Thomas Meadowcroft - The Great Knot (2011)

Performed by The Ludovico Ensemble
Jeffrey Means, percussion
Nicholas Tolle, percussion
Mike Williams, percussion
June 17th 2024
St. Paul's Church, Brookline MA
Filmed by Jeffrey Means
The Great Knot is based on the migratory patterns of the bird, 'The Great Knot'. This species breeds in Siberia in the Summer but heads to Australia and Southern Asia during the Northern Winter. (The Great Knot is also sometimes vagrant in Europe, although whether this is by accident or providence, one cannot be sure.) A distance that is for us a longhaul flight, the bird makes its trip with only one stopover. The Great Knot is now considered vulnerable as a species due to a combination of factors, not only in part due to the reclamation of the birds' stopover
grounds between Siberia and the South Seas (namely, mud flats in South Korea). Furthermore, given its strange 'international' status -- that is its territory is not fixed to a specific nation state --
the bird is difficult to protect. In these ways, Great Knots are birds without passports, so to speak, and are without anywhere to land.
The Great Knot attempts to approach the event horizon of the species' extinction with a kind of perverted joy. It does this if not to bring about some minor attention to these international
travelers, then at least to attempt to suspend the tragedy attached with the demise of these birds by using their flight paths as a model for music composition (namely "how to get from A to B"). - Thomas Meadowcroft
www.ludovicoensemble.org