Jonny Greenwood‘s latest musical project will take a third of a day to listen to.
The Radiohead guitarist has composed an organ piece titled 268 Years of Reverb, which lasts a total of eight hours. It’ll be performed by James McVinnie and Eliza McCarthy on May 18 at the Octagon Chapel in England as part of the 2024 Norfolk & Norwich Festival.
“The organ is the lungs and voice of any building where it is installed,” Greenwood says. “In an old church, air is going through the same organ pipes, in the same space, that other listeners have experienced for centuries. So, hearing church organs is a kind of time travel, the closest we have to faithfully reproducing ancient sound.”
“In the Octagon Chapel, it’s 268 years of time: season after season spent celebrating, commiserating, praising, mourning, to the same recorded sounds,” he continues. “This time is measured over generations, though the rituals of the church, and is a reminder that churches are the repository for the books of parish records as well as Bibles.”
Tickets are available to the full eight-hour performance, but for those who don’t want to commit that kind of time, you can check in for an hour-and-50-minute time slot.
For more info, visit NNFestival.co.uk.
Greenwood’s other 2024 plans include touring Europe with The Smile, his Radiohead side project with Thom Yorke. The Smile put out a new album, Wall of Eyes, in January.
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