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Fauna is featured on the CD, “NEXUS Now”.

Fauna was composed in May 1988. It is an experimental piece combining electronic and acoustic music instruments, and it is also programmatic in nature.

The electronic instruments are used to generate reproductions of natural sounds (water, birds, voices), as well as reproductions of acoustic music instruments (drums, marimbas, Chinese opera gongs, penny-whistles). These sounds are combined with acoustic instruments such as wooden and conch shell trumpets, a melodion, marimbas, and Chinese opera gongs, to produce music that is constructed around a single melody, harmonized, and repeated in several series of variations.

Inspiration for the music arose from the experience of seeing the incredibly gentle and vulnerable wildlife of Australia during NEXUS’ first visit to that continent in 1986. That experience produced cognitive associations and intuitive feeling relating to the plight of the Australian fauna on their island-continent and, by extension, to the parallel condition of the Earth’s fauna (including humankind) on their island-planet. The music attempts to give expression to those thoughts and feelings.