Reflections
on Love and Truth
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Secrets,
Dreams, Faith, and Wonder
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Ritual and
Memory
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HeavenEverywhere
DrumHead
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A review of the music on the Ritual and Memory 3-disc release appeared in Computer Music Journal 34(3). It was written by by Gareth Loy and John Snell (founding editor of Computer Music Journal). Here are some excerpts.
[Ritual and Memory, a] "breathtakingly broad swath of musical aesthetics and music technology"
"The composer consistently finds compelling ways of adapting and combining media and tools to his compositional aims" and "projects a fluid and engaging rhythmic and harmonic sense"
"Such accessible works are actually quite difficult to make convincing, but Mr. Pope?s imagination for movement and dance easily carries the listener along."
"Wonderfully resonant bell-like sounds ring with a vibrant acoustic quality somewhat reminiscent of the tamboura or the drone strings of a sitar. The music moves spatially in a playful manner, somewhat like African Mbira playing"
[In All Gates are Open,] "the sonic landscape is pristine"
"As [Ritual and Memory] demonstrates, he has sustained a long and successful career as a composer and music technologist. Yet what arises to the surface from beneath all the technology, all the musical prosody, all the compositional algorithms and experimentalism, is Mr. Pope?s spiritually informed humanity. He says, "Listening deeply to music can be a powerfully mystical experience." He knows whereof he speaks."
The image of "the man in the maze" is common to many of the native
Americans of the south-west US. I interpret it as meaning that we are
all very close to our goals as human/spirit beings, and that the
labyrinth consists of our learning what our role or context is, what our
relationship is to our surroundings.
