About the piece:
The sound is part of a larger work, Cosmography, inspired by the idea of what a "musical map" of the cosmos might look like, from a particular vantage point. "Ghosts of Grayson County" is concerned with the notion of traces (or seeming traces) of things left behind in a place (in this case, the place being the Nolin Lake area of Grayson and Edmonson Counties, Kentucky).
About the piece:
uke Cissell is a musician and composer who lives in Lower Manhattan. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he was a fiddling champion at the age of eight. Cosmography is Cissell's second full-length album; in 2009 he released the experimental Noise in the Street which was described as "daring" and "celestial" (Splice Today, Groovemine). He recently appeared as violinist on Tara Hugo Sings Philip Glass, a collaboration between the singer and composer released on the latter's Orange Mountain Music label in November. Cissell has written a number of solo and ensemble works; his String Quartet No. 2 and Frontier Chorales were premiered earlier this year by the Hudson Quartet in Brooklyn, NY. His current projects include a commissioned work for the New England String Quartet and an opera based on Henry James's The Ambassadors. Cissell is the proud recipient of the 2012 John Cage Memorial Random Composer Award - an honor bestowed, as its title suggests, by blind chance.