Listening to Where Once We Walked is a deeply religious experience. The half-hour composition is a tribute to the British village that took in 300 Polish children who had survived the Holocaust. Wright traveled to their homes in Poland to record the sounds of the surrounding woods, rails, and buildings. Church bells toll, a stream flows, a cantor intones, thunder barks. As the sound collage unfolds, we are drawn into the story and its tugging emotions: terror, sadness, gratitude, surrender. In the end, the story is too big for any of us to comprehend, but by transcribing the sounds of city and glen, Wright captures a fragment of the unknowable essence. The ghosts of those who have gone before – refugees and rescuers both – seem to be beseeching us, remember us now, where once we walked. (Richard Allen)
Excerpts
Photo by Chris Atkins: http://www.anotherspace.org.uk/a2a
a closer listen 