Michael Pisaro

5 CD Box. The five discs come in an oversized box with ​cover art by Marcus Kaiser and Yuko Zama. The box set also includes a 24-page full-color booklet containing additional photos by Joachim Eckl, Marcus Kaiser, Emmanuelle Waeckerle, and Michael Pisaro, and liner notes by Michael Pisaro and Joachim Eckl. This beguiling epic was born of composer Michael Pisaro’s desire to organize a series of sound walks along the Grosse Mühl River in Austria, a practice borrowed from the visual artist Joachim Eckl, whose own work is deeply connected to the water. Over the summer of 2011 and 2012, Pisaro set up a series of listening stations along the water for six days straight. Activities included listening to natural sounds, listening to playback of the previous day’s sound in the same spot, solo performers aligned with the Wandelweiser Collective playing selections from Antoine Beuger’s Auch Da series, and musicians playing a Pisaro composition over a recording of another day’s work. After a long break, Pisaro assembled these vast materials into these five components—each with four 12-minute pieces—with compelling, rich results that stand on their own, but also are meant to comment on our own degradation of nature. It’s a masterpiece that promises to yield greater dividends the more time a listener invests in it. (Peter Margasak)