Composer Christopher Cerrone and Flutist Tim Munro Release New EP and Film LIMINAL HIGHWAY

GRAMMY-nominated composer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Christopher Cerrone and GRAMMY-winning flutist Tim Munro today release a new EP, Liminal Highway, on New Focus Recordings.

Cerrone's Liminal Highway, written in 2015 for Munro, is a hypnotic five-movement work for flute and electronics inspired by a poem by John K. Samson, the lead singer and songwriter for the Canadian pop-punk band, The Weakerthans. Caught between sleeping and waking, Samson's protagonist comes to understand who they are and where they are going. Cerrone's piece evokes that moment of limbo, an anxious, gauzy, in-between state of memory and nostalgia that forces you to reflect on your life. Layers of flute shimmer, pulse, and glow, conjuring an atmosphere of anxiety tinged with a fragile sense of hope. The piece was co-commissioned by Miller Theatre and premiered there by Munro in November 2016.

A film, created by Four/Ten Media, is also released today and features Munro performing aboard the SS United States, a ship that was the hope of a nation, but now lies, ruined, in the Philadelphia harbor - a reflection of the concept of flawed memory and nostalgia in the piece and poem. Watch the film on the Miller Theatre website. A "making-of" documentary will premiere on 21CM in September 2020.

The opening of the poem reads:

when you fall asleep in transit
you rarely wake up much closer
to where you want to be
and you've missed the song
you were waiting to hear
coming up after the ad for a
funeral home and the traffic and weather
in a town you'll never live in

or even see now that you've passed it
in a dream you don't recall

Cerrone says, "I stumbled upon an article about the longest naturally occuring echo in the world. A researcher squeezed into a giant storage tank and shot a gun, and the sound echoed for 75 seconds. I imagined a flute playing in this vast and lonely space, and thought about how memory functions like a vast, echoing chamber. These ideas led to Liminal Highway."

Munro relates the energy throughout Liminal Highway to the current anxieties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining, "The liminal, in-between spaces of this piece capture my feelings during the in-between period of this quarantine period. I'm filled with uncertainty about what is next, but always, somehow, I keep moving forward."

Christopher Cerrone is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. Recent commissions include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of the Chicago Symphony, Third Coast Percussion, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Calder Quartet, and Eighth Blackbird.

Cerrone's opera, Invisible Cities, was a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Invisible Cities received its fully-staged world premiere in a wildly popular production by The Industry, directed by Yuval Sharon, in Los Angeles' Union Station. Both the film and opera are available as CDs, DVDs, and digital downloads.

In July 2019, New Amsterdam Records released his GRAMMY-nominated sophomore effort, The Pieces that Fall to Earth, a collaboration with the LA-based chamber orchestra, Wild Up, to acclaim. Cerrone is also the winner of the 2015-2016 Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition. Learn more at www.christophercerrone.com.

Tim Munro is a Chicago-based, triple-GRAMMY-winning musician. As a flutist, writer, broadcaster, and teacher, he treats audiences as equals, welcoming them into musical worlds with passion, intelligence, and humor.

Munro is the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's Creative Partner. In this role he works as a curator, writer, moderator, and broadcaster. Munro is the flutist for the University of Chicago's Grossman Ensemble, Principal Flute of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, and was flutist and co-artistic director of Eighth Blackbird from 2006-2015.

Recent career highlights include a collaboration with Wu Man, performances with Ensemble Signal and the Chicago Symphony, and the creation of a transcription for live instruments of a work by Turner Prize-winning artist Susan Phillipsz. Munro also directed large-scale, immersive works by John Luther Adams and Alice Chance. Learn more at www.timothymunro.com.

Liminal Highways Track List

Christopher Cerrone - Liminal Highway
1. I. When You Fall Asleep in Transit [2:57]
2. II. Between Consciousness and Sleep [3:54]
3. III. A Dream You Don't Recall [2:29]
4. IV. Liminal [3:45]
5. V. Suddenly it is Needed [3:12]
Tim Munro, flute

Total: 16:17

Recorded by Anthony Gravino in Chicago, IL on December 14, 2018
Mixed, edited, and mastered by Mike Tierney in Brooklyn, NY

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