suspending time.”

STRINGS MAGAZINE on NEUTRAL BUOYANT:

“It is beautiful, haunting, immersive. A meditative sound world to live in for a time and think about once you’ve left… In Davis’ hands, the psaltery soars and twangs, pings and croons. Gentle and meditative at one moment, sharp and melancholy the next, the music on Neutral Buoyant reveals the bowed psaltery as an instrument capable of producing tones in surprisingly varied spectrums of texture and color, evoking fluid shapes and celestial voices moving together through a complex, slowly shifting soundscape. It is both of this world and somehow beyond it.” - Megan Westberg

For the live set, Liz Liguori has created a reactive light and water sculpture that uses transducers attached to a parabolic mirrored bowl so that the live sound activate waves in water and reflect onto various surfaces in the performance space.