Steve Peters's from Shelter is music written in 1997 for choreographer Lane Lucas’s dance/theater work Shelter, which deals with “the concept of metamorphosis, and the way connections between people can bring us to a greater awareness of our place in life.” The gently undulating three-section Three Short Stories and the beautifully insistent My Burning Skin to Sleep form a suite that very successfully stands apart from the theater/dance work for which they were composed. Three violas calmly stroll through their pitches, starting and stopping to form little pieces within pieces, all leading to an alluring voice and gently off-kilter piano music, an evocative extended coda to the string music that preceded it.
Peters’ music on this CD stands slightly apart from the greater body his work, which often is concerned with presenting an environment through soundscape and/or sounding techniques. The performers on this recording (each tracked multiple times) have collaborated with Peters on more than this one occasion.
Steve Peters is a composer/sound artist who, drawing inspiration equally from the experimental tradition and a wide range of the world’s folk musics, readily integrates improvisation and open forms into the work he has creates for dance, theater, radio, public spaces, and concerts. In addition to performing as a soloist, using an array of acoustic and electronics instruments, environmental sounds, and amplified natural and/or found objects, Peters has worked in many collaborative contexts—touring with vocalist Anna Homler and sound artist Steve Roden and performing with composers David Dunn and Christopher Shultis; vocalist Marghreta Cordero; electroacoustic composers Francisco López and Steven M. Miller; and saxophonist Tom Guralnick. Peters is also a founding member of Gamelan Encantada, a Javanese/American ensemble that performs both traditional and contemporary music. With choreographer/writer Lane Lucas, Peters has produced several critically-acclaimed works (Faith, Ground Luminosity, and Shelter). He has also received commisions for music and sound design from numerous other choreographers, including Nora Reynolds and Bill Evans, Kagami Butoh, Deborah Slater, and John Carrafa. With visual artist Barbara Grothus he received a commission from the City of Albuquerque to create Celebrating Nature: The Landscape Underground, a permanent neon light and sound installation for the Albuquerque Convention Center. Other recent installations include The Alchemy of Desire with visual artist Christine Wallers, at the Historic San Ysidro Church in Corrales, New Mexico; Confluences: Songs of the Rio Grande and its Tributaries at the Albuquerque Museum; Emanations with visual artist Claire Giovanniello at the Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque; and Hereings, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe. His works for radio have been aired on internationally syndicated series. Peters’s solo CDs are on the Cold Blue (see Peters’s The Webster Cycles, CB0027), O.O. Discs, and Pianíssimo labels, and a CD and book documenting his Hereings project was published by La Alameda Press. Other recordings and writings of his have been included in numerous compilation CDs and publications.
“Steve Peters shows another facet of his multiple gifts.… From shelter is highly distilled purity in the form of acoustic temperament…refined contemplations.… [T]he key to the heavens of lyrical enlightenment is served.” —ei magazine
“Pure, restrained and rigorously beautiful.” —Alvin Curran
