David Lumsdaine: (b1931) Big Meeting Location recording by David Lumsdaine (tape montage/re-composition) NMC D171 It is David Lumsdaine's 80th birthday this year. Lumsdaine was born in Australia and moved to the UK in 1952. The Durham Miners' Gala is a large annual gathering associated with the coal mining heritage/miners' trade unionism.   It is locally known as “The Big Meeting.” Big Meeting is an extraordinary collage of voices, speeches, songs, brass bands and their electronic transformations, which David Lumsdaine constructed from location recordings of the 1971 Durham Miners' Gala – a record of one of the last of the annual meetings before the county's pits were closed. Over the last forty years David Lumsdaine has composed a body of strikingly original music, including Aria for Edward John Eyre (recorded on NMC D007), Hagoromo, Mandala 3, Bagatelles, Mandala 5, Garden of Earthly Delights and Kali Dances.   His work is influenced not only by the music of other traditions and cultures, but also the music of the natural world.   At its heart, his music embodies his experience of the Australian landscape – the variety of its shapes, rhythms, colours and textures: the vitality of its creatures; its sudden violence; its sense of unlimited space and time.   His passion for the natural world and its conservation expresses itself more literally in his archive of birdsong and recorded soundscapes, many of which have been released on CD. TRACK LISTING 01. Beginnings: "Speak!" - 5'42 02. Gathering, memories: Old Elvet and Racecourse - 9'18 03. The Fairground Dances - 13'17 04. The Miners' Hymn - 2'52 05. Crossing Palace Green to the Cathedral - 7'24 06. Underground: questions - 8'59 07. Praise: people speak - 8'28 08. Coda - 4'47 NMC Recordings are distributed in Australia by Rockian Trading, P.O.Box 44, Briar Hill, Vic, 3088, Australia Telephone (03) 9432 4149 ~ Facsimile (03) 9444 6879