Sounds from the Book of Bean Album

These sounds are recorded in the composer Annea Lockwood’s underground studio in Crompond, New York.  I am performing using beans as groups and as individuals for sounding.  The beans are red, black and white – the essential divisions.  The containers are glass, ceramic and wood as well as the human mouth.
Following the sounds are three writings from my bean collections. The Whale Shark Rhinodon, excerpted from the Journals of B.A. Bean, a 19th Century ichthyologist; the Bean Sequences, a poem made from a book titled Framers of Forty Centuries by F.H. King, a book concerned with farming technology in China in the late 1800’s; and the final selection, Popular Bean Soup.  This recipe, very old, is from China, the calligraphy translated by George Brecht.