SACDs - Gandolfi

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is an actual 30 acre garden located in the Borders area of Scotland. The creation of architect and critic Charles Jencks and his late wife, Maggie Keswick, the garden was a 15-year project which was inspired by fractals, genetics, chaos theory, waves and solitons. Jenck’s garden and resulting book captured the imagination of Michael Gandolfi, an American composer whose earliest musical experiences were in rock and jazz improvisation, which he explored as a self-taught guitarist. Later he became interested in music composition and pursued formal studies and is now faculty member of the New England Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Centre. “I have long been interested in modern physics,” Gandolfi commented “and it seemed proper for music to participate in this magnificent joining of physics and architecture. I discovered The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, and after a month or so of sketching musical ideas, I decided to focus on several aspects of the garden to which I had the strongest musical response.